Lazy in Sri Lanka

Home beach at Dalawella.

Sri Lanka. Another place which caught me by surprise. I did expect that the island will be beautiful, people nice and all the other clishees, but I ended up really fancying it. Shit. One more place I really wanna go back to. The list is getting longer.

The plan was to meet up with the lovely couple Sudda&CJ who I had met in Borneo last year and hang out with them for a few days before I'll go to the hill country to see some öh... hills. But as I only had a week, loved Galle&Dalawella area, I ended up staying there the whole week. I had a lovely room at my host's house who also rent it out via Air B&B (check it out here) just next to a beach & a expat hang out bar. 

But I wasn't lazy all the time, I finally made it to surfing! Kind of. Standing isn't the biggest problem, it's getting up on the board. I tried it for 2 hours and managed to stand 4 times. Not quite breaking records here. Bruised knies and some battle wounds but it was good fun! Have to try it again somewhere, someday. Maybe even on this trip as Sumatra is supposed to be excellent for surfing. 

We had a massive party on Saturday, one expat girl had a birthday and the beach bar was full of people. Good fun until early hours. And followed by a nice hang over thinking “never again”. Well yea. Even I don't believe myself anymore.

After a recovery day I finally made it to diving. I had heard some good stuff about a huge wreck about 30 min boat ride from Unawatuna so that was the next destination. The SS Rangoon is a 60 m long steamer/sailing built in the year 1863. Now it lies in a sand bank in about 30 meters and is filled up with huge clouds of fish, rays, morays etc. Beautiful! 

The second dive of the day was a pinnacle under water called Aluth Gala. It was all about fish. Lots of fish. Small ones, big ones. Fish everywhere. Made me hungry!

We came back to land in thunder & rain. The huge waves almost made me puke and I have enough of boat rides now for a while. So no whale watching on this trip I'm afraid, even though the sightings have been quite good in the last days. 

Instead I took out CJ's scooter in the next days and went to explore Galle & the surroundings. I drove to the fort a few times, to a buddhist temple, to the beach, to the next beach, to nowhere, to everywhere. 

Tuk-tuk polo on a beach.

Some house at Galle fort.

In total Sri Lanka is a laid back lovely place, people are nice and not too interested in what you are doing & where u r going. Meaning not annoying, but helpful with a smile. Food is great, especially the seafood. Wow. After a week it was sadly already time to move on. But I'll be back! Next stop: Maldives.