Insert Obligatory Goa Pun Here

Well, guys, it's been great knowing all of you, but I think I've found my new home. Seriously, Goa is amazing. I arrived in Margao so late yesterday that I was just in time for the poky little local train down to Canacona, the small town closest to my chosen beach village of Agonda. Thus I didn't get a chance to go into town and blog while waiting for a bus. But the poky local train was worth it. I was piled in, pack on my lap, between an elderly couple on their way to Gokarna and a young woman nursing a newborn.

Goa is the platonic ideal of a tropical paradise. Seriously, this is what all the cheesy water parks and mini-golf courses in Florida are modeled on. Rolling hills covered in jungle. Gurgling streams. Coconut palms. Rice paddies. Water buffalo. Little thatched huts. So that was pretty much my view coming down from Margao.

Arriving in Canacona, I met my first tout. All the guidebooks go on and on about touts. They're basically seemingly idle guys who wait around at train stations, on street corners, in front of tourist sites, etc. and offer various services. They will guide you through ruins, find you a hotel room, carry your bags, and most of them also drive rickshaws. The archetypal western attitude towards this, if Lonely Planet is any indication, is pure horror. Why that is, I don't know, because they seem sort of handy to me. I got off the train. I needed a rickshaw. Dude walked up to me and asked if I needed a rickshaw. I said yeah. We dickered over the price a little, agreed, and then drove off. Could I have found a cheaper rickshaw trolling around on my own for a while? Probably, but it's pennies of difference, and at this point I'd been traveling for going on 24 hours, it was the hottest part of the day, my pack was stuffed with extra books and water, and I really felt it was time to move on. So I picked the tout.

We headed down a narrow no-lane road, and like 2 seconds out of Canacona we picked up a few more passengers -- 2 aunties who were either fisherwomen or straight from the fish market, I wasn't sure. But they got in with their baskets of fish and we headed down an even narrower road out of town. We passed gangs of kids playing cricket with hand-carved bats under palm trees, roaside shacks selling everything from laundry soap to beer, coconut orchards, more rice paddies, and dropped off the aunties just outside the tourist mecca of Palolem. We got stuck in a traffic jam. A traffic jam of cows. Then we finally arrived in Agonda, where I scored a beachfront hut for the only slightly inflated price of 500 rupees per night.

I had just enough time to eat something and get cleaned up before the sunset, and I was crashed out by 8pm. Then I got to wake up to (I freaking kid you not) the sounds of roosters crowing and waves.

There's internet here, so I'll be in touch pretty consistently for the next week or so. However, since my plan is pretty much to chill on the beach, read in the hammock, sleep a lot, and eat fish, I'm not sure there will be much to blog about.