EIGHTEEN - The villa Viegas

This villa is a strange set up.
To greet us was a friend of the owner, who was away.
She told us a bit about what was what, and then rushed off. To Delhi or somewhere.
Yesterday the owner's husband, who is English, turned up to collect cash for our rental, and then he too departed.
He is only in India occasionally, he told us.
We are on our own there, with one helpful handiman/caretaker, two dogs, and a cleaning lady who comes in in the morning.
There are two other people, in a room like us, but they have been ill with feaver and sore throats so have not seen them much.
It is a modern,green house.
The garden is completed dry and bare, except for about a dozen large cashoo nut trees, in shape like huge apple trees.
Meena knocked the ripe fruits off with a pole yesterday. The fruits are pale pink, and at one end protrudes the nut, in a pale grey casing. When the fruit was all down, Meena and Kamlesh picked the nuts off the fruits and saved them in buckets to sell later. The crows eat some of the fruit which is still lying under the trees. You can eat the flesh, and I tried it. It is very juicy and slightly acid, a bit like a sweet tomato.
Our room is upstairs, and it is nice and large, painted white, with a very high ceiling and a fan. The fitment for the shower drips constantly, so we have to keep the bathroom door closed at night otherwise the drip noise would drive us crazy.
In addition to the dripping, there are often power cuts, when the fan does not work.
There is a balcony and outside, space for a kettle and some cups, so I can make cups of tea with powdered milk.
One good thing, is the little cafe just up the lane, where Surya does the cooking. He is a very smart young man, and had a wide fan base, mostly local people. The place is usually very busy in the evening, and the food excellent and very cheap. There is a building next to the kitchen where the 'locals' sit, and a kind of eight sided thatched hut with open sides, where he puts the people who spend more money, like us Brits.
He often says, Pay me next time, if he has no change.
This is where we met two people who stay in Palolem for six months each year. They were helpful and full of good advice, and recommended various shops - for instance we could buy a mobile phone with an Indian sim card, because everybody contacts everybody else by mobile phone here.