Goa: Not overrated

Goa, ahhhh Goa. First, I’d like to throw out a big thank you to Mr. Southard who so graciously showed me around his neighborhood and home while I was there. I arrived early, early Saturday morning (like 6am early, maybe earlier) and was without a room for a good 4 hours. I slept in the lobby of the hotel, which was wide open to mosquitoes, other unattractive insects, and hotel guests to see me drooling on the couch. I wasn’t totally happy, but there wasn’t much else I could do. My room was average at best, but I was just ultimately happy to get to a bed.

Around 12:30, Michael came by on his scooter and we started by planning the rest of the day out. We met a girl friend of his for a couple drinks on the beautiful (and clean) beach. I saw some pet piggies, a fisherman in a thong (not cute, but he did have buns of steel), and some cows wandering the beach. I drank a pina colada right out of a coconut, which was awesome. It was getting fairly close to sun-down, (another hour and a half or so), but Michael thought it would be awesome to take the scooter to a hidden little beach on a little island. So, I hopped on the back of his scooter and off we went. Being on that scooter was exhilarating, it was awesome. I loved the feeling of just being out there, “with the wind in my hair” as they say, experiencing the drive and the nature as close as I could. When we approached the ferry, we just drove straight on without stopping, and we made it just in time. The ferry ride was less than 5 minutes. I didn’t realize we were headed directly across the bay. And off we were again. Towards the end, we had to ride down some mountains, with the volcanic ash under us, we were very close to paradise. We left the bike up top and had to walk down. The sight was just breathtaking, the beautiful ocean, bright green palm trees, a lake on the left which drained to the ocean on the right, and pretty landscaping in the distance. It’s something not even a picture would be able to describe. We stayed and took a bunch of shots, did some swimming both in the lake and the ocean (so warm both of them!!!) until it got pitch black and a wild dog tried to hump me (seriously, it was quite frightening, he was a strong beast and I don’t know what would have happened it Michael wasn’t there to scare it off! Every time Michael walked away he came to attack me again). I remember saying this was my most favorite swim I had ever taken, I felt like I was in paradise. Really truly. We had to ride back up with the first mile being lots of potholes and such, over the ground without pavement. I had a carrot coconut shrimp soup for dinner, before some fish. It was awesome. That night, I stayed at Michael’s because the next day we were going kayaking.