 |
| Sri Lanka railways map. |
|
| The beautiful beach at Uppuveli. Susan & Curtis 'aving it large. |
 |
A couple of stops on the Curtis Road Show.
With a Tamil family at a Trinco temple & with the local children at the beach |
Well, we finally managed to drag ourselves away from the relative luxury of the Lotus Park Hotel, although not quite how we planned. After much debating we decided to return to our starting point (Colombo) and begin our tour of the West coast beaches. We discovered that there were 2 flights a week from Trinco to Colombo (the other side of the country), 40 mins and you were there. Perfect. Then we found out the flights were run by the military, on 15 seat Y12 Chinese built propeller planes, but we decided that they couldn’t be that bad and went ahead and called to book seats. Unfortunately there was only one seat left on that particular flight, so we were now left with only one option…. A 10 hour train journey across the whole country with a 6 month old baby, in 2nd Class at 7am!
|
| Curtis & Susan as we began our 10 hour train journey. Curtis decides he'd rather sit away from his embarrassing parents. |
Once again, to our complete surprise, Curtis was as good as gold for the whole journey. The train wasn’t bad at all, and we met a really lovely Sri Lankan family who were doing the same journey and who spoke a little English.Yet again Curtis was the star of the show, being passed around the carriage, poked and prodded, sniffed and kissed, tickled and tweaked like some chubby ET. Still it kept him entertained and made the long journey seem much shorter. We also decided to try to carry on the journey from Colombo to get to the first of our West coast beach resorts (Aluthgama) rather than staying in the capital, which just happened to be where our Sri Lankan friends where going, and they saved us a lot of time by showing us the quicker places to change train, and they helped with our luggage too. At the end of our journey they even invited us to their house for dinner the next night, which we accepted.
 |
| Curtis and the lovely Sri Lankan family we met on the train ride to Althugama. |
We checked in at the Anushka River Inn in Aluthgama, and once again we were the only people there and hence got the best room in the house with a balcony overlooking the lagoon. Where ARE all the tourists?
The answer to the above question it seems, is in the REALLY posh resorts hotels, the ones that you see all over the world. The ones where you pay a fortune to stay in a beautiful, but sterile, ethnically-designed environment, where you need never leaves the confines of the resort, and where the only locals you meet are either cleaning your room, speaking flawless English on the reception, or acting as a footstool when you want to put your feet up by the pool. You could indeed be anywhere in the world, and the only thing that would differ is the shade of your servants skin…. We often enquire about rooms in these places and have been quoted anything between $150 and $250+ a night, and even at these rates they were all full (or was it my ‘I love Hackney’ bag that prompted that response?) It’s not for us, even if we could afford it, we prefer our way, we’ve got photos of our room cleaners and kitchen staff holding Curtis, met really lovely people (and yes, many that weren’t there just to serve us), learnt a lot about Sri Lanka and its people and we still manage to sleep in comfort and eat well. AND we’re only 2 weeks in….
| View from our balcony at the Anushka River Inn. Not bad.... |
Aluthgama is very nice, not stunning, we’re overlooking a lagoon behind the main beach area which is home to all the aforementioned resort hotels. The beaches further along the coast are nicer but again with very little accommodation apart from the resorts.
|
| The beach at Aluthgama. Phone box, same as UK but this one doesn't smell of.... |
| We went for dinner at our new friend Nihal's family home last night, and a very nice evening it was, all his relatives and neighbours came round to ‘check us out’. As usual Curtis was the star and he disappeared for 10 mins at a time only to reappear in a different relative’s arms to the one he left in. H really has been a star on this trip, and really seems to be enjoying himself, despite being in a different location every few days, and being man-handled by all and sundry, he’s taken it all in his stride and is laughing and giggling his way across the country (well mostly, he IS only 6 months old!). We ate a lovely fish & veggie curry with rice followed by lots of fresh fruit for desert – a real feast. The only thing that let the night down slightly was our tuk tuk driver who charged us way over the odds to get there and back after promising to only to charge us local rates as we were invited by a local, and proceeded to try and sell us trips at every opportunity. |
 |
| Dinner at the home of our Sri Lankan friends. Spot the odd one out..... Nihal and Curtis |
What is it with tuk tuk drivers, the whole world over it seems they slowly descend into money grabbing, fake friendly, lying, tourist fleecing low-lifes
Had our first (of many hopefully) Ayurvedic massage of the trip today. I’d forgotten how thoroughly relaxing they are, you come out very chilled, feeling very healthy and pleased with yourself, and wanting to eat mung beans and water for the foreseeable future. That doesn’t last tho, we’ll be back on the beer, curries and egg rotis by tomorrow no doubt.
After 3 days here we’re moving on to Hikkaduwa tomorrow, which by all accounts is one of those 70s hippy destinations that’s been ruined by slow commercialisation over the years, a bit like a mini Goa. But you’ve got to check these places out, and apparently the beaches south of the main drag are still quite palatable and much less touristy. I’ll be the judge of that methinks….
 |
| Curtis and Buddha. I'm not suggesting any similarities...... |
No comments:
Post a Comment