Tuesday night.
Our neighbours Bob and Kath White Morrissey (cousin of
Morrissey, 1980’s singer) have been friends for three years now. We decided we would have an outing to
Bennoulim to Pedro’s for the Reggae night .
Little did we know, until Albert the taxi driver aka, “the voice of
Varca”, told us that it was the last night of the three day Carnival and it
would be terminating in the square in front of the beach outside Pedro’s. He said we should avoid it, that there would
people who would be having too much fun, drinking and squirting people with
water and dry coloured powder. Well, we
couldn’t resist it, we said we didn’t care about the water and paint powder and
that we would give it a go.
Unfortunately Kath had her white capri shorts on, I had a floral dress,
no worries there. Albert dropped us off
in the thick of it, there were hundreds
of people dressed in carnival masks, fancy dress, voodoo death masks etc., etc.,
quite a sight to behold.
We had a cracking view of the parade and the music sounded
more like the Caribbean than Goan Carnival, but there was wild dancing and very
high spirits. I was just approaching the
pirate ship when a young guy stroked my face and smiled, I thought nothing of
it until I felt my face and saw the
pretty pink paint powder, he did the same to Kath, but
dodged the boys, mind you attempting to paint himself and Bob might well have
incurred a bit of a slapping! Then we came in for a right soaking from the
crowd which didn’t seem to have done any damage to my dress but Kath had gone a
nice shade of lilac!
We went into the toilets in Pedro’s to clean up and were met
by a couple of dozen giggling girls all washing their faces and admiring our
colours. Needless to say it took some scrubbing
Wednesday
Having soaked my pink stained bra and lilac stained knickers
overnight, it still hadn’t come out so I shoved them into the Samsung toploader
and hoped for the best. The best didn’t
happen – hey ho, there’s always tomorrows wash.
My hair however is also being a tad stubborn, pink streaks may well be
the fashion for a week.
We went on the bike to Blue Waves, our favourite beach bar,
where the sea is always calm, the sand crunches like snow beneath your toes,
and we get a welcoming wave from Samsul as we approach. The food is really good here, we both had
lunches of Hot Chicken Salad and Hot Tuna Salad and while we were there we
watched a pod of dolphins for about twenty minutes diving in and out of a shoal
of fish just off the shore, sea eagles doing their best to get a share. We swam for quite a time as the sea was so
calm – ah bliss.
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