Anjuna

We were quite sad to leave Panaji, having really enjoyed our time there. We particularly like the beautifully renovated Fontainhas Inn where we stayed in the old Portuguese quarter. Our friend Dan from home had spent a bit of time lounging around and enjoying a host of never ending parties at Anjuna Beach though, so we had to give it a go and arranged to meet Caper there.

Heading out of Panaji we crossed the broad Mandovi River on the bridge we had visited previously by scooter when I found myself caught in one of the many randomly inescapable one way systems that helped to make the town's streets extremely confusing to navigate.

I snapped a couple of pics from the taxi window.


We were quite tempted by the paddle steamer you can just make out on the river. It was some kind of dinner/tour/casino/disco, but was sadly a little pricey for our budget.


Apart from the parties (which as we've said previously have been all but stopped by a government crackdown), Anjuna is also known for its Wednesday market, which is the biggest for miles around. We arrived on Tuesday morning with the aim of finding some accommodation for ourselves and Caper who planned to arrive the next day.

I had provisionally booked a place from the lonely planet, but upon arrival we found ourselves immediately besieged by drug dealers offering us everything under the sun. Now people who know me quite well might not think that would be too much of a problem, but when the main protagonist turned out to be the guy who owned the accommodation we had booked, and said accommodation turned out to be rancid as hell, and the guy was far more interested in selling us drugs, it was a bit of a problem. We swiftly left to check out some other options.

There was a huge range in prices, but sadly not a huge range in quality. It went from really feckin horrible to just about bearable. Our fifth or sixth place seemed ok for the reasonable asking price of 500 rupees a night (just over seven quid). On the upside, the room was quite big, fairly recently built and the other part of the building would hopefully be available for Capes. On the downside, it wasn't that clean, the bathrooms were pretty grim, mozzies would prove to be a bit of problem due to it not really being sealed at all and our view was essentially the next door neighbour's rubbish dump. Looking back now at those pros and cons, it doesn't really seem like a very sensible choice, but we did only plan to stay there for a couple of nights at most.

Check out the pic below. We had the right side and Caper eventually had the left complete with mini balcony terrace.


The manky mattresses hanging up outside turned out to belong to Jackson who lived with his family just to the left of the pic. Jackson (who's name hasn't been changed to protect his anonymity) turned out to be the chief supplier of narcotics to all and sundry in the area (I'm guessing someone fairly high up was getting their cut as he seemed to be left well alone). This was handy for obvious reasons, but the endless traipsing of sketchy looking tourists across our front patch definitely outweighed this advantage.

We headed off to explore the beach, and to get our bearings for the market the following day. The main part of the town is actually a fair way from the beach, but our accommodation was conveniently between the two. The beach at Anjuna was not nearly as nice as Palolem and could definitely have benefited from the morning rubbish sweep that someone seemed to be organising there. Not only that, but it seemed like many of the beach front restaurants were just chucking their rubbish out directly on to the beach, and not much of it was getting washed away. Combined with this was a fair amount of black oily residue on the sand that looked like there had been a significant spill at some point in the past. I'd say it was actually close to being one of the worst beaches we have come across.

Clairy spotted this possibly unintentionally hilariously-named place, catering to just two people at a time.


A little further down was the empty skeleton of the market.


It was incredibly hot and dry. Not sure what these poor water buffalo were munching on if it wasn't their favoured tasty cardboard.


Pay parking? Who's gonna make me eh?


Clair spotted this handsome looking fella on a cable near by, we later identified it as a green bee-eater.


And she also spotted these nests that bore a striking resemblance to the oropendola birds that we saw in Guatemala. We didn't see anything go in or out though so we couldn't confirm what they were.


Yet another German bakery. Not quite sure how or why they have become so prolific in Goa, or for that matter where the German bit comes in, as they all sell a fairly standard set of croissants, cakes and bread. This one did decent curries as well mind, so we dropped in a couple of times.


The next morning was market day. I had emailed Capes with details of how to locate our dubious accommodation, so me and the lady set off early to try and get a good look around before the sun got too high in the sky. Obviously I had to have a bit of brekky first though, so we stopped in a restaurant just in front of the market and had some pretty decent scrambledy-eggs.

Clairy snapped this pic of a chap setting out his attractive lantern stall.


We went inside and found the place still fairly empty at the beginning of the day. Clairy liked the repeating patterns of the palm leaf canopies shadowing the stalls.


She also snapped a pic of these Lamani tribal women's textiles. They themselves were quite a sight dressed head to tow in brightly coloured and heavily mirrored clothes with large decorative gold piercings through their noses.


The sun seemed to shoot up into the sky and soon enough the market was filling up and boiling hot. There was a definite air of desperation in the demeanour of a lot of the vendors. I'm not certain if it was always that way, or whether it was a result of the dwindling numbers of tourists visiting the area. It definitely topped the list though as the most hard-selling market we had visited on our travels.

It wasn't just the vendors either. When we got to the track that formed the far end of the market, it was full of young guys who were massively pushy, to the point where it was a real slog just to get past them. Then I found myself being grabbed by an older chap, who insisted that there was something wrong with, or in my ear. He had a nasty looking pin in his hand and was already jabbing it towards my ear before I had time to realise what was going on. I realised it was some kind of scam and shouted for him to back off. I later saw the trick repeated by various others on unsuspecting tourists, lots of whom looked genuinely freaked out. Capes told us that he nearly came to blows over the same thing being done to him.

After an hour or so, we were fully spent and had to get out of there. It was one of the only markets that Clairy didn't take any pictures of, and I think that says a fair amount about what she thought of it. Later she said she thought she might have enjoyed it between the ages of fourteen and seventeen when she was in her hippy phase, and that she did actually still own most of the things on offer, which were mainly purchased from Glastonbury and had been hidden away in the loft for some time.

We beat a fairly hasty retreat to the south end of the beach. I was looking for Curlie's bar, which our friend Dan had recommended. We found it in pretty dilapidated state. There seemed to be an infestation of flies downstairs so we made our way up some rickety stairs, and had a pineapple juice while we appreciated the admittedly quite nice view. I could imagine it being a nice place to hang out in its heyday when the tunes were banging out all night, and there were a few more people around.


That afternoon we rented another scooter and headed down through the towns and beaches south of Anjuna. Fort Aguada was built by the Portuguese in 1612 and was the farthest point southwards that we could go before reaching the Mandovi River estuary that we had come up from the previous day. It was quite a sight. It must have taken a huge amount of (no doubt Indian) labour to quarry the vast blocks that it was made of. A large chamber inside joined the upper fort some 300m up with the lower fort and dock down at sea level.


The old lighthouse was added within the fort walls at a later date.


Coal is a major export of the region and the estuary mouth was full of huge barges coming and going.


On the way back we headed down to the beach at Calangute. The town and beach here are the major Goan holiday destination for Indians. It was absolutely heaving, and if we thought that the constant hassling was mainly aimed at Westerners we were proved wrong here. It was total mayhem.

Clairy snapped a couple of pics on the beach. Check out the huge pile of inflatable banana boats. A hospital ward of spinal injuries just waiting to happen.


It went on for miles. We legged it as fast as we could.


But not before taking a pic of the nicely painted temple near by.


Capes managed to find our grotty little room in the middle of the rubbish dump while we were out exploring, and after the relative calm of Palolem and it's far nicer beach, agreed that we would carry on to Vagator the following day to find some nicer digs and hopefully a slightly calmer environment.

We headed out for some food, and chose a busy restaurant on the beach. Clairy took this nice pic of some passing vendors.


Oh hi! We ordered a couple of curries and waited for Capes to come and join us.


The food was delicious and we watched another attractive sunset. We were also celebrating the fact that we had been travelling for one whole year to the day. Cheers to us!


Sadly at about four in the morning Clairy awoke with painful stomach cramps and for the next two days solid had the most horrifically violent food poisoning either of us had encountered on our trip so far. It was nearly five days in all before she had the energy to be up and about.This also meant we couldn't move on to the nicer accommodation I had located in Vagator for us the following day, so the poor thing was ill in our grotty rubbish dump hell. Thank god when we finally got her to our new accommodation it was a million times better.