July 23

Yes, we hear all about Hillary! Every paper has about seven articles!

We did not see the eclipse. We didn’t wake up ( due to Cuba Libres ) but it was total cloud coverage so no one in Goa saw it!

Tuesday evening, Viraj wanted to take us to dinner at the BBQ place. He had a friend in town and wanted some more talkers. We decided to drink the rum and cokes because we would be only having a couple. Well, the dinner turned out to be a full banquet. It started with fish in a kind of tartar sauce in a little cup that tasted like a salty potato chip! It was delicious!!!! Bhot! That means excellent if I spelled it correctly. Next came the water buffalo tongue – picture of Nicole coming soon – which was very tasty. It was a little like Canadian bacon but drier. I can eat most things that are not squishy!......or green…….or hairy……or stinky…..etc. We had another great piece of beef as good as any tenderloin I have ever had with cold beet and potato salad. Then came the Goan chicken curry. Viraj disappeared for five minutes and came back with chocolate eclairs for dessert. In a small package he had chocolate covered corn flakes for us to sample! By now we had five or six rounds of drinks! And you know it is not the booze that gets you, but all the soda!

In a third package he brought us a prepared lady fish because Nicole said she had never eaten it. He suggested it for breakfast but since it was red in color we assumed it was spicy and saved it for lunch! We were both sneezing just cooking it in the kitchen. The flavor and the fish were excellent….very easy to eat around the bones.

Viraj promised to take us to see a waterfall on Wednesday and said it was a half an hour away and he would pick us up at noon. To make a long story short, we reached the waterfall at five o’clock in a Toyota van with eight people including a family from St. Augustine with two small children. We had to cross into another state and we were detained for not having passports. After a bribe was paid, we were on our way until the little boy started vomiting because of the winding roads. He always waited till we were stopped thankfully! The little girl sang “Dora the explorer” most of the trip!
I believe we went to the edge of the Deccan Plateau. The water, river, whatever just spills over down to the valley. It was magnificent! We were in the clouds so the pictures don’t tell the entire story but we want to go back on a clearer day. Most pictures are taken halfway up the road with the valley views obscured. And then there were the monkeys!!!!! ( not the ones in the shorts in the waterfalls but the hairier ones!) They were waiting for handouts but would only grab and not really trust you to get too close! When you came close, they would jump over the wall to certain death only to grab a vine below and hide out for a while! I just want to go back……build a tree house and live there forever! It would be heaven if you could keep those less hairy monkeys out of the water!

We now have to settle down and get our work and errands done. We leave for Hampi Monday morning. Nicole’s friend is flying in Sunday and has a driver to take us. It is a site built around 1200 and full of sculpture and temples. There is an animal reserve in the area and Nicole wants to meet her animal spirit, the sloth bear! I am very excited about the trip and to meet GB. I hear he is the handsomest man in all of Mumbai….and I hear he has been reading the blog! :)