Wednesday we got an early start and drove in a taxi. Our mission was two-fold: to see the accommodations we are planning to move to next on Dec 2nd, and, to experience the fabled hippie market that’s only open on Wednesdays. Our first stop was Sur La Mer….our friend Sanjiv has a home nearby and wanted us to meet the owner, his friend Aneel. Driving up a brick red rutted dirt road we did not know what to expect. Wow! Sur La Mer is a charming spot and we know we will be happy there. We headed to Anjuna and knew we were close when the traffic on the single lane road became clogged with tour buses, motorcycles, and taxis like ours.

I know, I know….you want pictures, right? We are having some technical difficulties and so I have borrowed a few pics of the market off google images ( apologies to the original photographer). The hippie market is acres of tented corridors of vendors selling shoddy crap. We couldn’t distinguish much difference in product one vendor to the next. All the tee shirt vendors the same. All the jewelry
or bag or sari vendors had the same stuff. None of it very appealing, all of it covered in sandy dust. Hundreds of vendors, thousands of tourists…we did not see many shoppers carrying bags. Not sure if that is due to the global economy or because the goods were less than stellar.

We followed the main path down to Anjuna Beach which was overfowing with beach shack honkytonks, restaurants, more vendors, tons of people! Imagine rasta-haired kids who don’t know anything about smoking, big bellied Russians trashed on vodka, natives on donkeys posing for photos, double and triple storied thatch huts with young people hangin out to loud pulsing music and you’ll get the feeling of what we were passing as we walked in the 90+ heat. The beach had lava rocks and a more impressive surf than ours down south. We had to walk at least a mile upbeach to get to the store we were looking for. But that, my friends, is another story…