Today we hired a taxi and went on a tour to see some Goan history and magnificent south Goan beaches. The fort called Cabo de Rama was an amazing place to stand there facing the great history and see the ruins of a fort built by the Portuguese in 1788. It is set high up on the side of the cliff and overlooks the magnificent Arabian Sea. I had a field day with my various lenses, meeting travellers along the way, and enjoying the shade of the mighty Banyan trees scattered in and around the fort area. Dacey and Ash were a bit hot, but the rest of us armed with our recording devices loved every minute of it. Charlie, Steve and I ventured all around the edge of the fort, walking on the top of the wide stone wall. Poor Dacey was dealing with sweaty feet (even in thongs) and finally towards the end cracked it, refusing to come any further. Dacey, Ash, and Billie sat in the shade out the front of a church. It took some talking to Dace to get her back into the “tourist” program, but we managed to, without Ash helping and the sniggering remarks between the two fuelling an all-out sisterly war in the middle of a fort.
We also travelled to two beaches – Agonda Beach where Charlie’s desire to hire a surfboard and ride the waves overcame her! Charlie hired the board for 300 rupee ($6) for an hour – but she didn’t require all that long to discover her surfing talents were not showing up as she first thought they probably would. So she and Dacey decided to swap the one long surfboard for two small boogy boards. They had some fun catching the waves, while the rest of us sat on the lovely beach enjoying the sun, sand and sights. There are many more foreigners here at this beach, it is where we would have preferred to stay while visiting South Goa but we could not get any accommodation for the six of us there. Comfy beach shacks on stilts lined the long coastline and out to the sea was a group of large boulders protruding from the water where young kids played on and jumped off and into the water.
It was back into the taxi and off to Palolem Beach, which we enjoyed immensely. We were shown to a beach café, ordered some cool drinks and snacks – veg spring rolls, satay chicken, deep fried calamari and watched the golden sun set. We changed into our bathers and swam out to a lonely rock that jutted out of the bay 300m from the shoreline. Ash stayed put on the beach chairs, while the five of us swam out to the rock with the goal of climbing onto it. Once we got there we realised the task of hauling our wet bodies up onto the rocky oyster encrusted surface, and spotting a large crab crawling off it, was not at all possible. We swam back, and enjoyed getting our bodies physically moving after being in the taxi for so long.
We stayed longer at the beach, relaxing completely and enjoying watching the young children play ball in front of us on the beach. We headed back to Colva Beach area and heading out for dinner for our final night in Goa. Tomorrow at lunch time we depart via train at North Goa railway station for the mighty city of Mumbai (Bombay).
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