You are like a Hurricane (Mirissa to Tangalle)

Well, after 2 days in Unawatuna, and no apologies from the Pierre the Party Man for the night before we hopped into a tuk tuk and headed onto our next destination, Mirissa, about  40k further along the coast. We’d heard great things about Mirissa, it’s supposed to be one of the best beaches on the South Coast, so we had high hopes that this was gonna be THE one, THE beach.

Welligama Bay beach. Nice, but a working beach so no good for swimming. Taprobane Island with house built in the 1930s by, and I kid you not Mel Brooks fans, Count de Maunay!

The road there was much the same story with the road running very close to the beach, with few exceptions. We saw some of Welligama, the big bay 2 km before Marissa which look really nice, this time it was a very wide bay around 4 or 5k with some beach areas to the East side. We were originally going to stay here for a night or two, but decided to head straight to Marissa. We stayed at the Secret guest house, a really lovely place, for once Trip Advisor was spot on. It was 5 or 6 min walk to the start of the beach proper, but the chilled out atmosphere and lovely rooms more than made up for that. Plus, the owners (an English lady of Laotian origin and her Sri Lankan husband) had a beautiful 5 month old baby (Davan) for Curtis to play with, well, ok, gaze at. It rained most of the afternoon, so we just caught up on a few things and relaxed.

The lovely outdoor dining are at Secret guest house. Curtis LOVES his new cot, better than sleeping with those 2 losers.

Next morning we were up early, and it was still raining, but somewhat heavier, and by 8.30/9am it was really blowing outside. We sat with another English couple who had been there two nights before but went to stay at the beach for a night, but the winds got so bad that morning with bamboo shelters and chairs being blown around, that they came back to Secret for shelter. Still we didn’t think it was that bad. We were all sat on the front porch drinking tea, eating biscuits and chatting, when the owner shouted “move, move, get inside”. I grabbed Curtis in his buggy and we all ran inside. Myself and the English guy went outside to see what was going on and saw that a big tree was slowly being uprooted and aiming to fall right were we were sitting! I went back in and found the safest place for Susan, Curtis & the English woman to shelter under and went back out front to help. But even where they were there were trees all around, swaying drastically in the winds, but it was the safest option. For the next 30 mins about 7 of us tried to tie this tree to the surrounding trees to keep it from falling. It all seemed to be working, until there was a loud cracking sound and the tree in question, and another it was attached to fell onto the side of the house. Luckily due to being linked to the other trees it went off course, and only took out a corner of the house front, but it could have been a lot worse. For the next few hours the local guys clambered up the fallen tree and began to cut branches off and slowly break the tree down while we piled the branches in a pile in the corner of the property. To make matters worse, there was obviously a red ants’ nest under one of the trees, and boy were they annoyed! For the rest of the afternoon the little b*ggers were biting everyone while we tried to clear up, and there seemed to be hundreds of them and when you tried to brush them off they just clung on, biting!

The main offending tree before it fell, wondering what to do. And the after effects, that's the porch where we were sitting.

I walked round to the local shops, but everything was shuttered up tight, apart from the Roti shop, where a few locals had gathered. No-one was saying the word, but you could read between the lines, people were trying to carry on as normal, but they were scared. Who can blame them, the Tsunami, like many places, hit them very bad and most people have stories of losing family or property when it hit, so who can blame the for being nervous. I bought the last 2 veggie rolls and a pack of biscuits and headed back to the family. By early evening most of the tree was in a pile waiting to be collected the next day. The power was off, so no lights, fan or internet, and we all had a bit of a hot night, but at least we were all safe, Susan admitted they were both more than a little scared, especially when they heard the crash of the tree. Oh, and a coconut the size of a rugby ball fell right into the middle of all of us while we were trying to restrain the tree, from that height, if it would have hit any one of us, we wouldn’t be here now.

Cyclone damage in Welligama Bay. Road signs trashed and buildings destroyed. Very sad to see indeed.

The next morning I went for a walk down to the main village of Welligama to get a few supplies, and it became apparent that it was a lot worse there. Trees were down everywhere, houses hit, billboards flattened. Several local guys said it was the worst storm in living memory, and because it was such a wide bay, there was no shelter and nothing to stop the full force of the storm. There were 13 fishermen killed and over 20 still missing. I now found out that the whole Southern coast from Galle to past Tangalle had been hit by a cyclone, not just any old storm, and due to it hitting so early, and so fast, there were still fishermen in their small boats out at sea. The Navy were out searching for the missing fishermen, and the Army came in to help with the clear up the debris later in the day, with the newspaper calling the whole area ‘a disaster area’. Terrible. We just thought, along with the locals, as we were busy trying to save our guest house roof, that it was just a bad storm, we had no idea that we were being hit by a cyclone. A very sobering experience.

Link to more pics of the storm.

Marissa beach itself was really nice, a good beach and not to many guesthouses and restaurants to ruin it. It’s a shame we didn’t get to spend much time to on it due to the bad weather.

Mirissa beach, one of the best we've seen so far, and not too developed. Not bad eh?

By the next morning tho, the local guys had done a grand job on the house roof, the two trees were nowhere to be seen, and everyone tried to carry on as normal. We spent some of the day at the beach, and the rest chattin’ & chillin’. Is this what we used to do before, laptops & ipads? The day after that we said our goodbyes, with them still without any power, and left to head towards Tangalle.

2 Decks I found in Galle. Check out that big boy speaker on the front. Now, if  hook up the laptop speaker too, I'll be kicking out 2-4w stereo no probs. Soul Sri Lanka here we go! Plus I KNEW I'd find some vinyl, and Lalo Schifrin too.

Curtis having another swimming lesson

Curtis and his traditional fan base....