Saturday 4/12/2008- Tuesday 4/15/2008
After our 1.5 hour delay, we somehow made up time over to Colombo. It was a quick hour flight, and we had a very lovely gentleman waiting with a sign when we arrived. We were glad that we booked our accommodation and hotel transfer, as it was the beginning of the Sri Lankian New Year, and locals were getting crrraazy! We saw many people out enjoying libations and shooting off very sad (but festive) displays of fireworks.
Around 3.5 hours later, we arrived at our hotel, Asian Jewel, which was about 130km south of Colombo’s airport. We were greeted by seriously the nicest woman on the planet, Tanya, who showed us our room and made us the most delectable homecooked meal. We had our complimentary house drinks of Lion beer and we were sleep walking before we knew it.
The next morning we got to meet Dale, Tanya’s husband who helped to plan our very short two days in Sri Lanka. He was beyond accommodating, with recommendations and getting us deals and discounts on transportation. We decided to chill by the beach the first day and for our second day; we ended up hiring one of Dale’s friends, Anura, to take us on his tuk-tuk for a tour of the SW of Sri Lanka.
We had an incredibly peaceful day at the beach where Derm caught some great waves, and Katie relaxed under her own tiki hut with $0.90 beers and reggae music. It really could not have been more perfect. If only we were stressed, this would have been such a great get-a-way (haha). After taking a tour of the beach, we ended up running into Dale and two other lovely guests from our guest house. We ended up having happy hour with them at Budde’s Beach Bar and continued on down the beach for authentic Sri Lankian seafood cuisine. It didn’t hold a candle to Tanya’s meals…so we decided this was our last night eating out! After dinner we headed back up to the hotel to watch the Manchester United/Arsenal game with Dale, Tom, Tanya and Jill. Dale and Tom were Man United fans, so they were happy with the result. Dermot was not. After the game, we headed to bed ready for a day of touring tomorrow.
The next day we hired Anura to take us around the southwest coast of Sri Lanka. We started our tour in Galle, the Old Portuguese turned Dutch fort on the southern tip of the island. We explored the Old Dutch fort and drove around the entire town before deciding to head over the Handunugoda Tea Estate. On the way there we passed a bicycle race. They didn’t shut down the road for the race, but just had police cars surround the racers.
After several turns and pit stops for Anura to ask for directions, we arrived to the tea plantation. It was officially closed for New Year, but because Dale was friends with the owner, we got to have a tour! The tour was still a lot of fun and we got to taste over 20 varieties of teas made at the estate. The most expensive tea, used by the Ritz and other fancy pants places, was a white tea which is harvested by women dressed in white robes cutting the tea leaves with white gloves and gold plated scissors. We got to taste the white tea…and did not think it was worth the $20 an ounce.
After our tour of the tea plantation we decided to head back toward Hikkaduwa. On the way home, we stopped off at a sea turtle hatchery and conservatory. We saw lots of 1, 2 and 3 day old turtles. When a turtle turns 4 days old, they are released into the ocean. After touring the hatchery, we made our way to Budde’s Beach Bar for our now traditional, sunset happy hour. Our sunset bet was still on, so we ordered some drinks sat back and let nature do its thing as we talked with our friends. The sun was actually visible this day and the sun set was one of the most beautiful they have seen on their trip… ‘touchdowning’ at 6:17 p.m., making Tom the official winner. We had another drink and then our tuk-tuk driver Anura brought us back up to the hotel for dinner.
After a quick shower, we ate dinner at the hotel with Tom and Jill. Dale and Tanya then joined us for some drinks after dinner. It was strange having drinks with the hotel owners, which made our stay in Sri Lanka feel more like visiting our friends then just renting us a room. We had a lot of fun and talked for quite a bit that night over many drinks.
The next morning we were up bright and early to catch our train to Colombo. Dale and Tanya made us breakfast and they had Sunny take us to the local station for the 2.5 hour ride up to Colombo. It was fun taking public transportation with the locals on a train with a beautiful view of the coast. When we arrived in Colombo, we waited to meet Raj, a tuktuk driver that Dale set up for us in Colombo. We weren’t sure how to find him, but after Tanya’s description of a ‘big teddy bear’…we found him right away. He was a fantastic host in Colombo and he gave us the 4 hour highlighted tour. We ate lunch at the Colombo Cricket Club, then stopped by the Post Office to mail some postcards, before heading to the airport. We said goodbye to Raj, thanked him for our tour of Colombo and then checked in for our flight to Bahrain. The airport was an interesting experience, as we were definitely the only white people on our flight and got some interesting looks as we waited to board the plane. The 4.5 hour plane ride when by relatively quickly and the food on the plane was very good. We were very excited to see our friends Zein and Yanal when we arrived in Bahrain.