Day 111 - Ella to Ahangama, Sri Lanka

Day 111 – His.

Mostly, Today was destined to be a travel day. We had to drop down from the mountains right to the coast and six hours was the estimated travel time and it took about that. Then bear in mind we didn’t sit on the bus for that long. I think I have said before Gecko is quite good at handling these long travel days. What they do is split them up into little bits and give us interesting things to do after an hour or so of sitting on the bus. We started off by going to see the gap of Ella. The gap of Ella is the valley and the view from the top down to the plains is pretty awe inspiring. We clambered back aboard the bus and set off. Five minutes later we turned around and went back. We had left one of our group behind. Not deliberately I might add.  After we had picked him up we set off again and headed down a winding road to the falls of Rawana. Yet another magnificent water fall. The problem with water falls and Sri Lanka is that the place is just littered with glorious waterfalls. We stopped awed and ahhed and photographed and were assailed by trinket sellers who were flogging bits of rock. The bits of rock they collected in the mountain and included a huge piece of amethyst quartz -  a thing I had never seen – so I bought a lump for 50p. Their other offerings I had already picked up off the trail when we did the hike through the mountains the day before yesterday.

The next two hours were basically a winding climb down the mountain and dash along a highway to lunch as we regaled with stories of wedding customs, funeral rites and birth customs by our guide. So what was destined to be a dull experience was actually pretty interesting.

Lunch was at the Sri Lankan version of Greggs the bakers. There is a style of eating here called short eats. At first I thought this was a joke but it is for real. You ask for short eats and they bring out a plate of various pasties, rolls, sandwiches and local Sri Lankan delicacies. You eat as much as you want and only pay for what you have eaten. So we sat by the beach on little trestle tables and drank coffee and ate pasties and baked in the hot sun. The temperature difference is astounding. In the mountains we had been fairly chilly but here – everyone was begging for Ice cream.

The section of the coastline is the one that was hit by a tsunami a few years ago in which 40,000 people lost their lives and the remnants of the destruction were all around us as we drove on to our hotel. Smashed houses and cars upside down were in evidence everywhere. There was a memorial put up for the 1,700 people who were killed in a train that was washed away.

We finally arrived at three and the hotel is actually on the beach. It is brand new and pristine and what everybody would think a hotel by the beach should be. The sea is warm, the beach slopes gradually, the waves are high enough to have fun in but not high enough to scare you, palm trees line the edges, there is a pool, a bar, a huge public area with no walls and a roof. If you were to think of your perfect hotel the chances are it would look like this place.

We dumped our stuff in our room and the boys went off to play cricket on the beach with the hotel staff and the girls went into town. Patti and I changed into our bathing gear and went for a walk along the beach to see the stilt fishermen. The stilt fishermen are this bunch of crazy guys who have sunk poles into the sea bed about 50-100m from the beach. They swim out and as far as I can see spend the rest of the day sitting on top of their poles fishing. My guess is they are not the greatest of conversationalists. Still, it was fascinating to see. We then strolled back and went for a swim in the sea. People like to swim in the sea but on the whole I don’t. In my experience, most of the time, it is cold, the water is dirty and your feet get hurt on the rocks. But here the water is as warm as a bath, crystal clear and the soft sand extends for ages. We spent a while being rolled backwards and forwards by the waves until moving ourselves up to the beach hotel for a few lengths in the pool, then back for a shower. All in all a great place to end up in for the last couple of days.

 Day 111 – Hers.

Dinner was again a very jolly affair.  I had been craving pizza ever since one member of the group had one for lunch the other day – and the restaurant at our hotel offered a vegetarian pizza with mushrooms, aubergine and chilis....just my sort of thing.  It seems that most of us have tired of the Sri Lankan rice with curry dishes – I saw spaghetti, garlic prawns, fried fish, chips, salads....pretty much everything except rice with curry on our table. 

The restaurant also had a strolling guitarist who played a selection of old favourites from John Denver, Westlife, Ricky Martin, the Beatles – oh, and the la la la la la song we sang on the bus earlier in the week.  We all sang along and Dewa gave him a generous tip from our quickly dwindling tip kitty.

We ate, chatted, laughed and sang – even when the thunderstorm briefly cut out all the lights – until 9:30 and time for bed..... quite late by Sri Lankan standards.