A day at the beach

Saturday was Diwali and we weren’t sure how much would be open and we were ready to just relax so we scooted off to a different beach which luckily was quite well marked so it wasn’t as tricky for me to navigate. This beach was also below a mini cliff which had great views; we could even see some cows on a beach a little south of us. We walked on down to find a rather interesting beach annoyance in Goa and the reason why lots of people stay at resorts…we had lots of women coming up to try and sell us things. Skirts, necklaces, etc., etc. Now I’ve been in India long enough to know that if you show even the slightest hint of interest you can’t get rid of people trying to sell you things; alas my travel buddy is newer to India but within about a ½ hour she figured it out and we got quite good at quickly shoo-ing them away.
After grabbing a quick lunch we decided to head over to an even quieter beach closer to the cows we had seen; Indians don’t go to the beach much and the few that do are mostly men, and the women keep all their clothes on when they go in the water (literally) so we were hoping to get a few less stares at this quiet beach. This beach was not well marked and I was 99% certain that we were totally lost but I knew that the ocean was west so we got there. Whew. The beach was super quiet with a few other foreigners around so we got much less attention. This beach also had a little café where we sat in the shade and had a drink (and some hummus…really difficult to find here so super exciting for me) and watched as the cows ran by.
Dinner was back at the hotel and was so amazing that it is blog-worthy. I love fish but don’t eat it in Delhi because I can never be sure that it is fresh so whenever I’m near the coast it is fish, fish, fish. At the hotel we met a French man who lives in Mumbai who comes to Goa every year during Diwali. He had stayed at the hotel the year before and became friendly with the owner so asked them to get him a nice big fish. We saw them bring it out and it looked amazing…they had another so we ordered it too and it was absolutely perfect. Indians tend to either fry fish or put it in a curry but this was perfectly cooked, broiled I think, with some roasted garlic…count on a French man to teach an Indian to cook fish the ‘right’ way. As the night progressed other guests came out and we all sat around chatting…the group was:
2 Americans living in Delhi (us)
A French man living in Mumbai
2 Frenchies living in Sweden
A Brit living in Spain
Quite an interesting bunch...like I said, a great little hotel with fun guests.
Picture time! A view down the coastline and 3 women surrounding guys on the beach trying to sell them stuff.