Ettukala

First things first today - get ourselves into the ocean for one last pre-breakfast swim! Apart from a few fully dressed locals playing in the shallows further along the beach, we had Nilavelli beach to ourselves for about 15 minutes - we are really going to miss the peace and quiet of that beachside town.

After our last omelette and fruit breakfast combo, we grabbed our bags and hit the road with our driver for the day, who was a local and a friend of Niru. He arrived 30 minutes earlier and considering that he was driving back to Nilavelli, we were happy to get going!

247km (of probably the best roads we’ve experienced in Sri Lanka) later...we arrived in Negombo! Google Maps kept up in good stead right up until she tried to get us to drive down a train track. So the driver had to improvise a little. He was a great driver, a good balance of safe and risky. And no friendly bottle of booze in the front seat - yay!

Our hotel is not exactly what we expected - I’ll paint a picture for you. You enter the 3 storey building and the bottom floor featuring the bar/kitchen area is painted like you’re underwater.
We were shown to our room, which in itself is a 2 storey space - storage and bathroom downstairs and chill out space/bedroom and balcony upstairs. The view to Negombo beach is not too shabby either as we’re on the beach esplanade, so we’re happy!

This afternoon and evening was spent wandering up and down the local strip, sharing pizza for lunch, stocking up on water, snacks and antiseptic mouthwash for Ant. The poor guy has broken out in no less than 10 ulcers (no joke) in his mouth - he is blaming the box of crackers we ate for lunch the other day. Whatever the source, they look bloody painful so fingers crossed this helps!

Because it’s a Sunday, much like a pint-sized Galle Face Green in Colombo, most of the locals flocked to the beachside to fly kites and devour street snacks from vendors. We even saw a grown man being led around on probably the smallest horse I’ve seen in awhile. We did laugh to ourselves, I’m not going to lie. Even the locals giggled as he trotted by.

We decided to have dinner tonight at the hotel restaurant ‘Seafood Embassy’ because it’s nice to support their business, plus an in-house 15% discount doesn’t hurt. Anthony is sticking to bland foods and ordered a European-style chicken dish [autocorrect believes he ate chicken dogs] with veggies and mashed potatoes. I had the traditional fish curry with rice and several sides...I think they may have overestimated the size of my stomach but I did my best guys! The curry was tasty but REALLY spicy - I’ll let you know how I fare tomorrow.Read more