Dominic and Rita

Each year there are more beach huts and restaurants but so far the character remains the same. Our guest house – the home of Dominic and Rita – is only a dusty walk away from the beach.  Families of pigs trot through the yard, large monkeys with black faces lurk in the bushes eating the leaves, and an early morning bird chorus fights with the noise of the crows.  It’s not difficult to create and maintain a schedule here, with plenty of time for swimming and walking on the beach in the morning and late afternoon when the sun is less fierce.


Gerard, the ‘Swami of Mundane Things’ according to a good friend back home – manages to find things to repair in the room – towel racks, squeaky hinges, and after, Salou, the cleaning girl has cleaned the room, he discretely asks for a rag and disinfectant and continues to wash the bathroom down again.  He’s even been pressed into service to relocate a flying cockroach bigger than your thumb from the curtain rail of our bedroom

Salou on her way to work

Meanwhile I grab my shopping bag and head to the greengrocers to buy deliciously fresh fruit and vegetables. Taking a break from eating out three times a day –  fresh yoghurt in clay pots from the corner store with fruit for breakfast and at lunchtime a huge vegetable salad with samosas fresh cooked in the vil vvillage each morning.  

Lunch at Blue Planet

We had lunch with them at our favorite and only organic restaurant that is pleasant walk into the jungle.  Over the meal, they both told us their background which left Gerard and I with our jaw on the table.  Like our friend Johnny, they’ve had way more than their share of personal problems and have not come out completely unscathed.  For those of us who have blinders on, it’s a sharp reminder of how many wounded people have to pick themselves up daily and get on with it…with enthusiasm.

Danielle and I hike to a nearby cove, leaving the men behind relaxing.  Nice to have someone with my energy to hang out with!  We have birthdays two days apart and as a fellow Libran and fervent believer in astrology, she analyzes my personality with uncanny accuracy. 

Fatima’s General Store cum Restaurant

Every few evenings, we wander up to a restaurant cum general store, which is a central meeting place, partly because it is one of the oldest and least pretentious in town.  A sliver of a building, with a dark interior, steamy with the cooking that takes place in a tiny area in back…cramped with a couple of wooden tables and benches… a wall of yellowing photos of long gone hippie visitors.  When Agonda was a simple fishing village with few if any other restaurants this was a stop for the locals.  It’s still frequented by the locals and the travelers who’ve been coming here for twenty years.  Newbies like us go there to feel the remnants of the old days.. Sometimes the conversations can be provocative sitting on the steps outside where the air is cooler.