Goa, Part III

**pics/vids added as of 6/1; post complete**

I got checked out of my hotel (“Beleza - by the Beach”) but my driver didn’t show.  The hotel brokered another car for me, and I talked him down some, but I still ended up paying $10 more than I had agreed to with the first guy.

We drove from Colva, inland to a spice plantation, where an informative and friendly guide walked me and a half dozen Indian tourists around a portion of the plantation in which representative species had been planted.  The whole plantation was hundreds of acres, thank goodness we didn’t have to walk around the whole thing.  The entire operation is organic; no pesticides or herbicides are used at all.

He showed us coffee trees (Arabica and Robusto is what it sounded like the two types were), and spices like cardamom and tumeric and cinnamon.  He showed us cashews and coconuts, bananas, vanilla, nutmeg and chillies, and a bunch of other things that I couldn’t remember.  I started taking pictures when he would show us something, but then I realized I would never remember what was what.  All kinds of things were growing here.

After the half-hour walk through the jungle, they poured a bout a cup of cold water with citronella at the base of our neck and it gushed down our backs soaking our shirts and saris.  The guys said not to worry because it wouldn’t stain.  In India, a stain is pretty low on the list of worries.  The water was some type of Ayurvedic ritual cleanser and besides cooling us down it had a bit of bug-repellent to boot.  Too bad we didn’t have the citronella at the beginning of the walk, though I’m not sure it works on fire ants which were the primary nuisance.  The guide then gave us a small sample baggy of some spices from the plantation, we’ll have to see if it makes it through customs.

After the water ladle, we ended up back at the reception area where there was a complimentary lunch buffet (I had started the tour in the same place after they gave me some hot lemon-grass tea and some “cheese biscuits” which were similar to goldfish crackers, but tinier and better).  The foods on the buffet were made using the spices from the plantation and the food tasted good.  A man served me half a shot of cashew feni alcohol, but I didn’t want any.  Another man came around with a tiny little dish of ice cream which I ate.  It was early enough in the day and I didn’t anticipate any exertion which would set my belly off.

We left the spice plantation in the non-AC car, and headed down to Palolem, which is a beach area about 25 or 30 miles from Colva.  The beach itself is crescent shaped (unlike the straight beach in Colva) and is supposed to be especially photogenic.  The trip took a while (most of the driving here is slow - around 25-30mph) and I fell asleep for a bit in the car.  Edwin, my driver, is a nice-enough guy, but he’s asked me several questions, several different times.  His memory must be about like mine.

We get to Paololem, and I’m seeing a fairly young crowd of Western tourists.  The accents are from the UK and from Australia and America.  And sounds like probably some French and some Dutch in there too.  Most of the foreign tourists are about 20 years old I would guess.  I’m pretty sure this was not the crowd I was hanging with when I was 20.  Lots of ripped muscles and tiny bikinis.  Lots of bravado and machismo and testosterone.  And plenty of alcohol, and I’m sure some other recreational substances.

The beach itself is beautiful.  The central part, where the main road enters the beach area, has the strongest waves, and there are lots of people in the water here.  Some people are on the beach, laying on towels, but most of them are in the surf.  I head North along the coast toward the top end of the crescent.  Apparently, parts of The Bourne Supremacy were filmed on this beach.  I’ll have to watch it again, I liked those movies anyway.

Farther north on the beach are some very large rocks, some of which are probably 15 or 20 feet tall.  A hill rises behind them and in front of them is a little island (maybe 20 acres or so).  Apparently you can walk across to it at low tide, and it appears to be low tide while I’m there, but I’m not chancing getting stuck while Edwin is waiting in the parking lot.  I told him I’d be back in about 3 and a half hours.  Drivers wait, no problem.  I guess the money he’s making is more than enough to keep him satisfied.  Besides, it’s a different culture here.  Waiting is just part and parcel of the whole.  In America, waiting is tedious and “a waste of time.”  Here, it’s just time, no wasting of it.

I find some peculiar designs in the sand that look somewhat like the balls a dung beetle will make.  These didn’t get here accidentally.  So I pull out my camera and take some quiet photos.  As I’m waiting and watching, little crabs start to come out of the holes.  They are the sculptors.  They are industrious in their little tube houses, like miniature stone-masons working only with mortar.

As I’m captivated by the artistic crabs, 4 guys from Alleppey (my next destination, about 15 hours south of here) become interested in what I’m looking at, and we start a conversation.  They offer me a “fag" which I didn’t realize was a cigarette.  The upper class people here smoke cigarettes and the lower class people smoke bidis.

We talk for a while and they inquire about my camera as one of them is a camera buff.  He says he has a high-end Canon which he really likes, but it’s too big and heavy to carry around.  I recite to him a line that I didn’t come up with, that the best camera is the camera you have with you.  He laughs because he knows it’s true.  That’s how I ended up with this camera, it won’t win against a $2500 full-frame DSLR, but it’s got a really nice lens assortment and high quality sensors and best of all, it’s small.

I answer all the usual questions and politely break off and head closer to the rock formations.  A couple of boys are sitting atop one of them, and I think that’s a good idea.  I climb up the next one and sit perched atop the boulder for about a half an hour.  Watching and listening.  To the surf.  To the wave-like undulations a little past the breakers.  To the beach dogs infested with biting flies.  To the seabirds in the shallows.  To the man, fishing with nets from his outrigger canoe.  And to the Western tourists walking by, bodies in the prime of their lifespan arc, tatooed and dreadlocked for effect, beers in one hand, smokes in the next.

I take some pictures as the sun starts to fade, and get down before I break my neck trying the dismount in the dark.

I find a beach shack with people occupying a few tables which are laid out in the sand, all the chairs facing toward the sea.  I sit down, alone (what will it be like to eat with people again?), and ask for a menu.  This place’s specialty is Thai food.  I order veg Pad Thai and it comes out about 20 minutes later.  It is actually very good Pad Thai which surprises me.

I still have some time before Edwin expects me back, and I don’t want to leave too soon and end up spending time at the train station.  If I’m going to have leftover time, I’d rather spend it at the beach, even in the dark just listening to the waves, than spend it sitting in a train station.

So, I order some fried banana fritters and they are good also.  The bugs are persistent, but one of the staff brings around burning mosquito coils.  They seem to help, but some of the bugs aren’t deterred, and so every so often, I have to swat at one or flick something off my arm or the back of my neck.

There’s a single man, maybe mid-60’s, the oldest by far of any Western tourist I’ve seen at Palolem, sitting alone on the table behind me and to my left.  He’s been nursing a Tuborg beer for 20 minutes or more.  In front of me and to the the left is a single, early 20-something man who is reading a book.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it was philosophy.  Directly in front of me sit a couple.  They are a destination couple.  They have only just met here in Goa, and they are spending time together because its convenient and they are attracted.  But you can tell from the way they interact that they only have a few things on their mind, and long-term relationship is not one of them.  He is tatooed all over his body.  Even his face and into his hair is tatooed.  I mean his whole face is tattooed, his nose, his forehead, his cheeks and lips.  His ears, inside and out are tatooed.  There is not a patch of skin (that I can see) that doesn’t have ink and his earlobes hang slack because the big metal spacer is not in the holes.

They get up shortly before I do.

I call for the bill and get it paid.  I ask to use the restroom which ends up being a western toilet bowl (no tank), sitting on a platform in a shanty.  When I walk in, the walls are moving, and things on the walls are moving.  Good thing I only need to urinate, besides, I can hit it from the doorway.

I walk down the dark beach and trip into some kind of sand sculpture.  I can’t make out what it is or what it says.  Or rather what it used to say before I crashed into it.

Back to the beach head, I find my driver and we head back up to Margao, which has the biggest train station in Goa, and is the place I get on the train to go to Kerala.  We continue our chat on the way and the conversation turns to his daughter who is 1st in the “English medium” school.  There are schools that are taught in the native language of the area (for instance in Goa, the predominant language is not Hindi, its Konkani); these are the government schools.  English medium schools are private schools that are taught using only the English language for the instruction in all subjects.

Being 1st in an English medium school makes him very proud of his daughter and Edwin is the most animated I’ve seen him.  I can relate. 

We get to Margao without incident, and I give him a chocolate candy bar that the waiter at the Thai place gave me in lieu of my 5rs change.  I tell him to give it to his daughter.  My action is only half-way thoughtful.  I had a Snicker’s bar in my backpack that gave me some headaches when it burst, melted and nougat-y into the seams of my belt pouch.  I’m not interested in doing that again, and besides, good for his daughter anyway.

I’ve timed it just about perfectly, so I only have about an hour before the train comes in.  Except the train isn’t running on time, and is scheduled (at this point) to be an hour and half late.  So much for planning.  India wins again like she always does.

I find a bench down the way while looking for the air-conditioned 1st class waiting room which apparently doesn’t exist.  I have a seat next to man and his 10lb bag of rice.  We don’t talk.  Neither of us is interested.  It’s hot here, but it’s not the heat that’s critical, it’s the humidity.  It’s so humid that I believe it should be impossible for the air to hold any more water without breaking lose a torrential rain.  But the rain doesn’t come, and neither does my train.

At least not until it’s 2 and a half hours late.  I climb on about 1:20a for my 10:50p train, somehow find my berth and get my bed made up.  It’s a 2AC coach which means in theory that there are 4 people in my section and I’m one of them.  There are already 5 people in my section before I arrive.  At least they haven’t commandeered my bunk.

My feet and crocs are still sandy from Palolem and getting the sand off of sweaty skin and rubber is an exercise in futility.  I get off what I can and climb up into the sheets anyway because I’m too tired to wash my feet off in the sink of the moving train.  That will have to wait until tomorrow.

And so the train finally heads south, with a sandier version of me asleep in my bunk as soon as my head hits the dirty pillow.