A swim for lunch
Sunday 22nd
Woke this morning to loud (club volume) music being played from the house behind our place. The type of music varied from heavy bass reggae to Xmas songs with one in particular being played frequently imaginatively entitled ‘We wish you a merry Xmas’. We are constantly, while having out having our evening meal, approached by groups of young kids with red Santa hats and a leader in full Santa gear singing the above song except they are terribly out of tune and they sing ‘Vee viss you a Mary Xmas’ which I now annoyingly find I am singing whenever I ride the scooter.
Today we went to a beach south of Varca. There were four or five shacks. It seems that their main clientele were Russians as all the signage was in Cyrillic. The place was deserted except for a couple of sour-faced but extremely fit Russian girls. If only they smiled. I wonder what makes them so miserable all the time? Living in Russia no doubt!
Six of these makes a great lunch for two
There was however some lively action going on in the sea. Some six or sevenyoung Goan men were out in the sea catching fish. The process involved three of the lads swimming out and holding a forty foot net while the others splashed, shouted and swam towards the net, sort of herding the fish towards the net. I joined in with the ‘herders’. Once we herded the fish into the net, we lifted it out above our heads and hauled it to the shore. It was a good catch, maybe a hundred Catfish. They offered me part of the catch once they had untangled the fish from the net – I took ten fish. I took them to the Sea pearls shack and asked them to cook them for me in a medium spicy sauce as recommend by the lads. I bought a couple of Kingfisher beers for the lads still at the net and the shack charged me 50 rupees (66 pence) for cooking the fish. How cool is that? Having a swim and catching lunch at the same time. The fish was excellent in an Ambot Tik sauce.
More power cuts, this is the third and hopefully final attempt at getting this online – fortunately the internet café is on the beach.
It has been confirmed in today’s papers that there will be no beach parties from 23 December to 5th January. The Goan government have sadly capitulated to the very minute threat of terrorism.
