Beach Holiday

After 18 months on this island, I finally had my first visitors! This is not surprising given the distance from the states, the cost of the flights, and of course the wonderful state of affairs here during the past year. I was lucky though, my friend Eric was making his second trip to Chenni, India for business and had inivted his wife Christen to join him. We originally were hoping to meet in the Maldives for a long weekend, but in the end it was too expensive. So we decided to make a nice 4-day weekend in Sri Lanka instead.

Eric and Christen flew into Colombo on Friday night and Jana and I made the extraordinarily slow drive down to Colombo from Trinco. It took us the better part of 8 hours to make the 260km journey. We booked rooms at a small hotel near the beach in Colombo for the first night and had a nice seafood dinner on the beach. "Nice" being a relative term and even though the beachfront restuarant was better than most places in Trinco, Eric and Christen were quickly indoctrinated to the levels of service found in Sri Lankan resturants.

We rented a car from Colombo and the four of us drove south along the coast to a beach town called Mirissa about 3 hours away. We stopped in Galle along the way and had lunch in the old Fort and walked up on the fort walls that served as protection to the old town from potential sea invaders. We met a local man that claimed to be a dive instructor that lost his boat and all his equipment in the Tsunami. He was selling old coins that he scavanged from the shallow wrecks near the fort. I bought a few Dutch and British copper coins from the 1700's. I figure they will be unique keepsakes if nothing else.

A typical ox-drawn cart still in comon use here in Sri Lanka. Its a wonderful juxtaposition (thanks Eric!) seeing these animal-powered transports working against the sea of buses and Japanese lorries.

Jana and I a-top the Galle Fort walls. We were so lucky, the weather was like this the entire weekend.

Eric and Christen enjoying the views and relative reprieve from India's constant hussle and bussle.


After Galle, we moved on to our final destination, Mirissa. We stayed at the nicest place there, which doesnt mean all that much. But the place was really quiet nice. We each had private 2-story bungalows with ocean views and AC for about $40/night including dinner and breakfast for two.

Not much else to do but enjoy the beach with a few tropical drinks and good friends. Ok, truth be told, these cocktails tasted just a bit off... not quite right... But never fear, Eric and Christen stocked up at the duty free in Colombo airport. So we made our own drinks that were much, much better. Thanks guys!

It was so nice to have friends come to visit me and to see the country that I have been living in for the past year and a half, even if the south is much different then our life in Trinco. The weekend was really relaxing; we started each day with a swim in the sea, followed by a breakfast of fresh fruit, omlets and juice, then back to the beach to chill in the sun, read, swim or what ever met our fancy.

On the way back we stopped at a Sea Turtle refuge. I will write about this in another post.