Kalpitiya —> Negombo

We got up nice and early as we were leaving for Negombo and the airport today. As we’d packed up the previous night, it was pretty relaxed and we had time to do a bit of the blog before we left. As we checked out, we were chatting to the owner and our neighbour about all sorts and he asked us if we had everything, and we gave back a confident ‘yes’. We set on our way with some bakery items we got yesterday and headed south, with Tom driving the first stint. We were blasting music out, without a care in the world when Tom stopped and asked if we had our flip flops...we searched the Tuktuk but nothing. We’d bloody left them - unbelievable!!!

Today was Sri Lankan Independence Day, from the British in 1948, and pretty much every house and car and Tuktuk we went past had a flag on it. It was a 145km drive from Kalpitiya to Negombo, so we split the journey in half and I took over after 75km. We weren’t allowed on the major motorways or the till road in a Tuktuk, so we set Google Maps to avoid these and continued. For whatever reason the route we took seemed to avoid all major roads, including the main coastal route which we were ok to go down. Still, it got us off the busy road and before long, we were in the outskirts of Negombo trying to find our accommodation. It was like a maze and narrow roads, and the heat was getting to me, so I threw in the towel and Tom took over the last 5km with me navigating.

We eventually got to the guesthouse and dumped our bags. The lady was really nice and we paid her there and then so we knew how much money we had for the rest of the evening. We went into Negombo to the beach front as we needed to get ourselves a Lion Beer - our first one here! We were looking around for ages, and the first couple of places we went were all sold out. So we ended up going to a hotel and they said we could have one, and if anyone asked we were staying there. We sat outside overlooking the beach with a cold beer at the end of our Sri Lanka adventure, sad to leave but ready to get going in India. I FaceTimed my dad who was out in Portugal, was nice to hear I’ve inspired him and Kate to book flights to Sri Lanka next January (hopefully the blog comes in handy). We jumped back in the Tuktuk and went to find Hangover Hostel where we were due to hand back Greta, truly a sad moment as she’ been such a reliable gal and we’d clocked up some 1250 miles in her around Sri Lanka. We grabbed some takeaway Kottu and some other bits to try and use up the last of our cash as we planned to Uber to the guesthouse from town and to the airport the following morning. Whilst at the handover point, we got a couple of print outs of our passports, cheekily for free, and went out to the main road to get an Uber...sounded so simple in theory.

We requested a ride and were quickly accepted, but the guy rang us and said he was at the airport and wasn’t going to leave, so he cancelled. We then got another thug who accepted, but he started texting us saying that he was also at the airport and had queued up for hours and wasn’t going to come get us. It was so weird why they’d accept a ride when we clearly weren’t at the airport. However, this guy wouldn’t cancel and wanted us to (which costs us money) so we had a big argument with him saying that we are not cancelling and he would have to. Eventually he did cancel and then we got accepted again BY THE SAME GUY who then proceeded to ignore our calls and texts asking him to cancel. We’d figured out that this must be a scam where they refuse to cancel so you have to pay them when you cancel....so baffling. Anyway, we eventually got a guy who accepted, wasn’t at the airport, and was moving our way according to the little car symbol on the app. He saved the day when he turned up and took us to the guesthouse after an hour of our lives were lost!
When we got back it was pitch black, so we went in and packed up the rest of our stuff, devoured our final Kottu and hit the hay ready for an early start to head to India.Read more