Vamos a la playa

Monday March 23rd, Tuesday March 24th, Wednesday March 25th

Goa is only a short flight from Mumbai (around 50 minutes) and is THE vacation destination for most Indians--besides “Are you married? No?! And you have no boyfriend??!!” the next most popular question I have received from people I meet in India is “Have you gone to Goa yet?“ So of course, we had to go.

We hit it at the end of the tourist season, so it wasn’t crowded and it was hot, but we didn’t mind too much. After another harrowing taxi ride from the airport to our hotel (yes, this seemed to be a theme for the week) we checked into our digs at the Ronil Royale (nice, clean budget hotel, minus the cockroach our second night) and walked around the area on Baga Beach where we were staying before making our way over to Britto’s Restaurant for a few beers while watching the sunset. A delightfully relaxing way to spend the afternoon, I highly recommend it. We hit a Portuguese restaurant for dinner called La Fontana that was cute, had excellent service (not always the norm in India), and delicious. Goa has a huge Portuguese influence, and the chocolate and bananas for dessert really did not disappoint.



Traveling in India, however, is not always smooth (reference aforementioned taxi rides here, also bumpy auto rikshaws). Our first full day in Goa, we headed to the beach early. A staff member at our hotel warned us the guys on the beach would try to charge us for the beach chairs, but that they were really free. Soon we found this was, indeed, the case, as our pleasant morning turned out to be a bit more intense after I engaged in some arguing with the Beach Chair Dudes who tried to charge us for our chairs. (As an aside, this week also marked the turning point for me in that I Started to Get Tougher with People Trying to Rip Me Off).


Eventually, we found a few that we did not have to pay for, but soon found that going to Goa at the end of tourist season did not ensure peace and quiet, but rather that seemingly everyone (kids, men, women, dogs) would try to sell you everything from pedicures to parasailing to Bob Marley t-shirts. Alas, the best recourse was to pretend to sleep, as reading or listening to music meant that you could, indeed, still be approached to buy something from the persistent vendors.

This little guy, however, was content sleeping under our chairs

We did decide, however, to do parasailing. Around noon we boarded a boat arranged by our very persistent new friend Mike who had staked his claim to our business around 9 a.m. by leaving a life jacket next to our chairs. A few men from the British Navy joined us in our parasailing adventure, which was fun but surprisingly peaceful--knowing nothing about parasailing prior to this venture, I had anticipated more of a thrill, but really it was totally calm and not all that thrilling at all, but the view was amazing, and I was still very excited about it.




We spent our afternoon eating great seafood and drinking big beers with our new parasailing friends and our favorite Goa waiter, Tomas. After some encouraging we also road the Banana Boat, which is where you straddle a long boat shaped like a banana and a bigger boat pulls you and tries to throw you off. Yes, this is as fun as it sounds, but we soon realized that the Arabian Sea is very, very salty.

HOLLA!

A banana boat. Booyeah.

The afternoon turned into evening with dinner, drinks, a lost cab driver, and Jes and I playing the role of heartbreakers to our British suitors. So sorry, dudes.

One day was enough beach action for us, so the next morning after our free hotel brekky we hired a driver (who told us to call him Steve, but his name was Santosh) to take us to the Anjunta Market nearby which is held every Wednesday. Despite the fact that it was HOT HOT HOT, we managed to get some killer deals. However, vendors were even more desperate to sell than we were to buy; most of our business went to the less-aggressive salespeople.

We caught a late lunch at Jaime’s Lunch Place, where we were the only patrons but I had the best vegetarian briyani I have had since arriving. We then got Steve/Santosh to drive us to Old Goa and hit up some historic churches and then to the city of Panjim where we stopped outside another church and at Blooming Dales (as a favor to Steve/Santosh) before having some sweet lime soda and lassi.

Yes we are representin’ with our Home Girl Mary

That night took us back to Britto’s for dinner this time, where the seafood reigned and where Steve/Santosh and his friend Nelson Mandela (so he dubbed himself) joined us for a drink and then a longer-than-planned motorcycle ride. Needless to say, that was the end of us hanging out with them. (In case you are keeping track, that’s Leah & Jes 2, Dudes 0 on the Heartbreaker’s Score Card).