Sunday, November 23, 2025

Day 19: Sun 23 Nov - Candolim

Fine and sunny with some cloudy periods 25 to 32deg C 

Up with the chooks again this morning and pottering around until 0730h when I went for a walk along the beach with Bob. The extent of the bars never ceases to amaze me. This beach is about 9km long and there’s a bar every 30m or so!   

Back to another nice breakfast of fresh fruit, cereal, aloo puri (deep fried bread & curried potato gravy), eggs, toast and tea. Now we are not cycling, gotta stop eating so much. As John and Simmo would be gone by the time we got back from our next walk, we said goodbye to them after breakfast. 

I needed a good walk after all that food, so Bob and I headed out to Fort Sinquerim, about 5km north. The first part of the walk was hot and sticky but after a while we found some shade along the side of the road. The fort was a 17th century safe harbour for the Dutch, but it’s now a favourite beach and water playground for the locals, and of course a wonderful spot for a sunset selfie. From the part of the Fort that sticks out into the sea we could see all the beaches on this strip, Sinquerim, Calamari, Francoise, Calangute and Candolim. Good or bad it all provides a great deal of employment opportunities for thousands of locals who otherwise would have to move to the big smoke to find work.   

We wandered back, finding a suitable place to get a caffeine fix along the way. Bob looked for and found a suitable addition to his worldwide trinket collection down a side lane back near Candolim Beach. We made it back to have a chat and farewell Ken, who was the next to leave us. It wasn’t long before we were saying farewell to the next two to leave, Simon and Baz.  And then there were three of us, Dogan, Bob and me.  

As Dogan had not long had lunch and was not hungry, Bob and I wandered downtown for an early dinner. We hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, so we were getting a bit peckish, as it was now after 1600h. So, it was back to our now go-to restaurant, The Coastal Grave. The waiter who served us last night, and took our names to split the bill, greeted us by our names, good memory!  We ordered two veg dishes and two different rice dishes and it was the best Indian meal both of us could remember. See the highlighted menu below. My favourite was all of them, but if I had to pick one, I would choose the potato and cauliflower curry, it was amazing. When the dishes were first served, I thought no way are we going to make a dent in that, however we managed to polish off most of the curry and over half of the rice. The meal plus two drinks each cost us about AS$18 each, outstanding value.  

As we left the restaurant the sun was setting so we went directly to the beach. While we missed the actual sunset, we managed to catch some lovely colours in the sky. The parachute speed boats were still towing people around offshore so that added to the atmosphere. It was then back to the hotel for a well-earned shower and an early night.  

Morning delivery of coconut drinks 

Some nice murals 

The endless beach bar


A very contented looking dog

Yet another shot of our lovely old hotel 

No wonder there’s so much pollution, everyone is burning their trash

Another nice looking hotel down the road 

One fully packed roadside store

Ceramic mural 

Another iconic bar

A little church down the road 


We made it to Sinquerim Beach 

Fort Sinquerim 


A couple more bars

The locals tend to walk onto the beach, take a few selfies and then leave

More selfie opportunities 

A nice old Royal Enfield

Everything was so flavoursome 

Bit late for sunset 

Baz, Simon, Bob, Ken, Dogan & John at breakfast 

Simmo enjoying his last breakfast with us this trip

John, the better side


















 

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