Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Eating Goats' Hair at Elliott's Beach

After a rest, we went out to Elliott's Beach, scene of some of the destruction of the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004 (see about half way down this page). Suresh took us there in his auto and we met up with Navin and two of his friends this time.

The beach was very busy with hundreds of people swarming about, even though the sun was going down by the time we arrived. This seemed to deter no-one. We strolled down to the sea in a comfortably warm breeze as the sun finally slid away, and a burning red moon crawled out from the horizon. We were sitting just behind the white sort of archway building to the left of centre beach as shown in the first link above. The comforting crash of the surf was punctuated by the chatter of all the people lining the beach at the water's edge, the ring-ring-ringing of a food vendor's bell and the duck-like squeaks of a woman selling balloons as she twisted them into various shapes.

Overhead, the stars were blinking on, with Orion lying down, his head to our left (North) in Savasana. The power of the surf was intense, as it ripped and tumbled in a fury only twenty feet away, relinquishing its power to trickle up the shore , almost to our feet. Sometimes it was too "almost" as a few of the stronger waves sent Colin and I scuttling backwards, desperate not to get our feet wet. For anyone visiting this beach, please do not even consider a swim as the rip has claimed a few lives here.

I then succumbed to the vendor's bell-ringing and tasted the white pseudo-candy floss served in a cone of newspaper. It was very sweet and milky, with a wheat-cereal aftertaste, but the fibrous texture and greyish colouring sent definite "You are Eating Goats' Hair!" messages to my brain, so it was happily passed around.

As the blood moon began to climb higher and drain back to its normal anaemia, we strolled back to our auto. Sitting at the promenade for a short while, Colin took a sudden nosebleed - I am not sure if he was spooked when I later pointed out that it was only seconds after we had ignored a crippled beggar.

With a groan (of the "belly still full" variety), we then found out it was time to eat again. Those of you who know me will know that this means some serious eating was afoot!