Sri Lanka 2 - Induruwa, Negombo, Unawatuna

Induruwa, Sri Lanka - Friday 30^th December 2011
As we drive north along the west coast the devastation is still apparent from the 2006 tsunami in many places, however Sri Lankan recovery is robust and there are plenty of places to stay and visitors to fill them. We arrive at Long Beach Cottage – an unprepossessing entrance through a gate on the main road, to find a charming guest house with a small garden. At the end of the garden a small shaft of brilliant light shines through an opening. Stepping through it you are standing on a wide and incredibly long expanse of golden sand and blue sea. This little place is less developed and doesn't have anything going on except quiet and relaxation. There are a couple of hotels near by but not huge or noisy.


We're welcomed by the owners, a Sri Lankan man and his German wife. They have been running this place for at least 20 years and are thinking about retiring in a couple of years time. The dinners are Sri Lankan buffet style – light and delicious without any grease or oil, although they tone down the heat for the likes of us.

The Sri Lankan owner tells me of the difficulty in getting good staff who will stay for longer than a few months. A lot of work is to be had in the Gulf or in the big 5 star hotels, so quite often someone will come to work for him while they are waiting for their next assignment elsewhere. This means as soon as he has trained them they leave – this is all told to me with a sorrowful countenance and air of resignation. I suggest perhaps employing women who are local? The response is that twice he has employed local girls and both of them then promptly met and married his guests in quick succession! So this idea has been abandoned. Nonetheless, they manage to run a very welcoming house.

New Year's Eve 2011

The day was spent quietly. Went to the hotel next door for a sundowner and managed to procure a bottle of Shiraz to take back to have with dinner as Long Beach only sells beer. Our fellow guests were a mix of Germans and English, only ten or twelve of us in all. What can I say? The evening started in a sedate manner and I thought that was how it would go on – however entente cordiale broke out and John Pendlington started talking to everyone and before we knew it we were drinking too much and having fun. A bonfire was ready on the beach and we all went down and sat under the stars drinking and laughing and attempting to sing in tune, the owners included.

As you looked up and down the beach you could see other fires here and there. From around 10 – 12.30 there were fireworks being set off up and down the beach – the big hotels further up had really spectacular displays and we felt as if we had the best seats in town. Looking at that starlit sky and thinking of our loved ones under that same sky was lovely and when midnight came we sang “Should old acquaintance ….” and felt absurdly emotional, shedding a tear or two – must have been the drink!

A bit of fighting broke out at a nearby hotel – we could hear the Sri Lankan beach boys shouting and brawling with each other and decided it was time to retreat back to the garden around 2.30 a.m. Then the Arrack came out – coconut whisky – that was the beginning of the end for John Pendlington's evening. This stuff has a kick like a mule and at John's instigation and a few shots of that and we were playing parlour games! You cannot imagine anything more ridiculous than explaining the rules of 'Who am I?' from one drunk to another in smatterings of German and little comprehension of English on their part. Having said that, the games went brilliantly and all credit to John that he managed to explain the rules successfully – it was hilarious.  Bed around 3.30 am congratulating ourselves on still being able to stay up late and whoop it up sometimes.

Sunday, 1st January 2012
NOT so hilarious this morning – with the Arrack head falling off the pillow and rolling across the floor. Our car and driver arrived around noon and we said our goodbyes to our lovely hosts and set off back to Negombo to stay at the Village Inn, on the strip opposite the Rodeo bar, where all the ex-pats get together to drink. We skyped James and Katie, John and Terry and called Mark in Spain – good to wish them all a Happy New Year. Ate Weiner Schnitzel at a quaint Swiss restaurant up the road and to bed early.

Negombo – Monday, 2nd January 2012

Nuts

Our friends Terry and John arrived this evening from Bristol and it was great to see them. We are spending two weeks together before we leave for Thailand and they will then spend another two weeks touring further in Sri Lanka before they move on to the Maldives for another fortnight.

The next day we went to visit Hilary and Buddika at the Serendib Guest House and had sundowners and they again gave us great help and advice and arranged a car and driver for us for the next day. We went for dinner at Lords restaurant, run by an English guy who is a dead spit of Neelix from the Star Trek Voyager series – especially when he bought the delicious dishes to the table and explained what they all were with a sibilant S in his speech. The entertainment was a Sri Lankan cowboy trio and every tune they played sounded almost identical – just the words changed. The lead singer had a good voice but was unable to pronounce any consonants and that made for interesting listening.

Unawatuna – Wednesday, 4th January 2012
We start our adventure with John and Terry. We go back down the coast to a turtle hatchery, which was interesting, and then on to the resort of Unawatuna. It's a beautfiul little golden bay with a reef, so the swimming is easy. Hotels, guesthouses and restaurants completely surround it and they are right on the sand. The tsunami swept a lot of the beach away so it is quite narrow and the place is full of tourists – some of them are the wrong colour entirely having underestimated the power of the sun here.

We have booked a guest house that is up the hill away from the main tourist area – only ten minutes walk – and it is like entering a different world. Purple faced black monkeys with the longest tails you have ever seen are sitting in the trees near the gate. They are not like the grey langurs as they are shy and not given to stealing laundry from balconies as in so many other places. They are leaf eaters and sit quietly snacking and are very beautiful and then move gracefully off through the tree canopy. 

 Kingfishers call and dart about and we realise we have arrived at Villa Inn Paradise. We go up to the terrace and look out on the trees and the garden and pool and are enchanted. The owners, Roger and Maureen, are from the UK and spend 6 months of they year running the place. They are retired and the place pays for itself so profit is not a big deal for them. It just means they get to live here very comfortably on the top floor and they like to be busy and meet people. They have a great team of staff and everything runs smoothly.

We see golden orioles, bird of paradise fly catchers (male and female), sun birds that are like humming birds with iridescent wings, red vented bulbuls, drongos and a host of other birds we couldn't identify. All the while we hear their calls making a sound-scape to match the landscape. Swimming in the pool is divine and relaxing and chatting is the order of the day. In fact, it was so quiet and peaceful that a  large brown snake slithered lazily across the terrace in front of us and disappeared among the plant pots. The silence continued for a while as we were too gobsmacked to say anything. 

There is a small monastery next door which is all a bit crumbly and the young monks play cricket in their breaks. Roger reliably informs us that the abbot is a drunk and has sold off anything the place had and has let it go to rack and ruin. Ooh! The things you find out when you scratch the surface.

Thursday, 5th January 2012
Roger has his own auto-rickshaw or tuk-tuk and takes John and John out shopping with him to Galle – not to the lazy quiet fort but the noisy bustling town itself. They come back looking as if they have been on a whirligig for a couple of hours – they enjoyed it but are glad to get off!
We have a Sri Lankan curry buffet at the villa with the other guests, a mix of Scandinavians, Germans and French as the sound-scape changes to all the night calls of crickets, other unidentified insects and bats whirl above us.

Friday, 6th January 2012
Set off around 7 a.m. To go on a boat trip to a nearby brackish lake that is partly salt and partly fresh water. It is very shallow and we get in narrow catamarans and are poled around past small coir works where the family business is to break the coconut husks up and dry them then turn them into ropes, matting etc. They wave and smile as we go by and I can't help wondering what they think of us and our lives as we look at theirs – no answers come to mind.


We visited a small sacred temple island with a Buddhist temple and monastery school - very quiet and serene. Then on to a small spice island where the villager made us cinnamon tea and showed us how they strip off and curl the bark from young cinnamon whips – it is raised in the same way as a hazel coppice so that they can cut and come again frequently. He explained that to hand cut and curl the bark is now only done for tourists and that all other production is mechanised.

Then it was back to the mainland for a quick look round a spice garden and turtle hatchery before breakfast at a beach side hotel where there was a Sri Lankan wedding in progress. They are such good looking people and were all dressed in fabulous outfits and we made rather a dull contrast to the colour and sparkle of the wedding. One little girl wearing a stiff netting party dress in pink reminded me of party dresses that my sister Clare and I wore when we were little - around 1960! She then twirled in a circle and showed off how it swung and swished just as we once did.

On the way back we stopped to see the local fishermen balancing on stilts to catch their fish, though they seem to make more of a living from tourists by posing for photos and carrying young ladies back and forth in the surf so they can have a try at landing a catch. However, they did catch a few small ones - the fishermen that is.

Saturday, 7th January 2012
It's a beach and swimming day and very nice it was too – John and Terry tried to snorkel but the sea is rather milky here so they had to give it up – you need to go further out beyond the reef to get clearer water. On the way down the lane Terry was startled by a big land monitor lurching from a ditch next to her and scuttling past with a lizard in it's mouth, off down the road to find somewhere quieter to eat it's lunch - that woke us up. Later we took two tuk-tuks into Galle Fort for a walk on the ramparts and sundowners at the Rampart Hotel. Dinner at Mamas rooftop restaurant listening to the call of the mosque.

Sunday, 8thJanuary 2012
Plague strikes us all – except Terry. We believe the cause is last night's dinner but you never really know. Well enough in the evening to go back to Galle Fort and eat the best pizzas in town at Anuras restaurant. Back at the guest house we meet Dan from Canada – he works for the Canadian Embassy in Cairo – so that was an illuminating conversation on the scene there right now. He is a fluent Arabic speaker and struck me as a great example of an enthusiastic young person working hard in a difficult world to improve things.

Trotters Independent Traders, Galle