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Published: February 19th 2006
A perfect end to a perfect day
After the fire had gone out we fell asleep in the sand and slept until we were awoken by fisherman going out in their boats at dawn. Just to mention, it turns out if you put a whole dry coconut in the fire (they burn very well) you shouldn't have to worry about it exploding... At least the one I put in didn't :)After waking up late from the party the night before it was 12 o'clock by the time we had organised our motorbike (well scooter actually but motorbike sounds better) and other things.
We had a rough plan to head up the coast of Goa visiting forts, beaches and churches etc before coming back through some of inland Goa visiting a spice plantation on the way. We weren't sure where we were going to sleep either so took a couple of blankets and a few other essentials which we strapped to the back of the bike.
As luck would have it, we managed to see everything we intended to and had fun along the way getting lost and taking in the scenery.
The first day (which happened to be valentines day), after travelling a little way up the coast, we watched a beautiful sunset from the Portugese Cabo de Rama Fort on the coast and considered sleeping there. In the end though we decided to back track to a quiet and idyllic beach we had found earlier that day. Dinner was a huge Red Snapper and a couple of beers by candle light infront of the sea. At around
Cool rider...
Our mode of transport for 3 days was this beauty who turned out to be very reliable and needed little encouragement to get up some speed on the open roads. 11pm we wondered down to the end of the beach where I lit a fire and we spent the rest of the evening stargazing and talking about our pasts and futures. Eventually when all the wood was gone we fell asleep where we were sitting on the sand and stayed there all night.
I feel I should point out that as nice as this sounds it wasn't the best nights sleep at first and did get cold and damp. However, when the fire had almost died out I covered it over with sand and we slept over it to keep us warm and this seemed to do the trick.
Over the course of the next few days we got minorly lost repeatedly due to the local talent for directions (or possibly my ability to follow them). At times we were travelling down no more than a bumpy dirt footpath but this was exactly what I had hoped for when we first set off.
We didn't really meet any Goan people for a very long time but I chatted to a few of them for a while and got a rough jist for what they are like and
Basilica of Bom Jesus
The portugese were very, very keen on building churches. Old Goa (the old capital of Goa) in particular has loads I like them. Rightly or wrongly they view themselves a little higher than most Indian people do and this I feel leads to tourists being more accepted. You could also argue that they have just had a lot more exposure to tourists but I felt I was more than just tolerated there. They were always genuinely friendly and helpful and conversations revolved around other things than the usual 'how much did your plane ticket cost' type of conversation. When asking them about local cultures and foods etc (Vindalo's here are as you'd expect really good) they were happy to tell you as much as you had time for. There are as always exceptions to this rule of nice people such as the irritating hawkers on the beach but this is to be expected.
From here partly due to lack of time I'll leave it there and let the pictures show what we got up to.
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