Unawatuna and the last days in Sri Lanka

This next entry comes many days after the last. In this small of town of Unawatuna, life has become very slow - such a contrast from the first week here. The days have been filled with lounging and reading on the beach, eating, walking to other places to eat and sleeping. 
We've finally met plenty of travellers to share stories with, which has been great - much needed from my side. On our second night we met some guys who were working at the turtle hatchery in Bentota. Seven weeks of tickling baby turtles' bellies might have been just toooo relaxing for us, but Sean and Anders seemed to be coping with it just fine - they weren't even smoking either!!! 
We've also had some good neighbours at our hotel; talking to Markus and Karin the Swiss couple who were literally covering the whole of Sri Lanka in two weeks ensured that we knew what not to do, and Kate and James who have been very friendly (but not too friendly) have given us good recommendations on where to eat out. 
The only real experiences so far to note are:-
Getting badly sunburned in patches on our first day, despite wearing suncream which has been a pain in the ass (literally) wearing clothes ever since.
Getting accosted in the usual 'hello where are you from, how do you like Sri Lanka' fashion by five guys calmly carrying machine guns. Yes, we like your country very very much, and of course we'll be telling all our friends to come next year...
We've been meeting more genuinely good natured people than not so. Today we avoided getting scammed by the 'waiter' at our hotel - things got fishy when he asked to borrow 450 rupees, but later were chatting with a real waiter who was also the gardener, who sneeked us a bunch of aloe vera for our sunburn :-)

Monday
A relatively uneventful day recovering from sunburn, only notable points were going for a surf and realising that four years without touching a board combined with no swell meant a lot of paddling, no rides, and very sore nipples!
 
Tuesday
A couple of days ago we finally decided that we'd get off our butts and do something, so signed up for a PADI open water diving course. The divemaster Shirly was very easy to get on with (and understand!) so we opted to use his school which turned out to be a good choice as the other schools were European owned, and Shirly's was Sri Lankan, his dad's business before he died in the Tsunani. You don't mind shedding out the equivilent of the three months wages of the average Sri Lankan if it goes straight into the local community and helps rebuild something that was wiped out.
After a tiring days with lots of exertion and learning, we went out to dinner with of neighbours Kate and James who had also returned to the hotel after venturing elsewhere and realising it just wasn't as good. Turns out that the Sri Lankan newspaper were doing an article on the restaurant and they wanted to show tourists having fun there. So they lined all four of us up at the open plan kitchen to 'admire' the chef as he sporadically flambeéd his meat. "Now lean forward please" demanded the photographer as he looked to capture the moment my eyebrows were singed off. Can't wait to read the headline, 'Local Chef leaves lasting impression on Tourists'
 
Wednesday
Today we've completed our second day at the dive school. After what looked like a daunting pre-training video, we asked if we could start in the pool (all our other dives had been in the sea), and this made things much more stable - Rachel did particularly well and managed to swim a whole length of the pool with one breath singing "Arrrrrrrr" (which sounds more like a didgeridoo under water!) and two lengths without a mask on. I was very proud of her as this was make or break time. Followng this, we did a full open water dive at a wreck site and saw lots of shools of fish, and a big sea turtle. We had to invent our own underwater signs to express "I'm Happy!!!", since the PADI course only gets emotional enough to say OK...
We're now off to Galle again to withdraw £600 to pay for th course. Let's hope the guys with machine guns aren't hanging around again!

Friday
Today we completed our diving course and now we can officially go out and diving without supervision. It's not a scary a thought as it sounds, as we passed all of our tests with flying colours (except my compass orientation which bizarrely I failed miserably and Rachel did perfectly...) and feel very confident in the water.
After finishing our course, we chilled out at the beach. It was the weekend and the sea was flooded with Sri Lankan's who'd come to the beach from inland. Although mostly men in their skimpy Y-fronts, the water was also filled with women and girls... fully dressed! It transpires Sri Lankans are still very traditional - no one could give us a proper reason why, other than some mentions of strict parenting, religion and tradition. A bit sad really.
Somehow I managed to end up havin a kickaround with some guys from a factory in Colombo. This was the first time I can remember ever playing football and actually being better than everyone else! Either I'd finally lost my two left feet, or the Sri Lankans should stick to cricket!
The game resulted in more locals showing their curiousity and before I knew it we were playing 10 a side volleyball. It was quite strange being with people who were much older than me who made me feel like I was over the hill - as after the hour long game they then invited to come play in the water, I declined and went to pass out on my sunchair!
As they left the beach later that afternoon, I felt a bit like a movie star as all 20 came up one by one to shake my hand. I think Rach felt a bit left out - she only got the fat kid asking for her phonenumber :-P
That night, after we'd been to watch the sunset from the rocks with some local stoners, Shirley and the dive school put on a beach BBQ for us. We proceded to eat, drink, and be very merry. It's funny how a little alcohol can bring together a group that normally can barely communicate! After consuming numerous bottles of Arrack (35% Malibu), we staggered home to pass out, awaking to mozi bitten hangovers!

We spent the last few days in Unawatuna chilling out at the east side of the beach. Watched a few sunsets, ate some local grub and chatted with Andy the lifelong travelling German at Tujeera's place, and finally left after 12 days of 'chillaxing'.

Last few days in Sri Lanka
We took the train up the west coast to Aluthgama, a busy little town which had it's weekly market in full swing. Despite being regular shoppers at Taj in Brighton (and living with Paul who prides himself on bringing home a new phalic vegetable each week), we were dumbfounded about how many vegetables we couldn't identify. My inner chef was crying out to take sone new things homes, but sadly that would be a wasted exercise as I haven't been able to step foot into a kitchen in three weeks :-(
After the market, we jumped onto another crazy express bus (which overtake anything in their path, scattering oncoming tuk-tuks into the hedgerows) to Kosgoda. Don't worry mum, I've been wearing that cross you gave me!!!
In Kosgoda, we jumped off the bus, thanked the lord (and buddha, Vishnu, shiva and the other multitude of gods worshipped here) for our safe journey and wandered down the the beach which was entirely deserted. Miles of unspoilt coastline with sandy beaches and palm trees. A little odd to be so alone, but within half a mile we'd found the turtle hatchery. Basically in Sri Lanka people like turtle-egg omelettes. So the hatcheries buy eggs from the poachers for a slightly higher price than the markets and the incubate and release baby turtles. It's awfully cute and it all seemed above board. Rachel and I got very into tickling their tummies, and were left to our own devices with them. :-)
We returned via a local school bus, children beaming at us all the way home, to chill out at a lovely austrian guesthouse prior to our last night in Colombo and Sri Lanka.  

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Part of trip: Rich and Rach travel the World

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