So here we are now in the city of Panjim, Goa, which is one hour north of Palolem. Back into the city with the traffic and horns honking, a bit of a change from the quiet in Palolem where you'd hear waves instead of noise. We're just sitting here drinking some chai tea as it's been coming down with rain today.
The three days in Palolem were amazing and we're glad we found this little town on one of our scooter excursions. It's definitely a little backpacker haven on the ocean and used to be a small fishing village. Considered to be Goa's prettiest beach, we had to agree. Every day we saw the fishermen out on their boats or bringing fresh fish in. We had a great time getting some lazy beach days in, reading and chilling out. We even got some time in the ocean, which we didn't think would happen. But the beach is so much cleaner here (you didn't have to step over garbage every two feet or so) and the waves are tame (not like Benaulim) since Palolem is protected from the open sea in a bay. I guess the most dangerous thing about Goa is the rip tides and every year tourists are killed in Goa's waters. Another reason we didn't hit the beach in Benaulim. Surprisingly, there's a ton of lifeguards around even on the most deserted of beaches.
The days have been beautiful, sunshine and blue sky for the most part during the day and rain at night. One night though, we had a full moon and a clear sky. We grabbed a bottle of Indian wine (Sula Sauvignon Blanc, circa 2009 - wasn't awful but it was drinkable compared to the few other Indian wines we've sampled), grabbed a few chairs from our guest house and just sat under the stars enjoying the beach to ourselves with our bottle of wine.
Goa's food is one of the things we have enjoyed the most. Every day we had our pick of fresh fish. We 'splurged' on dinners every night. To have a whole fish (red snapper, king fish, etc) along with sides and drinks it came out to 900 rupees or about $20 for the two of us. Nice!
In Panjim today, we visited three old churches built by the Portuguese in the 1600 and 1700's, St Augustine, St Francis of Assisi and Bom Jesus or Basilica of Jesus. We're talking beautiful and huge churches! One of them, St. Augustine, was demolished in the 1800's due to the explosion of religious orders by the Portuguese government. It was actually quite sad to see what once was a huge structure, just torn to shreds. Half of the tower still stands at 40 m, which is huge. The other churches were still standing (not sure exactly how they survived but St Augustine didn't) and they are used for services today. Filled with art and sculptures, it's almost surreal that they are even in India.
You definitely see and feel the Portugese influence in Goa, in the houses, streets and churches. The local people here are referred to as Konkanese, not Goans, because they speak Konkani. Even the local people's names have Portugese names like Clifford de Silva. Their language even sounds a bit more Spanish-like and not as much like Hindi that we've been used to hearing. Supposedly the older generations still speak Portugese.
The houses here are so much more colourful than anywhere else in India. They've painted them every shade of the rainbow and it's always a bright colour, purple, pink, green, blue, yellow and red.
We also be-friended a few local stray dogs by feeding them some of our biscuits and dinner at different times. The dogs here....well, let's just say they have good memories. Every time they spotted us, the tails would start wagging and they'd be your best friend in the whole world. We couldn't get past the fleas though so our affection didn't go so far as to pet them or take them home.
For an idea of where we are now in Panjim, here's a map. We fly out tomorrow morning for Mumbai where we spent two days in the Bollywood city before flying back to Canada!
Take care,
Jack and Vanessa
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