George Fisher

George Fisher

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Viajante Travel 2020 - TBC
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- Dia 14
- domingo, 19 de janeiro de 2020 06:10
- ⛅ 12 °C
- Altitude: 1.907 m
- Sri Lanka Nuwara Eliya 6.974943, 80.7758826°58’30” N 80°46’33” E
Ella —> Nuwara Eliya
19 de janeiro de 2020, Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C
After an amazing nights sleep in the tent at Tomorrowland we got up at 05:45 to go up to the little viewpoint for a 360° view of sunrise. It was quite a nice sunrise, but a bit cloudy so we headed back down to get another hour or so of sleep. We both woke up just before 8 absolutely boiling as the sun was beating down on our tent...time to get up. We brushed teeth with an amazing view over the valleys above Ella. We hopped in the Tuktuk to go the ‘secret waterfalls’. Again, it wasn’t such a secret spot unfortunately with some locals obviously not particularly caring and leaving lots of litter about the place. Still, the falls were quite nice and I climbed up to have a good view of them, immediately stubbing my toe on a rock!! After I got out, I needed a wee and exclaimed “It’s a really pretty waterfall, I might piss in it” to the amusement of Tom.

We headed back to Tomorrowland to pack up our stuff after a very chilled 24 hours. We were heading to Nuwara Eliya, the pronunciation still a mystery as all locals said it differently. We popped back down through Ella and out onto the open road, quite sad to leave the little backpacker town behind. It was a couple of hours on windy roads to get to our next stop. We climbed up and up and the temperature dropped quite drastically...we’re talking 20°C instead of 30°C - what a disaster!! We drove round lake Gregory to get to the town of Nuwara Eliya. We eventually found our guesthouse, a colonial looking building with a nice lawn overlooking the hills and town. We headed out for a walk starting with a national park which Tom said was full of birds, however we heard no bird calls as we assumed this was a morning job. Onwards to Victoria Park, we got to the entrance and shock horror you had to pay 300 rupees to go in...skip that, especially as none of the locals have to pay. We went to the local market in the centre of town and found a little food court where they sold Dhal Vada, a kind of deep fried Dhal snack - amazing! We then went to the famous post office - one of the oldest in Sri Lanka. It was quite cool and had a old fashioned English post box outside, a little slice of home. We chilled out on the lawn for a bit, then went to the highly recommended Sri Ambaals restaurant where it was an all you could eat meal for £0.65. It was a strange ordering system, we just pointed and this naan bread thing arrived on a plate with some sort of filling. The guy then brought over big metal buckets of curry and filled our plates. He left the buckets for us to just keep going!! Without a single piece of cutlery in sight, we dug in with our hands...messy, very messy - Uncle Bob would have needed a few changes of clothing 😀

We were stuffed, so headed back to the guesthouse to grab a hot shower (a rarity in Sri Lanka) and sit out on the lawn with our books, I promptly fell asleep on the swing chair. Tom wanted to go down to the lake as we may get a sign of the party buses we’d heard about. Sure enough they were there, the locals having a dance next to this bus with enormous speakers. We went to this little carnival and watched the locals play an impossible to win dice game, regardless they were all chucking loads of money into the ring. This woman then randomly approached Tom and and threw her baby into his arms and started videoing us...all a bit strange as she didn’t seem to want the baby back. Anyway, we hopped back in the Tuktuk and went back to the guesthouse and spent a couple of hours chatting to Dominic, an Aussie, and Jasmina, a German girl - we all shared a few laughs and a few cups of tea before heading to bed.Leia mais
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- Dia 13
- sábado, 18 de janeiro de 2020
- ⛅ 24 °C
- Altitude: 1.109 m
- Sri Lanka Rawanaella 6.856693, 81.054556°51’24” N 81°3’16” E
Ella Rock Hike and Tomorrowland Hostel
18 de janeiro de 2020, Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C
None of us got good sleep because of the deafening noise coming from outside our room. A load of drunk brits had decided they were going to carry on the party from their night in town back at the hostel...at 3am! We got up without our well needed rest and had our free breakfast at 07:30 with a few people from the hostel and then headed to climb Ella Rock, with Filipa joining. We jumped in the TukTuk, de-leeched it, and made our way to a point that looked as though we could park the TukTuk and walk up, we were correct. We parked the TukTuk in front of an old ladies house and begun the walk. The first 3 minutes we were joined by said old lady who owned the house, she was guiding us and it wasn’t until I said to her we were okay on our own she stopped walking and began to ask for money...we brutally just walked on saying “sorry, we have no money”... blatantly lying but oh well. We walked through tea plantations and a small forest on our way up, the walk was relatively easy and enjoyable...but Filipa started to consider turning back as her taxi driver text her (because that’s a thing in Sri Lanka) saying that she should leave about 09:30 from the hostel to get to the airport in time for her flight. Tom wanted to get to a nice viewpoint to say our goodbyes and get a picture. We eventually found a viewpoint, wasn’t the greatest view but we thought we would settle as Filipa really needed to head back. We said our goodbye got a “family pic” and she left us. Literally 1 minute of walking onwards we found an amazing viewpoint, typical! Tom tried to get in contact with her via different platforms - each of them not working so he sent her a message to turn back if she could and we decided to continue... 30 seconds had passed and Tom got a FaceTime call from her, fuzzy and we couldn’t really see her face or hear her as she was clearly running back to us... we reunited and enjoyed the view for a little while before saying our humorous goodbyes, again. As soon as she was out of sight I realised that I didn’t remind her to leave my charger that I lent her on my bag back at the hostel...I messaged her and Tom reminded me that there was nothing I could do about it if she forgot and if she did we would just get another one. It’s funny how little things can worry you when you’re travelling and actually have no worries in the world and this was one of those times, but hey we all have them.

We made it up Ella Rock, it was a beautiful view over the whole area and we a lot higher than Little Adams peak, where we were the morning previous. We found a spot where there were no people and sat down and enjoyed the view for a little while, where we realised it was Jennie birthday today! We thought we’d be cute and write her a Happy Birthday sign and get a picture at the top of Ella Rock. So we used the TukTuk rental booklet (as that was all we had) and made Jennie a make shift birthday card and sent it to her - we knew she’d love that! After enjoying the view for a little longer we made our way back to Greta, on the way we had a funny encounter with a Ukrainian guy(?) - “you’re never going to get there” to which he howled with laughter.

We got back to our hostel checked out and drove our TukTuk maybe 100m to the Kottu stall we had driven past a few times and ordered a veggie Kottu to takeaway. Whilst waiting for our Kottu we got to speaking to an older English couple who loved the fact we were driving a TukTuk round the country, they were even more impressed when we knew all about the different birds we had seen in Uduwalawe NP as they were bird spotters on their way to a bird watching tour. With our red hot Kottu in hand, we drove through the hills to Tomorrowland hostel, where we didn’t have a reservation but asked for a bed for this night...they didn’t have any beds but we could take a tent for 1,000 rupee each. The hostel was a stereotypical backpacker hostel...peace signs and motivational quotes about enjoying life and taking things slow were plastered over the walls with the stench of weed in the air, DJ decks and a chill out zone. It was a real mix of people, ordinary people like us, a white French guy with dreadlocks who smelt a little because he probably refuses to use deodorant or body wash and Natalie, a woman who left the UK 25 years ago had been living in Sri Lanka for the last 4 years and gives massages for a living nowadays. However, we quite liked the relaxed vibe here but we didn’t want to sit and do nothing all day so we ate our Kottu at the 360° view area and I found a route on maps.me that should have taken us full circle via local villages back to the hostel. Instead, we walked through local villages but were stopped in our tracks when we come across a dead-end and were also being howled at by a massive black dog in the house whose land we were clearly strayed into. We tried to find a way back to the hostel that didn’t take us back the same route and we then noticed that lots of leeches were on our flip flops and legs so we literally ran out of the leech zone back onto the main road.

On the walk back to our hostel we saw a hut on stilts perched on the hillside at the side of the road serving up food, we thought we’d check it out. We both fancied rice and curry but as we were seated they practically forced us into having fried rice as that was all they were cooking at the moment. The view was insane and all the local guys were coming here so it must be good, so we decided to have the fried rice. We watched the guy prepare the food, using the same plank of wood to do everything and then cook the rice in a huge wok that shook the hut as he mixed it all together. Over dinner we discovered that I was still on the same pair of boxers he I was wearing when I left the UK (albeit we’d had a week in swim shorts) and Tom was only on his second...disgusting! Full and satisfied we went back to the hostel chilled out for a bit longer and then got into our tent and fell asleep to a film hoping for a better nights sleep than the last.Leia mais
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- Dia 12
- sexta-feira, 17 de janeiro de 2020
- ⛅ 24 °C
- Altitude: 1.036 m
- Sri Lanka Ella 6.875607, 81.047156°52’32” N 81°2’50” E
Little Adams Peak and Ella train ride
17 de janeiro de 2020, Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C
We had an early start as we wanted to climb Little Adams Peak this morning. We met some cool people in our hostel the night before and we all decided that we’d meet outside at 5:30am to start the walk. From looking at Maps.me it would only take about 45 minutes so we’d be just in time for the sunrise at about 06:20. It was me, Tom, Meredyth, Christophe and Filipa (the girl who stole my bed yesterday) who got up and got hiking. Me, Filipa and Christophe at the front exchanging stories and talking about our own counties, Tom and Meredyth at the back as they are both brummies presumably talking about Peaky Blinders. We made it up to the top of Little Adams Peak in really good time and we had been told to go to the third hill along for the best view. It was very undulating so we went down and up and down and finally back up to our sunrise spot with nobody else around except a couple of dogs. We waited for the sun to rise. It was a little cloudy, which actually made it more spectacular! We tried to get a few group pics with a timer but it didn’t really work. So I had a go...timer set to 10 seconds and I ran back on top of the rock we were getting the pic on. It was a heart stopping moment when I lost my footing and nearly plummeted down a couple of thousand feet! It made for a good picture, and made everyone else laugh except Tom who I grabbed onto to save myself!

After appreciating the sunrise it was time to head down for our free breakfast at the hostel, some simple eggs and toast would do. A few people were going to get the train to Nuwara Eliya, however as we were going there in a few days we decided to still get he train but get off randomly and see what was what. We got to the train station with Filipa and Meredyth and got some second class tickets for just 165 rupees (70p) to a stop called Ambewela. The German couple Jen and Matthias were also on the platform so we all piled on the train getting various seats and Filipa and Meredyth got the classic door view where you could hand out and enjoy the fresh air. I basically became Filipa’s private photographer as she dared to hang far out of the train, she did the same in return for me, however it’s so awkward getting these pictures when there’s a thousand tourists and locals watching. Tom would have taken part but he was trapped behind this large Sri Lankan man who’d swapped seats with him so he could look out the window. Filipa and Meredyth hopped off at Haputhale to go and do the Diyaluma Falls we’d done previously and we stayed on with Jen and Matthias to Ambewela. We got off at this station in the middle of nowhere to go to this farm. We bartered down a ride to what we thought was the right farm...turned out it wasn’t the one Jen thought. It was called New Zealand Farms, and was a massive dairy farm. Predictably there was a ticket counter, I spotted it was 100 rupees from afar so confidently put the money through the hole to the man. He pointed to a separate sign in tiny writing saying that it was 200 for foreigners...outrageous!! We went in and walked into the first shed where there were loads of goats...we were so excited as you could pet them all and there were baby goats all over! From here we went to see the milking station, the calves, pregnant cows, bulls and rabbits (which were being sold for either meat 😕). By this time we’d seen everything there and headed back to the entrance to try and get the same cab back to the station only 3km away. However, the number he gave us didn’t work so we got someone else to take us. We got back to the station to wait for the train. Awkwardly, the man who took us there was waiting and kept following us around...really weird. We grabbed some bits from the little bakery which was amazing and got our third class tickets back to Ella for just 65 rupees (27p).

The train was jam packed of people coming from Nuwara Eliya so we had to stand, which was ok as we were near the door so had some air. The locals near us at the door whooped and whistled each time the train went through a tunnel. As it was so full we all had to just manoeuvre ourselves at each stop to let the locals either on or off. Eventually we made it back to Ella and said goodbye to Jen and Matthias whose Tuktuk had been moved from where they left it, they offered a lift but we felt like a walk so made it back to the hostel. Once back we freshened up as we were still in the same clothes as climbing Little Adams Peak. Filipa made it back and was keen to go get dinner with us, so we got ready and went up to the part of town we were the previous night. We had fried rice, Filipa and Juliette (a French/German girl) shared a rice and curry and whilst eating Tom and I realised that it was 3 years ago today we met, HAPPY FRIENDAVERSARY.

We all went to 360 bar where we heard some live music from some people in the hostel. We saw the most disgusting thing, a leech full of blood on the floor wriggling around and leaking the host blood. It was awful and it was massive!! We headed back to the hostel as we were getting up in good time tomorrow to climb Ella rock. Filipa who was trying to do Ella in 24 hours was coming with us, but had a flight out of Colombo tomorrow at 6pm, we’d see how far she’d get...Leia mais
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- Dia 11
- quinta-feira, 16 de janeiro de 2020
- ☀️ 26 °C
- Altitude: 985 m
- Sri Lanka Gotuwela 6.876658, 81.0601066°52’36” N 81°3’36” E
Koslanda —> Lipton’s Seat —> Ella
16 de janeiro de 2020, Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 26 °C
We woke up earlier than planned today so decided to hit the road sharpish, by 630 we were out. Today we were going to drive up to Lipton’s Seat and finish the journey in Ella, a place that both of us had heard great things about so we were really excited. We had previously been told to go to Lipton’s Seat via a town in the hills called Haputhale, however we thought we would take the more direct route which turned out to be directly up the hill that Lipton’s Seat sat on...we found out pretty quickly that this may have been a mistake! The “road” condition was horrendous, it would have actually made a pretty rough walking route so not suitable for a TukTuk. However we had invested time in this route so we powered through and insisted that we would make it. Each kilometre took around half an hour and the road condition seemed to get worse. The locals who lived in the small villages in the hills that we passed through looked at us as we passed with both humour and confusion...I’m pretty sure they’d never seen a Tuktuk go past their house, let alone white people driving one past. Regardless of the road conditions, the scenery was gorgeous on the way up, passing through tea plantations and eventually we reached a section of road that was actually tarmac!! We celebrated the tarmac as Greta (our TukTuk) seemed to be struggling however it was short lived as the bumpy roads shortly returned. We got up to Liptons seat at 9am, and it was a really cool viewpoint! You could see over the tea plantations that we just drove through and could see miles ahead of that into the distance, we tried to identify the Dam in Udalalawe. After enjoying the view we decided to get a cup of tea at the make-do cafe at the top which had a beautiful view of the scenery. We paid up and made our way down to Ella via beautiful, tarmac roads!

We got to Haputhale, a busy town in the hills and we stopped to get some grub at Sunrise restaurant. We ordered Veggie Kottu and agreed a price, 250 for the portion with the young guy working there and waited for our takeout in the TukTuk after checking out the view out of the kitchen window at the restaurant. Our Kottu arrived and surprise surprise when it come to paying they tried to rip us off and charge a different price...we obviously disagreed and then an older guy came (presumably the young guys dad?) over to us but we did not back down. Through principle we argued for that 100 rupees (40p) and walked away with our huge Kottu for £1! We stopped our TukTuk at a viewpoint spot on the road and ate the Kottu with our hands, and gave some leftovers to a stray dog that had been following us for a while.

Eventually, we arrived in Ella and got to our hostel, Bunk Station. It was a relatively new hostel, only being opened 6 months ago so was very clean and tidy but the guy who worked behind the front desk seemed to be a bit of an arse...anyhow, we threw our bags on our beds and went straight to Nine Arch bridge, a popular tourist spot in Ella. The bridge was constructed by British engineers in 1921 and was situated about a 30 minute walk from our hostel. It was beautiful, pretty busy and very very hot! We stayed there for a bit watching the tourists doing their thing and then decided to try and climb to the bottom of the bridge as we could see and hear water down there...due to the density of the bush we failed our mission and decided to head back to our hostel, however as we were about to leave a train passed over the bridge which was really cool to see!

On the way back to the hostel we went on the hunt for a cold bottle of Coca Cola to enjoy back at the hostel. We could of either had 250ml for 280 rupees or 1.5l for 250 rupees, I’ll leave it to your imagination as to which one we got. We got back to the hostel chilled out with our cold coke on the bean bags they had in the common area and FaceTimed home. We then ventured into Ella and got dinner at City Cafe Ella, I got the veggie fried rice and Tom got veggie noodles...it was probably the first meal in Sri Lanka Tom wasn’t too fond of so decided he probably wouldn’t have the noodles again. After a quick dinner we went back to the hostel and chilled out in our room, I got back to find my bed had been nicked by some girl called Filipa, so I picked up all of her stuff and placed it on her suitcase. We chatted to the people in our room for a bit and decided we would join them for a sunrise hike to Little Adams peak in the morning... Filipa also joined us in the room and laughed about the check in man sending her to the wrong room - hence my bed being stolen earlier on. In good spirits we all went to bed to get up bright and early tomorrow.Leia mais
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- Dia 10
- quarta-feira, 15 de janeiro de 2020
- ⛅ 28 °C
- Altitude: 580 m
- Sri Lanka Iriwendumpola 6.729546, 81.0202226°43’46” N 81°1’13” E
Udawalawe Safari —> Diyaluma Falls
15 de janeiro de 2020, Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C
We got up at just after 5 so we could get ready for the safari pick up. Straight away we were glad that we’d put jeans and a jumper on as the jeep sped towards the park entrance we were getting pelted with dirt and cold air! We went to the park entrance and our driver went to get the pass. He took ages and ages and pretty much all the trucks left, so I went to enquire with him what was going on. He said that he had to wait for another driver who had money! Another example of Asia never making sense. We were keen to get going as this was a sunrise safari and it was rising quickly!! Finally we got on our way into Udalalawe.

Pretty much as soon as we got in we saw an elephant and it’s baby. We knew that we’d see them but not that quick! The next hour was spent bumping around seeing Serpent Eagles, owls, water buffalo, foxes, kingfishers, storks, a rare wild cat, and bee eater birds...not to mention the thousands of peacocks. I was thinking that maybe we wouldn’t see any more elephants, but then we saw a massive herd just ahead. Round about 10 of them just grazing. It was our jeep and one other which was, unfortunately, full of Russians who wouldn’t stay quiet and were trying to touch and stroke the elephants as they came closer...stupid. We had about 40 minutes with the herd and just observed them grazing. They eventually moved on and so did we. The rest of the time was spent just looking at some amazing birds and listening to the dawn chorus.

We got taken back to the accommodation for some hoppers for breakfast from our host. Even though we had two nights booked, we had decided to leave Uduwalawa today and find accommodation on the way to Liptons seat to spare the huge journey (plus there wasn’t much else to do here). Tom sorted it out with the host and booking.com and just after midday we were on our way, Tom drove today and smashed it as usual! We got to near where we thought we could get Liptons Seat from and there was Diyaluma Falls, a 230m high waterfall. We found some accommodation and tried to barter down the price with the woman. She said 2750 we wanted to pay 2000. We settled on 2500, still a free dinner! We met Jen and Matthias who said the waterfall was amazing so we decided to get straight up it. A short drive and some free parking later and we were off walking to Diyaluma falls. It was a nice walk up but when we got there it was even better than we thought. A huge drop and we had to get some risky pictures...sorry mum.

There were some higher falls which we’d been told about and apparently were like infinity pools so we climbed up and they were also really nice so we went for a swim with the locals. With the falls all explored we went down to the Tuktuk and this little girl demanded 100 rupees for parking, nice try but it was free. We headed to Koslanda for dinner at this really good little restaurant and then chilled back at the accommodation chatting to Jen and Matthias about our Tuktuk adventures as they had also rented one. Time to hit the hay as a long day was ahead on our journey to Liptons Seat, we set up the iPad on a table between both of our beds and watched a film to fall to sleep to.Leia mais
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- Dia 9
- terça-feira, 14 de janeiro de 2020
- ☁️ 30 °C
- Altitude: 91 m
- Sri Lanka Rathkarawwa 6.436376, 80.8107846°26’11” N 80°48’39” E
Tangalle —> Udawalawe National Park
14 de janeiro de 2020, Sri Lanka ⋅ ☁️ 30 °C
Loudly awoken by the sound of a watery plop from next door... oh the joys of thin walls and shared hatched roofs! Sounds like the Spanish girl had the shits! Some more funny noises and a deep sigh and it was over. We managed to grab an hour or so more sleep and then got up and ready so we could head to Udalalawe National Park. We got on the road and decided to take a more scenic less main road route to Udawalawe, turned out to be a good call and we went through some beautiful scenery in the lowlands...mainly rice paddies. We were trying to get to a couple of waterfalls and ended up driving into the arse end of nowhere only to not find them or anyone who spoke a word of English to help us find them. We managed to attract a weird group of people who didn’t want to leave us alone and perused us in their Tuktuk. Just a few kilometres outside of Udalalawe we decided to grab a bit of lunch, we wanted something small so we got rice and dhal. The place we went said we could have bowls of dhal for 35 rupees each (14p) so we got one each and some rice. When leaving, Tom also wanted a roti for 30. So we were expecting a bill of around 120 rupees all included (50p). But they tried it on and wanted to charge 450 rupees as apparently rice cost 200 each!!! We flat out refused that logic and tried to hand over 120, but this was met with disgust and they told us to leave...so we did. Free lunch then :)

Fortunately we got to Udawalawe without anyone chasing us with, Tom doing a stellar job of driving. We got to Greenwood Safari Accommodation which was right on the border of the national park and we’d heard good things from Sophia the previous day about the safari and the owner of the accommodation. The ‘rooms’ in this place were cool as they were just large beds outside under a sheet metal roof with a mozzy net to cover you...it was amazing to hear all the sounds grow and grow through the night. We immediately confirmed the safari booking for the following morning and then we got a short history lesson on pretty much everything to do with Sri Lanka from the owner...he was such a patriot and also a researcher so knew a lot. We asked him if there were any other things to do, he suggested a temple and sent us on a treasure hunt for some ‘artefacts’. However he didn’t give us any clue but he asked us to bring back pics. We found nothing he talked about and ended up just climbing a boiling hot black rock. He seemed surprised when we couldn’t find the buddhas foot or some other stuff. He then started on about some Sri Lankan conspiracy about a mercury powered vortex plane from 8000 years ago. We were a bit sceptical so did some googling, turns out that he was so convinced that this existed but it was some myth...unbelievable.

Anyway, It was time to have a look at our plan, turns out we’d heard mixed things about Aragum Bay, so we moved some other things around so we could have a bit more time in Ella and also add in Polonnaurawa, an ancient city near Sigiriya. After shifting some things around, we needed to get some sleep as we had to be up early for the safari!Leia mais
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- Dia 8
- segunda-feira, 13 de janeiro de 2020
- ⛅ 31 °C
- Altitude: 16 m
- Sri Lanka Marakolliya 6.044091, 80.8091376°2’39” N 80°48’33” E
Dikwella —> Tangalle
13 de janeiro de 2020, Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 31 °C
I still woke up feeling awful and had convinced myself it was Dengue, but Tom said that I was being ridiculous and it was obviously the amount of sun we’d had. We’d decided the night before that we weren’t in a rush, so we were having a leisurely day. Over a game of shithead we met Sophia, a yoga instructor from Swindon but living in Bristol. She recommended that we go to a secret beach (unlike Heriketiya) which wasn’t too far away. It looked really nice on her pictures so we gave it a go. Abandoning the game of shithead, we fired up the Tuktuk and set off for Blue Island beach - it was gorgeous. A little beach bridging a little island to the mainland. We saw the locals bring in a massive tuna fish, taking three of them to carry it to the scales they were all exlaiming ‘big fish’ with their arms open wide! We chilled here for a bit watching the waves crash on the rocks and then headed back to the dinner place of last night to grab a veggie roti.

We saw Sophia walking along the road, she was heading to the blow hole so offered her a lift. We had to quickly check out and pay (not that the host was bothered or precious about our checkout time) and then we all headed to the blowhole, our first passenger!! After a quick fill up of fuel, we were at the blowhole...well, nearly. A guy tried to stop us and makes it for parking but we politley declined and parked up the road...RS50 saved (20p). We walked along the trail until we reached the blowhole visitor centre. Obviously this was not a free attraction, 250 rupees...and the man said it wasn’t great today because of the calm sea so we gave it a miss and went to a nearby beach for a swim...completely secluded apart from a few local men. We all had a nice dip in the beautiful sea and chatted for a while. We dropped Sophia half way back and then made our way to Tangalle and the Sun Star Homestay a few kilometres from Tangalle town, down a questionable road. Turned out to be a really nice little place albeit in the arse end of nowhere. We dumped our bags and decided we’d go get some cash from Tangalle town. ATM 1 didn’t work, ATM 2 took some finding but we got cash and stocked up on water. We headed back to the guesthouse and straight to the beach as it was really close. We chilled out and read our books for a couple of hours as the sea wasn’t the best to swim in.

Back to the homestay and it was time for dinner, as we hadn’t asked earlier it took some time to come, but when it did it was the best Sri Lankan food we’ve had, and the quantity was insane. We shared dinner and stories with a Swiss couple and a Spanish/German couple, getting tips for ourselves for later in Sri Lanka and other places and dishing out a few ourselves. At 20:30 our host had said we could all go with him to see if any turtles were on the shore laying eggs, we all jumped on this great little perk to this homestay. We all set off and we walked for what seemed like ages away from all civilisation until we came across a small green turtle digging a hole with her fins to lay. This is something we’d both wanted to see for ages and for the second time this week nature amazed us! We sat near the turtle for about 40 minutes until our host said it was ok to go closer and take a look. The turtle was patting down and covering up the eggs, the body making a deep thudding sound and vibrations felt through the sand a few meters away! Job done and she span round and made her way back to the ocean. Truly amazing! With it being 11pm now we all headed back to the homestay for a good nights sleep so grateful to have seen nature at work this evening.Leia mais
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- Dia 7
- domingo, 12 de janeiro de 2020
- ☀️ 31 °C
- Altitude: 10 m
- Sri Lanka Dikwella 5.976587, 80.6994085°58’36” N 80°41’58” E
Tallala beach and local Kottu dinner
12 de janeiro de 2020, Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C
After a comfortable night sleep we woke up around 8, and were straight out. We stopped off briefly at a temple near to our homestay, but quickly left after a man started signalling to us something that we couldn’t understand...could’ve been saying good morning for all we knew, but he was probably asking for payment. We then made our way to Talalla beach that we had heard from as being beautiful and secluded beach. It was around 10km from our home stay but was so worth the drive. It was a long stretch of gorgeous white sand and the water was the perfect temperature, however it was pretty rough and very very hot with not many shaded spots. We found a palm tree to base ourselves under and we chilled out for a bit reading and listening to some music.

After a while we both got really hot so decided to go for a dip in the rough see and basically be children in the waves....I came up with a great idea (sarcasm) for a game that was essentially chicken for going under the waves before they hit you...a huge wave came and Tom lasted longer than me on this one occasion, but it completely sent Tom flying all the way back to shore and ‘scorpioning’ on the sea bed. Technically Tom won that round, but did he really? After all that sun and being battered by the waves we really worked up an appetite, so Tom went for a walk to the shop we saw when we parked up to get 2 veggie Rotis for us to eat on the beach... in the shop the locals were looking at Tom as if he was an alien just landed on earth, rather than just a hungry human being.

At 2pm we both decided that was enough sun for one day! We went back to the home stay for some chill time, stopping off at the bakery and Cargills for a 5L water. I wasn’t feeling too good so we just stuck the Greatest Showman on and lounged around in our beautiful homestay for a few hours. The film eventually finished and I had started to feel better, so we both got showered and found a small local restaurant on the corner of the road into Heriketiya. We sat on plastic chairs and the whole family at one point passed by doing their part in preparing our meal...we had order vegetable Kottu and it was delicious, all for 250...around £1! We had a quick look on Dikwella beach which wasn’t as nice as Tallala, but we still got a good sunset. Thoroughly satisfied we made our way back to the home stay to get some sleep!Leia mais
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- Dia 6
- sábado, 11 de janeiro de 2020
- ☀️ 31 °C
- Altitude: 13 m
- Sri Lanka Dikwella North 5.9682, 80.707345°58’6” N 80°42’26” E
Whale Watching —> Dikwella/Heriketiya
11 de janeiro de 2020, Sri Lanka ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C
*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!Leia mais
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- Dia 5
- sexta-feira, 10 de janeiro de 2020
- ☁️ 31 °C
- Altitude: 11 m
- Sri Lanka Virumba Rock 5.97378, 80.4337165°58’26” N 80°26’1” E
Medigama beach and Weligama Surfing
10 de janeiro de 2020, Sri Lanka ⋅ ☁️ 31 °C
The homestay room was boiling hot overnight, so neither of us got the best sleep. Amazing how it can be hotter inside than out! We went to Mirissa to check out whale watching place and then went back had a big breakfast courtesy of our host which immediately gave me the shits. Whilst I was out of action Tom capitalised and did some clothes washing. When I came back round we went to Medigama beach which I’d seen the previous day on the journey to Weligama, it was only about 7km away.

Tom parked up Tuktuk and we went over the banking by the road and the amazing beach awaited. We spotted a palm tree at the far end of the beach and went to camp up. Gorgeous weather and the best beach we’d been on so far. We played around in the waves, had a little snorkel and generally chilled out. We got to grips with the new bat and ball but not the new shuttle cocks. We chilled for another hour or so nipping in and out of the sea thinking about how everyone at home was getting to the office!

We headed back to Weligama to the beach. We camped out again and decided to get a Coca Cola at a beach hut. Tom went to order and we awaited them to arrive and looked forward to them. We watched as the waiter brought two cokes and put them on the table next to us to a family with two kids. They necked them and we were left thirsty. No more cokes arrived so we duly got up and left to find a surfing rental. We went to Elephant Surfing and paid RS 250 (£1.10) for an hour on the boards. We signed them out and went on our way. The bay at weligama is perfect for surfing, so we looked spectacularly amateur compared to all the Assies who’d travelled here especially for the surf. About 10 mins in I noticed a slice in my board done by a previous pilot and realised that they would probably say it was me...anyway we attempted to surf. Tom got up on the first wave and I thought he was actually good. Took him a while to get another and stay up :) we both managed to catch some wave but also performed some spectacular wipeouts. The hour was up and with ears and eyes full of water we returned the boards. They accused me of damaging the board, shock horror, but we said it was already like that, paid and left.

On our way back into Weligama, we were treated to the best sunset so far, so we went into the beach to soak it all in. Even after the previous nights’ toilet episode, we went for dinner again at Day Long Restaurant, but this time got egg rice and curry. We assumed it was egg fried rice, but no. It was the same as the previous night, white rice but this time we got a side dish of a boiled egg! Not quite what we had in mind but Tom said it was delicious to which I coined a new phrase of Dhal - icious referencing Dhal Curry. Stuffed, we walked back to the guesthouse and packed up for the early start to find blue whales tomorrow!Leia mais
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