GOING FOR IT IN GOA

As we touched down the monsoon came to greet us and has it has several times over last day. Everything is super shiny green.  An hour from the airport we travelled through rice fields, palms, past churches and lorries, which had come off the road in the floods. Onwards further, past billboards offering casino experiences and holiday homes, to our holiday home for the next four days.

Five minutes down the road, on the opposite side, to Mother Mary Haven Home for Senior Ladies is  the Vivanta Holiday Village Goa for people with a few bob. 

Vivanta Holiday Village is a collection of about 40 separate dwellings, large and smaller (likes ours) secreted away amongst every imaginable green plant likely to grow in the part of world.  Above this manicured jungle tower palm trees that bend and rattle in the monsoon rains. At the edge of the property the sea throws itself onto the beach with a huge sound, a grey heaving mass of water occasionally slashed with shafts of white sunlight.

The place has a delightful end-of-season, low season, no-season feel to it, which is far from wasted on us. There were people swaggering round the pool, teenagers playing ball and the faint sound of Ibiza drifting across the water from the Pool Bar.  Wonderful. 

Today is a lazy day partly because I was ‘under the weather’ and am having to steady myself for the hotel’s cocktail party later this evening.