Benaulim - Margao, Goa

So here we are, still in the same beach. Life is relaxed here, our biggest problem is generally choosing in which restaurant to eat out.

Unfortunately our travel laptop (Acer, Aspire One, thank you Mieke for loaning it;) has had some issues - the power adapter decided to die. So off we went to Margao to visit computer stores. After prolonged 3hour odyssey in search of a local Acer distributor we found their office (from upstairs of a block of flats, no signs outside the building) but they did not have any spare power supplies to sell and told us to visit Acer Support Center anyway (5km out of the city) because the laptop is still under warranty.
By that point we had enough of pointless walking around the town so we decided to return to our home near the beach.

Sun & Moon

Next day I had a nice ½ hour busride to the support center but they told me that the international warranty we have for Acer is not valid in the state of Goa. If we would want to get our power supply fixed for free we should visit either Bangalore, Mumbai or Delhi (all over a day trip away...) So in the end I decided to buy a new "universal" laptop power supply from a hardware store, half of the price of the Acers official power adapter.

Meanwhile I also found a music store from Margao and bought myself a birthday present - a beach/travel guitar.

Grason - Made in India

We have also seen lately few indian music groups - most of the time there is setup of guitar & keyboards and singalong songs (generally pretty awful campfire campiness). The poorest act we witnessed in one restaurant was a fat indian man sitting behind a laptop, selecting karaoke tracks and singing Elvis, Beatles etc. evergreens with an hilariously thick accent. One of the better performances was Indian jazz band, with keyboards, guitar, base, drums and saxophone. They played really well but a rather boring set of elevator classics. With some food and cocktails we tried to enjoy it all. Funny thing to notice was that there was no seperate amplifiers; everything was plugged directly in to PA (without any effects).

Traditional party from Rhadjastan

We spend daily few hours on the beach and ocean and are now slowly planning our next move to Gokarna, a bit holier beach town about 100 km south.

Benaulim Beach continues

Benaulim Beachlife

Since monday the 8th of november we stay at Da Silva Casa, a purple family guesthouse in Benaulim Beach. They have 3 rooms to rent out but at the moment we are the only guests. The house lays offroad in a nice rural area but still not far from the towncentre and close to the beach. The family we stay includes a couple with little children, a grandma and then a few others of which we don't know much. It's communal living here with people walking in and out the garden so it's not clear who lives where and with who and which children belong to which parents. There are no fences inbetween so all is one for everybody. 

 Our pets Neighbours

Around the house is a lot of bush and trees where animals freely wander, sleep, eat, or just be. There is a few motherpigs with lots of mini piglets running everywhere they can, there are chickens, a white cat with kittens, cows and black bulls with massive horns and in the tree in front of out balcony we can spot a squirrel when we are lucky.  It feels really nice to stay here. Layed back villagelife. The same people are almost doing the same thing every day; women washing clothes in the morning, men chopping wood, others building new houses and shacks, trashpickers bended to the ground, poor looking people scraping dirt from fences before others will paint them, women sweeping the fallen leaves in the street or in the gardens to create walking paths, in the afternoon they are burning the collected trash on the sidewalks or in nature (no matter what's the material). All the work is done in primitive ways and their hands still do more than the machines. 

Doing laundry

 

We rented a scooter to explore the coastline. I was very nervous because traffic here is so different then what we are used to. It's not only that they drive on the left side, their mentality seems to be a careless; survival of the fittest. For example local busses don't move aside for any scooter, bicycle or pedestrian, you just have to make way for the speeding bus by ending up in the ditch no matter how steep or dirty it is. Luckily we have seen that the locals are very helpfull when tourists crash or fall. Our trip went well and we visited beach after beach to find out that there are not really any nicer ones then our closest beach in Benaulim. There were even a few beaches than seemed to be especially reserved for Russians including shacknames, flags and menu's in Russian. Continuing our way we both started to feel more at ease with the scooter, it's a refreshing breeze when you go 40 km/h. At slow pase we enjoyed sandy paths in the shade of the trees and ending up on little  roads that appeared to have dead ends to private properties. After having lunch we headed back to the hostel as clouds were getting darker grey and we didn't want to drive in the rain.

 Birthday!

Saturday it was Jaakko's birthday. We decided to have a luxuryday. We started with baked beans on toast (for a change) as breakfast at Tansy. After that we walked across the street for icecream and fruit. For lunch we chose some nice chocolate- and pearcakes at our local German Bakery to take home. We bought a little bottle of Indian whiskey and cola to have a nice cocktail at our balcony. Around 18 o'clock we went to the beach to have a beer and watch the sunset. In stead of the standard Indian Kingfisher beer we had some real nice Goan beers called Kings, a sweeter taste and made of corn. I ate tomatosoup and veg stuffed papadum (like veggie springroll) and Jaakko had masala fries and Tikka Paneer (barbecued stick with capsicum, tomato and cottage cheese). To finish the night we walked over the beach to Little Tiger, a backpackerbar with 70's music and hookah's on the tables, where we had rum cola's. In loungy seats on the sand we talked and watched the pitchblack sea making white waves in the light of the moon.

Benaulim, Goa

After spending 4 long days in bustling city of Panaji we decided to return to the beaches. This time around we chose Benaulim beach, nearby Margao. We took a "bouncy" local bus from Panjim to Margao, missed our stop and ended up taking a rickshaw to the beach. 

Currently we are staying in Rosarios Inn, a budgetresort with a 15min walk to the beach. We also managed to haggle the price of our stay down from 350 inr to 300 inr (5€ per night for 2 persons).

After two days Benaulim feels by far the most relaxed place we've stayed until now: less tourist shacks, hustlers and tourists themselves. Pigs, dogs, cats, cows and waterbuffaloes run around freely and a rooster from the neighbours wakes us up in the mornings. 

Benaulim Beach

For a change the sellers / hustlers actually respect the word "No", awesome.

This beach attracts a totally different crowd then Anjuna / Vagator - there's a mix of older westerners, Indians and few backpackers.

Unfortunately the weather has taken a slight step worse, there's been daily rain showers but that's just refreshing with continious heat. (It's only bad for the laundry)

After the rain

Later on we are planning to rent a scooter and do a small trip up the beaches - there's a dozen beaches in the next 20 km up north.