Day in Kalpitiya

I was up nice and early to take the Danish guy to the bus station. The accommodation owner had said that he would organise the lift but as usual, they were totally out of contact. We set off and he was asking questions about the tuktuk, if it was difficult to drive, any mechanical issues, etc etc. I dropped him off and he wished us well for India as he has travelled there extensively in the past and had given us some great tips. I got back to the accommodation to find Tom up and brushing his teeth, kindly opening the gates for me. As we were both up early, we decided that we would go and check out Kalpitiya town, about 8km away. Today was Sunday - not that we had any idea - and there was loads of church goers near our accommodation, we got through them and headed to town. When we got there we discovered everything was shut...even the bakeries. We couldn’t believe it, so we went to check out the old Dutch fort. However, this was now part of the army barracks so we couldn’t even get close to it. As there wasn’t anything going on, we decided to head to a separate part of the coast and went for Kudawa Beach.

Compared to yesterday, this was a big long beach with larger waves. We set up camp and chilled out for a bit with the occasional dip in the ocean. After an hour or so, we went for a long walk on the beach taking in the scenery and thinking of our next trip to India and how we’d had a fair bit of beach time in Sri Lanka that we’d maybe re-look at how much time we’d spend in Goa. Anyway, we turned back and went back to our stuff. On the way back we looked ahead, and it looked like a group of people were going through all our stuff - we had our phones and wallets with us - but we were now walking back much quicker. We got closer and closer and it did look like they were at our stuff, but it turned out to be one of the group crouching down to undo her sandals...we now both felt bad about judging them. We went for a little snorkel around and found a few big crabs, but it wasn’t that good for snorkelling here. Tom wanted to go and get a drink and a roti at one of the nearby kitesurfing resorts, as we looked around we saw that CocaCola was 200 rupees!! We left and went a bit inland for a better deal, but the next place we asked they were still 150 rupees, we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it as we got one he other night for 50 rupees. We left disappointed and went back to the Tuktuk to go back to our place for a chill, via a local shop where we got a massive bottle of CocaCola for 150 rupees...bargain!! We then decided to go back to our dinner place from last night to see if they had any roti, but no luck. Instead they sent us down the road to another woman (who was so moody and didn’t have change for the equivalent of 10 pence) to get the roti. On the way we were in a standoff with an aggressive looking dog which was barking at us...but it soon backed off when I aimed the Tuktuk at it to scare it...Tom was also ready with the bottle. We spend most of the afternoon chilling out, reading and listening to music in the peaceful surroundings of our Wadiya.

Just before sunset we wanted to try and get further west onto, what looked like, an untouched beach. We took the cycle bikes from the accommodation to get there. What we didn’t think through was that we had to go the same way as the aggressive dog from earlier. We got close to where it was before and it was there, stood in the middle of the road barking like a lunatic at us even though we were a good 50 yards away. I said to Tom that we would just have to go through it, but with feet at the ready to kick out if needed, but best to just cycle through fast. I went first as the dog went down an alley to the right, still making a load of noise. As I went past I looked down the alley, this thing was sprinting back up with its mates all as aggressive as the instigator. Tom was about 15 yards behind and by the time he was opposite the alley the dogs burst out onto the main road and were snapping at his heels - truly a scary moment, but we got though unscathed. We carried on for a bit until reaching the end of the track and due to the tide being high, we couldn’t get to our sunset point. We tried to go round and somehow ended up going past a set of kids who began to throw cow poo at us...the little shits...and kind of a pointless thing to do as they now had cow shit on their hands and we had none on us. Our quest for the sunset had been a disaster and we still had to go back through the dog zone! Tom was certain we were getting attacked because we were white, I thought that was ridiculous but it could be true - who knew, maybe they were racist dogs. Anyway, we were lucky and got back without another attack and we just decided to go to the boardwalk for the sunset, which actually turned out to be quite nice.

Earlier in the day we had a message from Jennie. It was three years to the day that I lost my flip flop off a pier in Port Lincoln in north east Australia and a fisherman got it out with his line and hook. On this boardwalk in Sri Lanka I dropped on flip flop and the wind took it right off into the water. I then put the other down to go into the water, I put the other one down to get the other and that blew off too!! February 2nd must be cursed for me and my footwear. I went in and it was the same slimy sludge as the day before when we crossed to the beach, not a good sensation, but I managed to get them both back. After the sunset, we needed food, so we headed up to last nights spot but disaster, it was shut. With nothing else around, we had to jump in the Tuktuk for a search. Like at lunch, everything was way overpriced (wanting 600 rupees for veggie rice). Instead, we went to the local shop from earlier and got a range of things, noodles, spicy sweet potato crisps, biscuits and a sweet cake. We took it back to our place and had a little picnic accompanied by a cup of tea. We organised some stuff and sent some messages to the dolphin watching man to confirm about our trip tomorrow morning, but we didn’t get an answer so we went to bed hoping to see dolphins in the morning.Read more