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Tuesday, February 4th – Benaulim Beach to Cabo de Rama, 17,270 km
After a morning swim, shower and our last meal at Pedro’s, Frank and I set out south along the sandy beach. It is a short ride, about four kilometres, until we get to Varca Beach, which we can tell because it has a welcome sign by a beach bar. It is pretty quiet here, even quieter than Benaulim, but the bar doesn’t look as nice and there is only one set of cottages nearby.
There is a thicket of coconut trees at Varca, denser than I have seen before. From the beach there is a scenic, palm-lined country road that twists and winds through
the farms to reach Colva Road. Dogs are barking as we pass. Some run as far as the road towards us but none of them attack. I have my water bottle ready just in case, to squirt them up the nose when they get close. That’s a trick I learned from a friend when cycling around Lake Ontario three years ago. It certainly catches them off-guard without hurting them.
It occurs to me that no dogs have barked at us or chased us in India until now. After thinking about it for a bit, I realize that in India dogs must scavenge for their food and they know that they must survive by their wits and be nice to people to get what they need. In Goa, however, people feed their dogs like they do in Europe, a habit acquired from the Portuguese, and dogs will usually try to protect the home that provides for them.
We cross Colva Road when we get to it, aiming for the village of Orlim. It has the only bridge over the Sal River, which would block our way south on other routes. The village has a quaint, whitewashed Catholic Church in the Portuguese style. We stop here briefly for a break before crossing the short bridge.
I get the feeling, with the small, often ill-paved roads, overhanging trees, the quaint Christian churches and equally numerous roadside bars and restaurants, that I am riding on an island in the Caribbean. Frank says he has never been there, but he think Jamaica would look like this. I wonder if the Christians here are as evangelical and unquestioning as they are in the Caribbean.
In a couple kilometres, our tiny road joins a bigger road heading south. It leads us to a slightly longer crossing of another branch of the Sal, by a naval academy. It continues south, parallel to the coast, until it ends at a T-intersection. From here we head to the coast and the estuary of the Sal, where more than a dozen fishing boats are parked on a small beach beside the road.
From here, the road climbs into low hills, bending around forest hills that afford some views of the ocean nearby. Once we lose sight of it we know to watch for a road leading to Cabo de Rama, where the abandoned fortress is. We stop at two roads that prove to be very short and dead-end before we find the one we are looking for, marked by a small, weather-beaten sign in Portuguese and Hindi.
The road is dirt. It climbs, falls and changes direction a few times before it climbs onto an open plateau covered in low shrubs and grass, with palms on the sides
of the hills above the beaches below. The fort is only three kilometres from the road but it takes us fifteen minutes to reach it on the rough road. It is not large compared to other fortresses I have seen on my trip, except maybe the Fortress of Prince Henry the Navigator in Sagres Portugal. Yes, I have come full circle, from arriving at that fort on my second week into my trip to arriving in this Portuguese fort halfway around the world on the second last week of my trip almost eleven months later.
The fortress is just a shell, made of large, heavy-looking sandstone blocks. The walls are only about five metres high. Dead grasses cap the tops of its walls and small shrubs have taken root on its sides – even a couple trees in places – as nature sets about tearing apart what man has left behind.
Inside the walls it is mostly an empty courtyard, not very large, with a few shrubs and a rusted cannon barrel that probably weighs a couple hundred kilos. There are some blocks knocked off the walls that are lying at the base of the walls. We surprise a gang of local monkeys who live nearby. This is probably one of their playgrounds. They scamper away before I can get my camera out.
It’s dead quiet here. There are no other visitors and there were no vehicle tracks on the road in. There aren’t even any ships visible on the sea at the moment. The fortress is the only sign of human existence, and it looks like a remnant of an extinct civilization that has been forgotten.
The courtyard, being flat, is a perfect place to pitch our tent, and it gives us protection from the breezes that accelerate as they cross the top of the bluff. Frank sets up his stove and we make our dinner of dried noodles and soup which we bought in Margao. We have fruit for desert. There is no water here other than what we have brought with us. We don’t have enough to wash the dishes so we wipe them mostly clean with sand and tie them into a plastic bag to wash at our next stop.
After dinner has been cleaned up, we walk around the bluffs near the fort and then sit on the decaying walls to watch the sunset. “This is the life,” Frank says, and I agree with him, but I add silently to myself that I am grateful to have someone to share it with.
PHOTO 1: leaving Benaulim Beach, riding the sand again
PHOTO 2: the coconut grove
PHOTO 3: Colva Road
PHOTO 4: Orlim Church
PHOTO 5: headland of Cabo de Rama
PHOTO 6: fortress walls at Cabo de Rama
PHOTO 7: inside the fortress walls
PHOTO 8: sunset at the cape
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