Family and Goan Beaches

We’ve always found it amazing how easily the body just seems to adjust to a different pace and how days just seem to expand or contract to whatever pace you make for yourself. For Goa, this has meant ‘beach pace’ where we often find it is already late afternoon without really knowing where the day has gone. The days here have melted away and blended into one another.

Our stay here has been all about family and beaches. My brother and his family have been visiting here from Germany so we took the opportunity to spend a few days hanging out with them and exploring the central parts of the state together and some of the ‘locals’ beaches, before heading down to the contrasting and much more internationally touristed southern parts for a bit of good old fashioned beach time with the kids.

Sitting at the beach all day isn’t our thing at all, so we’ve been filling our days with a few activities and learning a few new skills, which is one of the aims of our year away.

Of course, we’ve also spent a lot of time in the waves and on the beach so hope we haven’t falsely set the kids’ expectations about what India and this trip is all about!

The coast of Goa is pretty much sectioned into the Northern party beaches and the quieter southern family / traveller / long stay beaches. For our first few days we stayed right in the centre which is much more Indian centric. We spent New Year’s Eve at Bogmalo Beach…

The kids were straight into the body surfing and haven’t stopped since we’ve been here

Bogmalo Beach is a great spot for people watching, and also being watched! Not a place for bikinis for the ladies because of that, but we obliged with many photo requests.

New Years was a very ‘Indian’ experience with exceptional food at ‘Swing by the Bay’ with a quirky twist with our charismatic host sitting at his computer with a mic, blasting out some karaoke tunes.

Later in the evening we went back to the beach where thousands had gathered for fireworks – Indian style. We’ve seen many fireworks displays, but this is the first time we’ve actually felt part of them. They were launched just a few meters from where we were standing and exploded directly over us. Some of them did not reach the intended height meaning sometimes bits of burning magnesium or zinc landing around us. It got the adrenalin pumping to have firework watching turn into a participation event!

We are finding the health and safety standards in India to be different to what we are used to in NZ!

On that note, the next day, we hired a taxi for the day – with Indian style seating arrangements.

We visited the delightfully kitch ‘Big Foot’ museum in Louloutim

We had a major dilemma deciding on the optimal spot for a selfie. Then fortuitously we discovered this:

We visited several colonial mansions in Chandor. This is the Menezes Braganza house

Granty busted out some moves from his prenatal class thirteen years earlier on the Portuguese style recliner… Impressive!

It was time to go so I cut this conversation short.

ba dumm chhh!

I reckon this would make a great photo for the ‘caption that’ section of the NZ TV show 7 Days

With the Portuguese catholic heritage in Goa, there were many dioramas representing the nativity scene – this one uniquely positioned

Taking a break in the Vasco de Cama market

As was this cow. Bliss!

We lucked out at our AirBNB near Vasco de Cama, which was a touch more relaxing to chill out in than our hotel in Mumbai.

And with that it was time to farewell my brother and his family as they headed back to Germany

We headed down to gorgeous Palolem, one of the Southern beaches, where huts and restaurants are nestled in between palm trees along the beach. Like most of Goa, this place is renowned for usually being packed full of Russians and Brits but apparently tourism is down around 30-50% on last year due to increased costs of entering India and the deflated Russian economy.

Sofia got the obligatory Henna tattoos from Sanita

On the way to the northern end of the beach to watch the sunset with Liam

The beach lights up at night with candled tables and BBQs with a selection of local fish, which has been our staple dinner while here

This is the combo ‘Sofia loses her next tooth / man preparing our dinner’ shot

Nothing like kittens and puppies to melt the kiddies’ hearts

We took a day out to the stunning Cola beach just north of Palolem. The off-road tuk tuk journey was an exhilarating way to get there!

There was a beach, a fresh water lagoon, a couple of restaurants, and a tent village set up over high season.

Cows roam around anywhere as they please. Because of their placidness, they seem to add a sense of calm to wherever they are, except for when they nearly take you out before running into a barbed wire fence as they did shortly after this photo was taken.

My daily yoga classes with Shiva took me in directions I wasn’t expecting.

The kids loved cooking some traditional Indian dishes at Raul’s kitchen

They did well!

Sofia and Iris making wrist bands with Jameel

Clearing coconuts from around our bungalow. Again, not much in the way of health and safety precautions

We took a cruise at dusk to see some dolphins and tour some of the local bays

Rajeet inflicted massive pain on us during some aruvedic ‘massages’ or ‘smassages’ as we have called them. My last session was an ‘aryuvedic yoga massage’ involving tumbling around with Rajeet on a mat in compromising positions.

We’ve had our first sickness of the trip in the last week with Iris catching a bad cold and being bedridden for a couple of days, which has extended our stay a bit while she’s recovered.

Liam has had sickness of a different kind with moments where he has really missed home. Some FaceTime with his buddies has really helped!

Sadly, it is time to farewell Palolem…