Saturday, July 18

It has been a busy week but we got a lot done and are settling into more of a routine!

We went to a neighboring town of Panjam for a day to do many errands. We went to the market which was an adventure - I didn't know what half the veggies and fruits were. I will post some pictures soon of the neatly stacked piles - especially the garlic, a thousand little heads all stacked up!!!! The fish market was not as pleasant with the the flies all over everything. The fish were normal except for the little shark. We bought two pounds of large prawn for $8. They are in the freezer awaiting a feast. We also went to the movies to see "Ice Age III" and I had popcorn! It was a large complex and I felt like I was in Syracuse! We finally got Nicole a new pair of glasses - she has had a clump of red clay stuck on for a nose piece for 6 months! We went for a fish plate lunch and I had large prawns ( they don't know shrimp ). They are great and cheap! Nicole eats the heads but I refuse!!!!! She had a case of the trots and we had to pull over a few times on the way home - I have been fine so I think she is rethinking the head sucking!!!!

We had her neighbor Jane and her two teenage kids over for dinner - they wanted pasta so Nicole made red pepper, mushroom cream sauce over penne. We had fresh broccoli on the side with garlic bread. She bought a chocolate nut torte at the bakery and we had vanilla ice cream - very American dinner! The teens would not touch the broccoli, as typical. They all speak great English as they are Catholic Indians and go to Catholic school. ( Goa was a Portuguese settlement up to 1940 I believe. There are crosses, chapels and churches everywhere. The native language even sounds very Spanish. You can hear the influence in the music also.)

Jane told us of an old abandon quarry right up the hill by her house.. she also told us a woman had died from a cobra strike two miles down the road that day! Nicole and I decided to explore the quarry the next day - I think she secretly wanted to spot a python!!!! We did see a few very small snakes and lizards but nothing scary.
It really is a beautiful spot at the top of the valley looking down at the rice paddies. The top was flat and barren and a few water buffalo were grazing and giving us strange looks - they really look prehistoric! The pits are huge and you can see all the marks where they quarried the rock with hand tools. All would have been great but Nicole saw a little trail and decided to go home a different way. We were totally lost in the jungle - we found mountain streams and glens, I was sliding down on my butt at one point, and eventually returned back to the top and retraced our steps. There were monkeys in the trees but kept their distance. We saw big nests that turned out to be a solid moving mass of wasps!!!!

BUT.......the best was, we saw the largest peacock I have ever seen in a tree. It was so large the tail almost hit the ground. By the time I got the camera out, it had jumped down into the valley and we couldn't see it. It was a spectacle!!!!...but no photo! I will have to go back and hope it is it's favorite perch. So we survived with no cobras!

We went out for a quiet dinner at the beach hot spots. They had a group of local boy in a band trying to be American. "One oklick, two blay blay, three oklick, rock! Let us rock around the klick tonight!" They were pretty raw....but then Elvis and his friends showed up. The crowd was many American Indians on holiday, British and we meet another Scotsman! When the band stopped playing they asked if Elvis would play and there was a large jam session of all the good local players! It was crazy. They played for an hour or so then everyone just sat around chatting - when we finally left, the whole place was closed up! They just left us there and went home - it was 4 in the morning! We slept till eleven and now have to get ready to go out tonight because Elvis plays for real tonight! Nicole needs to get a job so I can sleep more!

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