Unawatuna —> Galle —> Weligama

I didn’t sleep at all last night. Woke up at 2am and didn’t get back to sleep. Kept going outside to see the stars and to see if it was getting light. I woke Tom at 6am as we’re planned to go to Galle for the morning. We drove to town as the sun came up and got some petrol, our first fill up and it cost 800 rupees (£3). We parked up in some random spot and walked through and archway into the old city of Galle. We went up on the fort walls and saw the classic lighthouse. It was getting very hot so we decided to go down from the walls and go through the shaded streets in pursuit of some breakfast. We found the National Tea Rooms which was the oldest cafe In Galle...since 1932 and got dhal and bread and hoppers for brekkie which cost us a grand total of just £0.65 each. We made our way back up to the walls as the cafe owner had said that when the cricket is on you can see into the stand, which was pretty cool....free tickets!!! We went back to the Tuktuk and headed to the Jungle beach which was meant to be secluded and quite secret. Turned out it wasn’t so secret, but it was still very nice with warm waters and soft sand - what more could we want at 9am? We chilled here for a bit and then climbed round the headland to a second jungle beach. We’d seen on our maps that there was a viewpoint, but we weren’t able to get round in flip flops - so we found a point where we could jump off into the sea. We trekked back uphill to the Tuktuk and went to check out of our hostel, and grabbed our bags.

Tom drove us to Dalawella Beach, stalling on the train tracks near the hostel which put us both into an induced panic, but we made it to the famous beach with the swing. The waves were enormous and the currents strong, so it was only dipping for us. We found a tiny little shaded spot on the back of the beach to set up our stuff, then UK Amanda cane up to me and asked if I could put some sun cream on her back. We all chatted and exchanged travel stories about Sri Lanka and various other places for about two hours, enjoying the sun and the occasional dip in the sea. We left Amanda behind and went to our new place in Weligama about 25 km away. We were met by tea and biscuits upon arrival by our lovely new host. We went straight to the beach, a nice little walk away from our homestay. This beach was completely different to the others, a wide open beach with long gentle breakers. Weligama was a surfers hotspot because of this. We went body surfing in the waves and played like big kids, nothing new there. We got dinner at this tiny little restaurant called Day Long, Just set back from the Weligama main strip. It was cheap, huge and delicious - our three favourite words when describing food. We had what we thought was sweet potato curry, but we asked and it was pumpkin!

After dinner Tom took a risky toilet break at the restaurant...it was a squatter with no toilet paper, his classic finger technique was back in use just 2 days in. He described what had happened and I was nearly in stitches as we left the restaurant. We grabbed some stuff from Cargills and then walked back to the homestay where we saw an elephant on the back of a lorry. We asked the driver what was going on, turned out it was going to a festival in Galle tomorrow. Anyway, back to the homestay for a night sleep before more exploration tomorrow.Read more