Sri Lanka

Bit of a fiasco day today.  All we had to do was get to Makumbura – the transit hub whence we have a bus booked to take us to Ella on the morrer. Started out heading up the coast on the slow train to Colombo. Not that it was that slow – just that it […]

Off to Secret Island this morning – the island that’s on all the maps, and isn’t actually an island. Quibble quibble quibble. Nice man offered to ferry us over, and having read that we should expect to pay 2,000-3,000, which did seem a bit bonkers for a 100 metre ferry ride, we were pleasantly surprised

Said goodbye to Umatuma this morning, after a lovely few days, heading north for…a beach! Oh yes. There’s a lot of ’em round here. But this one offers access to Secret Island. Though the moniker seems a bit of a misnomer, what with it being on all the maps. Not to mention the fact that

Unawatuna is just the name of the local beach – one of the most famous in Sri Lanka – but I can’t help pronouncing it like some cod character in an old episode of The Lone Ranger. Unawatuna! And so much for that. This morning, as per Virle’s suggestion, we got up at sparrow fart

Another beach day, oh yes. With one distinction – it was at Turtle Point. Where – jammily, as we later came to appreciate – we arrived just in time to find a group of three or four just off the beach, attracted by food bought from locals for the purpose and distributed by tourists.  We

Had dinner at our hotel last night and found ourselves sitting next to a very nice couple; her from Holland, him from Lebanon. He was kind enough to give us the number of the guy they’d hired a bike from – said he was starting to get a business off the ground, and he had

Not much time for photography today – we were on the move.  After a few minutes on the side of the road, along came the 322 we were waiting for – packed to the rafters. We’d thought the packs would be a problem, but the conductor said to stack ’em on the engine bulge, right

Crocodiles! Real live crocodiles, with big pointy teeth! And we actually saw one, out of the water, just lounging around on the bank. We got the impression from our boat man that this was a stroke of luck – mostly you get to see little more than the odd snout, maybe a bit of back

Got to Freedom Resort after dark, the last stretch involving a stumble down the beach and a climb up flight after flight of super-steep stairs – challenging with the full packs, but we made it, to be greeted by smiling faces and a room with a view. Also a shit-spattered toilet, which even travellers less