I say farewell to the sea

Friday 27^th March 2015

This morning I got up and did some half-hearted yoga before heading to the beach. It’s quite difficult to swim at Unawatuna beach as the break has a huge undertow and it’s on a downward slope so getting in is fine but coming out gracefully isn’t easy.

After cooling off in the waves I got in some serious tanning time despite it only being about 10am the day was already steaming and the beach was getting packed. I stayed flopped on the sand like a beached whale flipping over every now and again for a couple of hours before my stomach drew me away to go find food.

Since I was bone dry I just pulled on my clothes and walked into town. I hit up the veggie/vegan place and ordered large since I couldn’t make up my mind what to have. I sat there eating and reading my book enjoying the shady spot I was in for a while before heading back to the guesthouse.

I chilled out on the veranda for a while and just when I was getting ready to go meet Verity a storm rolled in and I was stranded by the torrential rain from my window I could see that the sea had turned black except for the violent white caps smashing against the shore.

Stupidly the beach was still heaving with people walking along in the water holding umbrellas (have they seriously never been told that both water and metal conduct electricity and both should be avoided in a lightning storm?)

I chilled out in my room as long as I could but I began to get cabin fever so headed out to a café to grab some tea and cake Verity met me there and we spent the late afternoon sheltering from the hideous weather and chatting eventually we got hungry and stayed on there for dinner as well before going our separate ways back to our guesthouses.

Back at the accommodation I tried in vain to search for info about Yala National Park ad day safaris there. Sri Lanka is really not set up for independent travellers there is just no information anyway except blog posts and trip advisor forums which are often out of date. (And most of the advice given is ‘hire a car and a driver’ which is never going to happen as the prices are astronomical)

Eventually I gave up and just went to sleep instead.

Saturday 28^th March 2015

I woke up early this morning and got packed up with that sorted I walked along the beach to find some breakfast. After I had eaten I went back to the guesthouse checked out and walked with my bags down to Verity’s guesthouse.

I left my bags in her room for the morning and we went off a walking over the mountain to Jungle Beach. The story goes (if I am remembering what verity told me correctly) that Sita was chilling looking for some medicinal plant but couldn’t find it so Hanuman brought the plant in some dirt across from India and ta-da there is the mountain which is nowadays covered in many medicinal plants!

The path across isn’t overly clear so it was nice of one of the hotel caretakers to show us the way (even more so as she looked as though she was 110 years old and had no shoes on!) along the way we kept hearing rustling in the bushes and would look to see massive lizards scampering away.

We got to the top of the jungle path and there was a small road and some houses dotted about the caretaker pointed us in the right direction (we tipped her much to her extreme delight) and we headed off in search of the beach.

Along the way we stopped at the peace pagoda and took some photos of the amazing view. There was a Russian dude with his phone on a selfie stick making a movie of himself in several takes where he would say exactly the same thing and walk along until he got it perfect it was amusing to watch and he was embarrassed when he noticed we were there.

We didn’t stay long on the pagoda as we had to take our shoes off and despite only being 10am the white stone was already burning our toes.

It wasn’t much further down to the beach and when we arrived we hid behind the restaurant to get changed and then dumped our stuff and went straight for the water.

Jungle Beach is the perfect swimming spot as it gets deep fast but there is barely a break and the water is really calm as it’s a small sheltered bay. It’s also full of amazing tropical fish that you can easily see even without a snorkel.

We stayed in the water for several hours just floating about looking at fish and talking. Eventually though I felt time was slipping away and so we headed back over the hill o I could catch the bus to Yala.

On the walk back we saw a snake on the side of the road it slithered suddenly and Verity near jumped out of her skin once we realised what it was we watched it slide through the bushes for a while trying to work out how long it was but it was too hard to see.

The walk back took much longer as we couldn’t find the path down and had to ask several times. There were also a lot of angry dogs about so I was keen to get back as quick as possible.

Eventually we were on the right path and emerged back at the bottom of the garden of Verity’s hotel. I rinsed off all the sand and got changed back into normal clothes (after walking back in a bikini and long kurta)

We bid each other farewell and I said good bye to the beach and headed to the road to catch the bus. A rickshaw driver was trying to convince me that I needed to go to Galle in order to get a direct bus but as I didn’t want to double back on myself my plan was to go to Matara and change buses as always he was looking to make money and kept telling me I couldn’t do that but that he could take me to Galle, he was driving alongside me and when the bus came he was in the way and I almost missed it. As it was I had to get on at the back and so had nowhere to put my bag. Thankfully a kind local made the bus wait at the next stop while I jumped off and ran to the front to get back on and put my bag down.

I dozed most of the way to Matara so it was lucky I woke up as we drove into the bus stand as the bus I was on went further along the coast but not where I wanted to go. I walked through the bus station trying to find the bus and ended up having to ask as not many signs are in English I found the bus I wanted and luckily it wasn’t going for about 10mins so it was pretty empty and I got a seat right at the front by my bag.

Unlucky for me the old dude that sat next to me (who was actually really nice) had a mouth full of paan dribble and next to no teeth and he insisted on talking to me I couldn’t stop looking at the red goo leaking out of his mouth and began to feel quite ill. Luckily he exhausted his English pretty quickly and then fell asleep for most of the journey.

From Matara to Tissa took just less than four hours, the drive was quite nice as it was along the coast and I was on the beach side so could watch the sea most of the way along. At one point we went past a huge Buddhist temple and in the garden out the front were two enormous elephants cooling themselves off in a fountain.

Just before the sleepy old man got off and another guy sat down we chatted about cricket for a while and then he told me he was a safari guide, I already had a contact for safari who had offered me a reasonable deal and it turned out the two knew each other (and that the contact I had was a former employee of the dude on the bus) in the end I was in the middle of a bidding war and ended up with a seven and a half hour safari with breakfast included and a night in a guesthouse all for 6000 LKR considering a jeep is 4000-5000 and park fees are 3600 and a guesthouse is about 1000-1500 I ended up with a pretty sweet deal.

Once I had dumped my bags I walked into town to try and find some mozzie repellent as I ran out but all they had was citronella oil which I got because it was cheap and it couldn’t hurt to give it a whirl but by the time I got back to my accommodation after dinner I was more bite than normal skin!

The Wi-Fi only worked outside and since I couldn’t stand being bitten anymore I gave up on trying to talk to anyone and showered and got my things ready for tomorrow’s early start and then watched a movie.