Snakes, elephants and spiders, oh my!
Well folks, we are back….
Where do we start? How about where we left off, but slightly before….we were slightly chronologically challenged before and missed a few things….
En route to our psycho…er….psychic mind body fair, we ran smack dab into an elephant! Well, one of the things I said I wanted to do here was go on an elephant ride….so guess what? I did!
Her name was Raja, and was only a baby young elephant of 20 years. It was at a shrine of some description and I cozied up to her and hopped on. It was charged out at donations only, so for the 5 minute ride I thought I was giving 5 dollars, but ooops…the exchange messed with my mind, and sorry Sonja…I ended up giving them $50….oops! The elephant man sure was happy to see me. We snapped some great pics for our Medicine Hat Newspaper contest.
It was creepy cool to touch the trunk of the elephant because it was so rough, yet warm and had long hairs growing out of it…not unlike my legs before I wax them I guess! The elephant took the money from my hand with his trunk and passed it back to the driver…I guess that is what you would call him, either that or a shriner?!
Next we carried on towards our fair, when Amber suddenly veered to the right and nearly fell off her scooter and she was being lulled by the snake charmers flute as he wooed the snake to come out of his basket. Sonja and I doubled back to make sure Amber’s eyes weren’t swirling in black lolipop fashion like in the cartoons.
Turns out I was the only brave enough to have the snake coiled around my neck. It was weird cause I could feel the cobra pulsating with muscular contractions and the hood was flared. Amber was able to capture on video the snake charmer actually getting bitten by one of the snakes. Luckily I did not see that, nor did I get bitten!
We carried on to the “fair” as described in the previous blog….
When Sonja headed out to find her travel agent, and we had escaped the mob of angry moped renters, we had a leisurely drive through the country where my navigation skills were put to the test, and unfortunately they failed. We ended up with nearly an hour and a half detour. Oops! But it was a beautiful detour where we saw an amazing church, St. Anthony’s ironically. Isn’t he the patron of lost things? lol
We arrived back at the hotel intact and went to meet Sonja down at the beach. Sipping on beer, chatting on the computer and heading back to the hotel rounded out the day.
We did end up having a night time adventure as well that kept people awake for a while though…Here is the spider adventure!
Amber went to go have a shower when we got back to the room, when she was practically spun into the web of the spider on the floor. It was about 3″ in diameter and veritably growled at her when she tried to enter his domain. Screaming like a school girl, she practically ploughed me over in her attempt to get away from it. The inner-knight-in-shining-amour in me came out and flew to her rescue. Sensing a Kodak moment, I snapped his picture and then went to see about the tools required to dispense with him in quick order. My belt and my shoe were assigned the task of rousting him from behind the toilet and to under my shoe. Amber got the video camera rolling for the execution, and followed me in.
I soon realized I was alone in this task as she screamed and went running, camera and all. The arachnoid make his way through the cracks in the rubber grip of my shoe and tried to climb up my pants. Screaming myself, I flung my leg out and the spider went flying. More screaming ensued followed by stomping and toilet brush squishing….like I said, it is all on video, so when we get back, ask to see it!
Finally able to sleep we tucked our bug net in extra tight and nodded off….
Next blog, the trip from Goa to Delhi….
A & A