CELEBRATING 20 YEARS

In the beginning…………..

It was 1992 and we were sitting on the beach in Baga wondering how we could escape the winters of the UK and do this forever.

Ambassador cars were the preferred taxi vehicle and Baga to Calangute was Rs12. A 2 course meal for 2 plus drinks set you back Rs180 at Sousa Lobo the only restaurant in Calangute. Phoning international was a challenge with the only international phone line 5kms away in Porvorim.

It was heaven and we were hooked.

It was to be another 2 years though before our dream became a reality and eventually in May1994 Goa finally became home.

The search then started for the old Goan/Portuguese house that would eventually become the little boutique hotel and bistro of our dreams.

With no estate agents the only way to find out what was available was to put the word out. We lost count of the number of taxi drivers/room boys/shopkeepers who beat a path to our door wanting to do property deals with us but after 6 months of bumping down tracks day after day reality suddenly struck us with a bang. The true horror of the bureaucracy meant were never going to find that perfect property where there less than 25 registered owners and, more importantly shock and horror whatever were we thinking of, what the heck did we know about running hotels anyway!!!!

Glum and despondent we took a long hard look just what exactly we did know.

We knew there were a huge number of amazing Indo Portuguese houses lying empty and in need of TLC, we also knew neither of us liked staying in hotels and we were both pretty good at organization and management and so the seed was sewn.