02/02/2012

My stomach was a bit upset this morning, I'm definitely still having some kind of gut infection. I therefore went for a short run and then had a shower. Afterwards we had a nice but plain (stomach) breakfast in H2O rather later than usual. My stomach was subsequently emitting spasms and I ended up having to take Buscopan, which combined with lemon/ginger/honey tea seemed to settle the stomach. We checked out and stayed in the H2O lounging area, consisting of nice comfortable couches and table, for most of the day. We read there and talked, had lunch and later dinner there (plain, non-Indian, non-spicy sandwiches+salads in my case) and Claire also squeezed out an hour in the sun. We also had a last walk and sit-down on the beach, while watching the sun go down. At just before 21:00 we got a cab to Canacona Hotel Krishna in Chawdi, about 10km down the road. At arrival we realised that we were not the only ones traveling as we were about 40 tourists waiting for various different destinations and levels of luxury - in fact it was a daunting task for many of us to determine which bus to take given that we ended up talking to the same operators regarding 3 different buses going to Bangalore. In the end Claire and I were the last ones standing and waiting for buses, everyone else had left, and ours didn't arrive until just before 23:00, about an hour late, while we were worried standing there wondering if somehow we had missed something! However we do have the Paulo Travels bus company suspected of screwing us as a luxury bus from the operator didn't take us on board, although we're pretty sure that that was the bus we booked and not the one we ended up in, which wasn't exactly fantastic or particularly clean- but never mind, we had prepared well with our own blankets, in liners, socks etc. But after boarding the real trouble started as it turns out that Claire's motion sickness extends beyond the sea to include the road when lying down in a sleeper bus - and we had no motion sickness tablets with us. So she ended up with her head buried in various plastic bags, I even went and bought a stack of shopping bags off a store keeper during our only night pit stop, literally half the night - before she finally succumbed to exhaustion and fell asleep with a completely empty stomach. In the meantime I tried to help as best I could while catching the occasional 40 winks...