Sri Lanka Series 2 - Day 1: Waskaduwa to Galle

We landed in Sri Lanka about an hour late, which was worrisome because I knew we had to, according to the itinerary, make it to the hotel in time for breakfast and "freshening up." We wandered out through immigration, passing duty free shops selling electronics such as TVs and refrigerators (puzzling - how did one get one of these home?! and were the deals in duty free really that great?), on out into the main arrivals lobby where a man with a sign for our tour group was waiting. We happened to be the first ones to greet him, so he sent us over by the door to wait for the other sixteen, while the main tour guide, Chris, came over to greet us. He asked us if we knew the other people in the group and when they'd be along, but we shook our heads and said we had no idea because as I said, this was an organized tour group of a bunch of strangers who'd never met. It created an odd bunch, who met for the first time in the Colombo airport even though we'd all clearly been on the same flight (it was relatively easy to guess who was coming along for the tour, but no one ever introduced themselves). Once everyone finally arrived, we were ushered out into the Sri Lankan morning to wait for our tour bus to come around and pick us all up.

The group, as I have said before, was a bit of a mixed bag - there was a larger group of friends who were all traveling together, and then several pairs, and one brave younger gentleman who'd decided to undertake the trip on his own. I'm not sure if it was a product of the horrid flight and the exhaustion, but to make things even stranger, not one person ever introduced themselves when we were standing there together waiting, and then even stranger, never really did over the entire course of the trip. I can't recall one place on the tour where anyone knew anyone else's name that wasn't a part of their pair or group until well into the second day of the tour, and then only briefly, for a few hours it seemed. The group dynamic was odd, and definitely part of the tour's less than wonderful moments. It didn't help that the first day, and really the first few hours (a discussion of which is forthcoming), seemed to immediately bring out the worst in just about everyone, and they showed their true colors fairly quickly. There were no lasting friendships made here...more of a tolerance of each others existence.

Once everyone had finally grouped up, we waited outside for our shuttle to come along, or rather, for our guide to take us to it. Once on the shuttle (a Toyota minibus that looked a whole lot like a old VW van) we were told that it would be a two hour ride to our hotel. Uh, what? Jon checked the location of the hotel before we left, and he swore the website said it was only 35km or so from the airport...which does absolutely not translate to two hours. Not to mention, having landed late, two hours would put us at a major breakfast setback. No one was really pleased about this discovery, but we put up with it, and headed on to Waskaduwa and the Citrus resort. We made it in time for breakfast, just barely, and managed to catch the buffet sheer minutes before it closed, which meant we pretty much got the cold scraps of the breakfast. Also, having arrived at 10:30ish meant that we were there well before check-out/check-in time, so we knew we wouldn't be able to get into our rooms, but were ASSURED this had been planned for and a room/a few rooms had been set aside for "freshening up" which was a nice thought after a miserable 5 hour plane ride. Really, all I wanted was my luggage, so that I could get to a fresh set of clothes and my medicine. It's not like I've never sink washed in bathrooms before (flashbacks to January, anyone?). Yet this is where the major problems began, because apparently the hotel and the tour guide were absolutely not on the same page with this plan.

Traveling Sri Lanka in style.

You see...there were no rooms ready/set aside for us. This was pretty crappy, sure, but as I stated before, I could've just as easily taken my luggage into the bathroom and made do with what I had, only the luggage hadn't come in the same shuttle, and was on a separate truck that was a bit behind. So we had to wait. Firstly, while we waited, we were promised that a room would eventually be made available for us all to use. THEN we were told that if we waited long enough, they would have rooms for us all to check into. Now, this caused most of the group to be grumpy, but in an interesting turn of events, for different reasons. A handful of us (and I could be wrong here, it could have just been Jon and I) were put off about having to sit at the hotel and wait, knowing we were simply losing more hours on our tour itinerary and that we'd have less time to actually explore places. Surprisingly, at least to me, more people were upset about the fact that they couldn't take a shower in a room and freshen up. I mean come on people. You're in Sri Lanka on vacation for a tour. Don't you want to just jump into the tour as quickly as possible and see what you came to see instead of whining about being tired/"dirty"? Clearly my opinion was unpopular and so, we waited. I want to say it took about two hours before the tour guide just gave up and realized we would never get rooms this early and encouraged people to go use the restrooms to change (what a concept!). Only...

This was me, in the lobby, having changed but still not happy about waiting.

Someone got a room. While we were sitting patiently in the lobby for this fiasco to resolve itself and then planning out how we would change after the luggage arrived, the tour guide flagged Jon and I over and proudly announced he'd gotten a room for us to check into and we could go now. Since this was after the hotel promised they'd have all our rooms ready, this wasn't a temporary room we'd have to share for "just cleaning up." It was our room. Ready. Jon and I snuck away with the key and enjoyed having a place to change and relax that was our own, until the tour guide came knocking and said that we were leaving within the next 15 or so minutes because none of the other rooms were ready and we needed to leave and to please not tell anyone we'd gotten a room (trust us, we never did). I like to think this was karma paying us back for being the only people who weren't yelling unreasonably and without success at the tour guide, hotel, or anyone else who came within earshot. Anyway, we left the room and met back up with the group, having changed and been refreshed, and eventually we did get away from the hotel, albeit with a black cloud of discontent lingering over (most of) our tour.

The turtle hatchery.

Our first stop along the tour was a turtle hatchery, and it wasn't *quite* what we'd expected, but I learned very quickly nothing in Sri Lanka ever really is. This was literally just a bunch of pools sheltered under a shed, with a sand pit for egg development and a path to the beach where the turtles were set free. Our "guide" took us around and showed us the turtles in the different pools, which were both different species and different ages. He explained that the rescue was in place to buy eggs picked up by local fishermen, so it offered not only a haven for the turtles but also local economic support. The turtles were then kept for a few weeks after hatching and released back into the sea, except for the few lucky (or unlucky, depending on your point of view) who were allowed to stay longer and age in the pools, kept for educational purposes. Our little group went through the quick tour, which was mostly only good for turtle selfies, and then wandered down the beach for a few shots of an upcoming thunderstorm until we were finally wrangled back into the bus for travel to our next stop.

The turtle beach.

Cleaning the cinnamon.

Our next stop was the Madu River Boat trip, which turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the whole trip. The scenery was breathtaking, and though we had to opt for the shorter version of the river trip because of time constraints, the boat ride was wonderful. We packed all 20 of our little group onto boats and headed up the river, meeting locals along the way, either fishing or river cruising or trying to sell something. There was one guy who came over with an adorable pet monkey that got passed around, but of course, for the luxury of a monkey photo op, it was expected that you tip the monkey owner. Poor monkey. Once we'd gone up river a ways, we made it to a small island in the middle, where we were given a tour of a local cinnamon producing operation. It was really neat to see the process from tree to dried spices, and also to learn how they extracted the oil.

A panorama taken on the river. Google's not bad at this.

Is it working? My skin clear yet?

We also got to finally try the famous King Coconut, which had been talked about a lot earlier in the day by our tour guide Chris in one of his various random information chats along the highway. King Coconut is sweeter than regular coconut, and the water is considered to have all sorts of different ayurvedic healing properties. it's considered to be the "king" of coconuts and is mainly used simply for its drinking water. Our tour guide offered up the legend that the coconut got its name from when a king of Sri Lanka had a terrible eczema rash that nothing could cure, but was told to drink king coconut water for its cooling properties and was miraculously healed. Not quite sure if that's entirely the case, but it made for an interesting tale. Another odd local cure offered up around the river was a fish pedicure, but I passed that one up. It's essentially exactly what it sounds like - you stick your feet in a pool where a bunch of little fish come up and nibble on them, supposedly taking away the dead skin. Gross, I'll pass.

After the sad end of the river boat trip, we headed to our next stop, the Moonstone Mine. This was pretty much the disappointing part of day one. The mine itself was little more than a 5 minute talk at the entrance to the mine about how moonstones were mined and what other stones, both semi-precious and precious were prevalent on the island, a two minute demonstration of the cleaning of stones, then a cursory walk through a polish and setting area right into an air conditioned, well maintained jewelry store where there was an abundance of clerks ready to follow you around like a hawk while you browsed, taking any opportunity they could to sell you something. To give you an idea, there was a clerk for every group/person that was on our tour - everyone had someone hawking. This was a mild disappointment because I'd expected to learn more about moonstones and the moonstone mining operation, and less about Sri Lankan sales tactics. It was clear the place was designed as a tourist trap, and it's not on my recommended visits.

This is about the time the group started grumbling again, sadly. Having left late from the hotel, it was probably about 4 in the afternoon and we hadn't stopped anywhere for lunch, which left some people with a less than cheerful disposition. It was generally agreed upon that after the moonstone mine we'd head to lunch, and we sat out again in our little van towards Galle and our promised lunch stop. About halfway there, we suddenly came to a dead stop in the middle of the road, and no one could figure out why. Traffic was at a total standstill in most places, and in some, it was little more than a very slow crawl. This didn't improve moods, until we suddenly realized why - the traffic was being rerouted around a street parade. Our tour guide wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but there was some sort of ritual procession/celebration combining both Hindu and Buddhist traditions. We were incredibly lucky to catch this, and all clamored for a stop, but our tour guide mysteriously kept on going (concerned about time, perhaps, or just ready to get rid of grumpy passengers) until we'd eventually passed the presentation and were on the road at a normal pace again, thus the only pictures I have of this beautiful and captivating ceremony come out of a bus window. I stopped trying about halfway down the line - the bus was picking up speed again so it was hard to capture things, and there was something horribly wrong about a bunch of people gawking from a bus and taking photos of a culture that has a rich history of condemning photography. The gorgeous spectacle isn't something I'll easily forget, however.

We finally made it to the place our tour guide had picked out for our very late lunch in the city of Galle, only to find that this place had stopped serving food hours ago and the chef had gone home. Oops. Bad move on the part of the tour guide, and it definitely had an effect on some of the already grumpy passengers. Half of the people demanded that we immediately found a place to eat, while half of the group was arguing that it had already become too late, and we wanted to see the fort, and we could eat when we got back to the hotel. The compromise was that the bus dropped us off at a restaurant at the fort where people were told they could either go and eat or go and visit the fort, but that they had an hour and they had to be back because the bus was leaving for the hotel. Jon and I set off to explore what little bit of the fort we had time to, enjoying the break from the group and the opportunity to branch out on our own.

Galle Fort

Galle's fort is a remnant from the Dutch occupation of Sri Lanka, and is filled with gorgeously breathtaking architecture, museums, monuments, and spectacular views. Jon and I sadly only got to experience the last when we walked along the fort's seaward wall for the sunset, to take in what we could before we had to head back to the bus for the 3 hour trip back to the hotel. We grabbed some Sri Lankan street food from a side of the road vendor as snacks for the trip back, anticipating the long drive crammed into the tiny bus seats. It's worth saying here that like every stop we made with this tour group, we left late because people arrived at the set meeting points way later than agreed upon, which of course made the itinerary and the stops suffer by cutting off time. We felt this keenly in Galle, it being the end of the day and us only given an hour to explore. Thanks to the late folks, we made it back to the hotel just in the nick of time for dinner before service closed (which of course caused people to complain - I'd never heard so much complaining as I did on this trip, and half of the time it was their fault!), and then after our meal headed promptly to bed where we crashed, knowing we had an early wake up call for our trip to Kandy the next day.