The palm beaches - Mirissa, Sri Lanka
Mirissa, Sri Lanka
It made a change not to be woken up by the waterfall and the sunlight. But I still didn't manage much of a lie in. Breakfast here was similar - some pineapple, banana, watermelon and yoghurt. And a boiled egg. The jams were not nearly as exciting as they were not home made, but pineapple jam and passion fruit jam are quite novel. We wandered off down the road to find the viewpoint. Turns out we went too far and ended up on a further beach. There was no one here except for a few fishermen. It was pretty - lots of palms. But rather rocky. We could get to the viewpoint from here, but involved scrambling up the side of the rock. Not ideal for me - I'm rather clumsy. But I made it ok. And it started to rain. Not too much and passed after 10 minutes of sitting in it!! From here, you can see the 3 beaches of Mirissa (plus the beach behind us that we ended up on by mistake!) and there are just so so many palm trees. Such a lovely view. And not a person in sight. We headed down from the viewpoint (again slipping down rocks and holding onto palms) down to the beach and walked around the 2 beaches. Really pretty. As it was high tide, on the the first beach we had to walk on the rocks at the shoreline. But the second beach had much more sand. We sat inbetween the fishing boats just watching the waves for a while. It seemed a bit wavy today. But still pretty. The tide was too high to walk across to the Parrot Rock - a small island coming out between the 2 bays. Hopefully will be able to later. For lunch we bought some curd (£1 for a huge dish) and a bottle of palm syrup (25p)! And ate it by the pool. The rest of the afternoon was spent swimming and eating! Until 3.30pm when the thunderstorms started. What a shame. It finally stopped raining about 5.30pm. But by then there was no chance of a sunsets a shame. We walked back along the beach anyway. It was deserted. And had some dinner at a different beach bar. It was much nicer than yesterday. But still very expensive and a lot more than we have been paying elsewhere for food, which is just annoying. Wednesday 13 November Today was an early morning - off in a tuk tuk at 6.20am to the harbour. Off whale watching! Of course any way to get more money - a 25Rp harbour entrance fee for tourists. Already the whale watching ticket was expensive at 6,000Rp each (£28). We set off at 6.45am from the harbour and it all seemed quite calm. Until we passed around the corner by the lighthouse and it started to get a bit chopper. Still ok. I had prepared and taken a sea sickness tablet before leaving the hotel. After about half an hour, there was a small pod of spinner dolphins by the boat, jumping in and out of the water. Cute. A couple of hours of nothing. A couple of whales were spotted, but I was too slow and they were gone. Then we turned around. And it was horrendous. The boat was rocking side to side, the bottom was taking on a lot of water. I was at the top and was hanging onto the bars. People were throwing up. I was really scared - but luckily didn't feel sick. Then some more! 2 Bryte whales - a mother and a baby. We saw lots of blown up water and the fins riding out of the water. Once a head popped out too! Black and white coloured. How cool. The third largest type of whale. Sadly no blue whales - it was too choppy today. We arrived back into the harbour at 11am after 4 hours of sailing around. Glad to be back on solid land! (Think everyone else was too!!) The tuk tuk took us back to the hotel and we had a late breakfast. Was so hungry! Sadly the weather wasn't what I had hoped today. A bit cloudy and windy. And not very warm. Even still, I spent the afternoon by the pool, swimming and lazing around. A first so far this holiday!! Had no time to do nothing yet. At 4pm, we headed off to the kitchen for a cooking lesson! So far I have done cooking lessons in Indonesia, Cambodia, India and Thailand - some of which were better than others. This one was good. Just the 2 of us, in the kitchen of the guesthouse, with the chef to cook dinner. We made an aubergine salad (fried aubergine, raw chili and tomato, with a vinaigrette sauce), green beans (cooked in spices and a little coconut milk), devilled fish (fried fish - Maui Maui, with a spicy soy and tomato sauce), leeks which I can't eat, a lentil dahl (cooked in coconut cream with a huge number of spices - very different to that bland Indian dahl) and a pol sambal (coconut and chili). We even made our own coconut cream/milk by blending fresh coconut with water. Oh and rice - again cooked with curry leaves and pandan. Wow! It was fun. And so so tasty. All the food here is great. They use the same basic spices as most of Asia - curry leaves, pandan leaves, turmeric, cumin, cinnamon and a masala mix. We spent almost 3 hours cooking. I was so full after dinner. And then we had icecream!