Whale Watching —> Dikwella/Heriketiya

*bang bang*. Disoriented and dazed we both woke up wondered who the hell was trying to smash our door down at 430am... we soon realised it was the cute old man waking us up to tea...an hour early! We got up had tea, said our goodbyes and packed up the TukTuk and made our way to Mirissa for the whale watching tour. It was a clear, chilly morning and the morning light was starting to break through lighting up the road. We arrived paid our 7,000 (£30) and made our way across to the harbour where we got on our modern catamaran with first pick of seats...we went for the front two obviously! We were welcomed onboard with a cup of tea and a sea-sickness pill...however were reassured that the sea was rather clam today which was great for spotting the giant blue whales!

We set out to sea into the sunrise and before we knew it the boat stopped and the crew pointed out two turtles in the water...”making babies”. Shortly after that the boat stopped again as we were joined in the water by a pod of Spinner Dolphins...we guessed up to about 10 of them! We noticed there was a huge group of boats in the distance and a plane hovering above it...the captain of our ship explained to us that there is a blue whale over there and that they had this info all morning...however he doesn’t like to chase the whales nor join the crowd, rather he prefers to wait till the crowds are gone and then find another whale rather than crowding or chasing. We both really liked that so enjoyed the boat ride. Shortly after our conversation with the captain he had intel of a whale up ahead that was only joined by 2 boats so we made our way over there. Eager and excited we stood at the front of the boat waiting for a spotting... with a blast of water into the air we saw it! A blue whale surfaced revealing its HUGE body and then dorsal fin, before smashing down its huge tail to take a deep dive. We stayed at this location for the rest of the morning, with slight relocations based on the whereabouts of the whale. We saw the 18 metre female surface between 10-15 times. One time in particular we were positioned away from the other boats based on a gut-feeling by the captain...and out of nowhere the huge blue whale shot out of the water with its huge mouth wide open engulfing hundreds of krill, and preceded to come closer and closer to the boat, surfacing 3-4 times en route. It passed the boat directly in front underwater and started the blow bubbles and it was then where you could see her sheer size! It was genuinely a moment neither of us would ever forget - where you feel completely insignificant. The captain wanted one more viewing of her before heading back to shore - she surfaced again not too far from the boat but this time she was swimming away from the boat, she gave us an awesome display of her huge tail as she went down for her deep dive.

On a total high from what we had just experienced we got into our TukTuk and drove to Coconut Hill; an Instagram hotspot that we wanted to checkout, to see if it was all that it was made up to be. In all honestly it was very nice, a hill overlooking the ocean with an abundance of palm trees. We even saw a turtle in the water from the top of the hill. We both wanted to get a picture together with the nice view and a Sri Lankan man insisted on taking our picture, ensuring that he got all the angles before giving Tom his phone back with much less memory than before due to the quantity of pictures taken!

Back to our TukTuks and we drove to Dikwella. We were actually staying nearer to Heriketiya beach in a beautiful home stay calm Cinnamon House. Beautifully maintained gardens and the host was a lovely lady who straight away wanted to give Tom remedies for his sunburnt arm and me for my neck. It was VERY hot, so shortly after checking in we went to check out Heriketiya beach. We grabbed a Roti from “Roti Hut” on the way and meandered through the streets to find the beach. A small beach which was certainly beautiful, but rather busy.

After a few hours of chilling out there we went back, showered and then went out for dinner. We tried to find somewhere in Dikwella for food, but there wasn’t any places that were tickling our fancy so we went back to Heriketiya and found a nice place that did buffet style curry for 450 each. With full bellies we went back to the homestay and got some good sleep!Read more