Day 2 in Goa, home of the cliché beautiful beaches one only gets to write home about.
As we speak, I am perched outside our little Bali bungalow surrounded by palm trees, tropical flowers and a sparkling lap pool. But achieving this paradise was not as easy as it sounds. I should have known we were cursed to start out with, as David and I had very specific expectations about our beachside bungalow. I can only blame the incredible oceanside location of our Ko Phanang cottage in Thailand for this expectation and god knows we pored over every guide book and internet site to find it. No real luck, but thanks to Vasanth, we found something that seemed passable in Baga Beach.
Showing up at Alidia Cottages after 13 days of international seminar-ing, next to no sleep and too much Indian food catching up to me, I was hopeful. When I saw the room, I lost a little enthusiasm. When I saw the live spider and the dead roach (at least that one was dead), and didn’t see the ocean as promised in the guidebook, I was close to a breakdown, but held back.
It was the crows that did me in.
David and I both woke up in the earliest of daylight hours to the sound of probably 500 cawing crows. I would guess that most of you have no idea what this sounds like but it was absolutely horrifying. I have never seen the movie The Crow or even Hitchcock’s The Birds, but I imagine the screenwriters for both of those movies got their inspiration in Goa. It is a crow playground. It is where crows must go to live and to die. They are everywhere. Not a seagull in sight. Why is this not in the guidebooks.
We had to get out. And so we did—leaving the cottage at 6:15 in the morning, pitch black, and started walking up the beach in the dark in search of our Goa paradise. Here is what we saw during our two hour trek:
- Hundreds, and I mean hundreds, of tiny beach shacks. Sam’s Beach Shack. Tom’s Beach Shack. Annie’s Beach Shack. It went on and on, for two hours as the sun rose. And they all serve the same exact things—Kingfisher, Goan Crab, Naan and random grilled cheese sandwiches – and during the day they put out lounge chairs for the hordes tourists we haven’t seen yet. .
- Dogs. Maybe even more dogs than beach shacks.
- Cows. Ok, they were really only on Anjuna Beach, but there was a herd of cows on Anjuna.
- Dudes still drinking from the night before.
- A grounded oil tanker, aptly placed near the luxury hotels on the south end of the beach. It was called the River Princess but she wasn’t a very pretty princess.
- Not a single cool place to stay.
We did appease ourselves with a very nice breakfast at the Taj Resort in Fort Aguada and hitched a ride back to Baga to check out of the Alidia with high hopes of finding something in the famed Anjuna Beach. While we found plenty of cheap tee-shirts and sun-leathered remnants of the hash-fueled days of Goa’s golden hippy years, we found no place to stay, two meals down and hours of wakefulness later.
At this point I’ll end this story by saying we did find something pretty great. Not on the beach but no crows and free breakfast. We found it on our own with no thanks to the Lonely Planet which is letting us down this week but would recommend it to anyone, called the Cavala Inn http://www.cavala.com/. Very cool Portuguese style estate. And we’re having fun—it’s so nice to have David here now and to not be on a schedule, although it was a little weird after two weeks in a tour bus with a herd of my new Haas friends who left 2 days ago.
On that note, I didn’t really say any good-byes to them as I am really not good at them, but for anyone reading this blog—it was a really incredible experience meeting you all. Swastik, I am expecting those quotable posts! Get ready for the reunion party in a few weeks!
More later.
Ps—Dave Francl, went to Britto’s. Had crab. Heading to Tito’s tonight!
