Beach Life in the South of Sri Lanka!

It was time for the beach. Despite it officially being the monsoon season in the south of Sri Lanka, we decided to give it a go anyways.  The downside was that it was often cloudy and it rained everyday, but usually only for an hour or so. The upside was that it was still very hot, and it was the low season for tourists, which meant the prices were really low and we could negotiate a lot!

The first place we went to was Tangalle. The water in the ocean is so rough and has such dangerous currents that you cant swim in the water. Waves come sideways and even backwards, the undercurrents are really powerful, and there are big rocks in the shallow part of the water. 

Fortunately for us, we were able to get accommodation with breakfast in a really nice resort for $23 a night (usually $65/night). We lounged on the beach, swam in the pool, canoed in the lagoons behind the resort and even played beach cricket with some local tourists.

I ended up getting a real crash course on the danger of the water. While playing cricket on the beach the ball went into the water. It had happened a couple of times and the locals would go into the water up to their knees and wait for the waves to bring the ball back so they could grab it. When I tried I went just a little deeper, but still below my waist. A wave knocked me off my balance and the undercurrent took out my legs, I was very lucky one of the guys I was playing with reached out his hand and dragged me back in. After that, there was no going close to the water anymore! 

Unfortunately for AJ, she was disturbed while sun tanning on the beach by some local farmers and their heard of water buffalo :)

After Tangalle, it was time for Mirissa. This extremely small village is right on the beach, but since it was low season, there was virtually no one here. The water was a lot safer and we could swim everywhere. Given the low season, we were able to get accommodation in a small basic room for only $8 a night, by far the lowest we’ve paid since we’ve been traveling. The only excitement in Mirissa was the Roti and Dhal for breakfast and the afternoon boogie boarding. We moved on pretty quickly from here.

While traveling to our next beach village, we caught a glimpse of these guys: Stilt Fisherman. They sit on their stilts all day, that have been handed down generation from generation and they fish from there.

Finally we arrived at Unawatuna. The knock on this place is that it was too developed. Well, in the low season this means you actually get to meet other people and have a bit of nightlife, this was perfect for us! The locals in town were so nice and we met some really cool travelers to spend out days and (late) nights with. As well, thanks to the low season we were able to get an amazing beach side hotel for cheap again!

The first couple of guys we met were Gavin and Ash. While having dinner and drinks we began chatting and asked them what brought them here. The answer surprised us a little to say the least. Turns out Sri Lanka is a huge cargo ship base; boats that travel long distances will stop over in Sri Lanka due to its strategic positioning between Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The guys were former military Special Forces and now work as armed security on the ships to protect them from pirates, particularly off the coast of Somalia. We called them “Pirate Hunters”, but in reality they try to avoid engaging the pirates at all costs. They tend to be on the boats for two to three months at a time and can go weeks without seeing any other ships the ocean. But they also do occasionally get an RPG aimed at them… The knocker for us was when they let slip, “the money is good; $40K a month”.  After our night with them, we began to notice that tons of the foreigners in Unawatuna were “Pirate Hunters”. Big, tattooed military guys everywhere, pretty nuts. Fortunately, they were all cool and were just looking to hang out and meet people (they had all been on ships for two to three months). This first night proved to be one of our best partying nights in months.

We were also fortunate enough to meet Quico, an amazing Spanish guy who is traveling across India and Sri Lanka by bicycle for six months (check out his shirt: Bike + Home = Bike Home). He was really fun to hang out with, funny, generous and really well traveled. 

Needless to say, with good company like this we had an amazing time and some really late nights! We even hit up our first club, I made sure to wear by best outfit for the occasion!

Our only cultural outings were a brief trip to Galle and a Sri Lankan cooking class. Galle is a small port town not far Unawatuna. The Portuguese, Dutch and English had all taken turns conquering and influencing Galle. It is really picturesque thanks to the huge ancient fort walls that surround the town. It was nice to see a historic city like this that was still functional and not in ruins like the others we had visited. 

The cooking class was amazing, we were very lucky to find such a nice chef who was able to show us his personal secrets!

Polonawura, Trincomalee & the Highlands

We arrived in Polonawura by tuk-tuk from Sigiriya. It wasn’t the best 45-minute drive we had ever had, but it certainly beat riding yet another jam-packed bus. The heat in Polo was intense. In the afternoon the power in the city is cut, as electricity in region is low due to a lack of rain. Most of the electricity is hydro based, and with no rain for over nine-months, there's less and less electricity to power the city. We took this in stride as we asked our guesthouse where we could find a pool and we headed there for the afternoon. In the evening we were fortunate enough to be invited by two vacationing Sri Lankan’s to join them as they went to watch the sunset over what remained of the lake (it was over 75% dried up). The view was amazing, and even though they couldn’t speak much English, it nice to hang out with the locals.

The next day we rented a couple of bicycles and explored the ruins that are scattered across the city. With the entire historical site covering a width of over 4kms, a bicycle is a must! There are temples, Buddha’s and stupas everywhere, with many dating back to the 10th century. Our personal highlight was the 14m long lying Buddha carved into the side of a giant rock. It is an impressive site to be seen.

After our short stay in Polo, we heeded the advise of a couple of locals and headed north to the beaches of Trincomalee. This meant we were now headed into Tamil territory for the first time in our Sri Lankan journey. Tamil people are mainly in the north and east of Sri Lanka. For decades a bloody civil war was fought between the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and the Sri Lankan army as the LTTE sought to separate parts of Sri Lanka to create an independent state. The war ended in 2009 when the Sri Lankan army destroyed the last of the LTTE in extremely bloody battles that used tactics that will likely one day be condemned as war crimes.

The four-hour train to from Polo to Trincomalee was nice, albeit quite slow. We noticed that one of the cabins of the train was a gift from Canada.

From the train station in Trincomalee we took a bus to Nilaveli, which had been recommended to us as one of the most beautiful beaches in Sri Lanka. The bus ride from Trincomalee to Nilaveli had us driving in front of a former UN Refugee camp and numerous military checkpoints. The camp was empty as were most of the checkpoints, but it was a sobering reminder of how recent 2009 is.

We arrived in town and searched for a guesthouse. With AJ’s birthday only a couple of days away, we splurged and got an expensive (read 55$ a night) hotel. Wow, were we disappointed! The AC didn’t work, the internet didn’t work, and apparently monkeys had eaten the hot water line, so we had no hot water. What a joke. After a couple of hours negotiating and changing rooms, we had the price dropped and realized we wouldn’t be staying here nearly as long as we planned.

We headed out to the beach, which was beautiful, except that it was 45 degrees outside and there was no shade on the beach; just 40m of perfect sand that was so hot you could barely walk on it. As we tried to walk down the beach we came to a military base that broke the beach in two. We were waved down by the military lookout post and informed that we couldn’t walk through this 150m stretch of sand, we would need to walk around the military camp by going through the village. What a mess!

Needless to say our plans to celebrate AJ’s birthday here and spend five nights in a nice hotel fell through. Two days later we would spend eight hours on three different busses as we made our way to tea country in the Sri Lankan highlands.

What a difference eight hours makes. We arrived in Nuwara Eliya, the highest point in Sri Lanka at nearly 2000M, and we were immediately taken back by the weather, cold, cloudy and rainy. In only eight hours we had gone from 40+ degrees to 8 degrees!

In Nuwara Eliya we would prove to be quite lucky. The best guesthouse in our guidebook happened to be at the bus station looking for tourists to fill its last rooms. We had been hoping to find a room in this place for AJ’s birthday, but figured it would be full. Instead, we got one of the best rooms in this old colonial house. The room came equipped with a fireplace, cable TV and internet, definitely a couple of luxuries we enjoyed on the rainy and cold days in Nuwara Eliya. We wouldn’t do much during our two days in Nuwara Eliya except eat, walk around and drink, but as we were celebrating a birthday, this was actually just perfect for us!

Our only special outing was for a day at an Ayurvedic spa for AJ’s birthday. Quite an experience to say the least. They started by asking us to take our clothes off (except our bottoms, but tops off) in front of them, and then they have you sit on a couple cold plastic chairs in a cold room while they pour a quarter cup of oil on your head and proceed to rub it into your hair. From there you lie on a “massage table” which consists of a piece of wood that is barely cushioned and they massage you for an hour. The massage was nice, albeit mine was a lot more painful than AJ’s (Special observation: In Sri Lanka, the masseuses massage women’s breasts). Finally, they finish with the steam bath. We each had our turn in this death chamber type of box. You lie in a box that looks like a coffin, except your head sticks out (kinda like a guillotine), and steam rises from the bottom of the box under your body. It worked pretty well; it’s just a little scary to climb into.

From Nuwara Eliya we hopped a train to Ella. This is the most scenic train ride in all of Sri Lanka, and also one of the busiest. With only 2^nd class tickets left by the time we got to the train station, we hoped we would be able to get a seat on the train (2^nd class doesn’t guarantee a seat). Boy were we wrong! When the train arrived there were so many people in the train you couldn’t even get into the door, let alone the main train cabin. Passengers had trouble getting out there were so many people, getting in was almost impossible. People were hanging out the doors, pushing to get into the main cabin, passing bags over everyone’s heads, it was nuts. We’d never seen anything like this before. We climbed down from the doorway of the 2^nd class cabin we had tried to force ourselves into and walked into the first class cabin. Lucky for us, we found a couple of empty seats and asked the kid working if we could pay the difference in our ticket prices so we could sit in the front. It worked! For 600 Rs (4.60$) each we were now in first class with leather seats, an onboard movie and wireless internet. It was like a completely different planet.

Ella was mildly warmer and very scenic with beautiful hikes to the various viewpoints around town. Unfortunately for me, I had fallen slightly ill over the last day and a half and my energy level was really low. Never the less we trekked on and hiked two hours up to the summit of Ella rock. I was drained and ended up having a 30 min nap on the top of the mountain… We then followed our guide back to his shack at the bottom of the rock and gave him a tip for showing us the way to the top. He seemed really pleased with our $10 tip, so pleased he brought out all kinds of sweets for us and gave us a small bottle of honey made from the local mountain bees. Not a bad tip for us either!

After a couple of relaxing days in Ella we hit up our last spot in the highlands, Haputale. This meant going back up slightly in altitude and heading back into the cold once again. Regardless, it was worth it. The view was epic and being surrounded by tea plantations on every side was amazing. We took a tour of a local tea factory, and headed up to Lipton’s seat. This viewpoint is where Sir Thomas Lipton (as in Lipton Ice Tea, etc.) would come and look over his estate when he was in Sri Lanka. Pretty amazing view!

Our next and final destinations in Sri Lanka are along the south coast as we give the beaches a second shot!