During this week along the coast, it must be said that the atmosphere was more relaxing than anything else! We took advantage of the beaches and the almost sunny weather to rest and sunbathe! We will retrace our journey for you.
TANGALLE
We put our bags down in Tangalle for one night. We were happy to return to the beach after two weeks spent inland but Tangalle beach is dirty and we didn't enjoy walking around it any more than that. We went swimming anyway because with the heat we were dying to (especially since our hostel was 20 meters away) but the sea was very rough.
MIRISSA
Mirissa beach is unlike anything we've seen before. Hotels, restaurants and guest-houses follow each other along the bay and there are suddenly many more tourists. The Sinhalese in this area are more in "reggae" mode, Bob Marley echoes in the small restaurants run by young people in dreadlocks, we feel good there, the atmosphere is relaxed. We sit in a room above one of these restaurants for two nights. In the evening the beach is lit by restaurants, candles are lit on all the tables, we eat with our feet in the water, rocked by the singing of the waves (and the remixed music of the young rastaman ^^). It is certainly tourist (besides the prices which increase all at once confirms it to us) but it is a completely different atmosphere than that of the north that we have known so it suits us! The second day we go to sea to see the whales... that we will not see, we will have to settle for dolphins (they were big though!).
UNAWATUNA
Once again, we had an inn 20 meters from the beach, the total foot! We stayed three nights in this little corner of paradise. We had trouble accessing it anyway because the bus we had taken from Mirissa dropped us off too far away, we no longer had any change to take a tuktuk and the buses in the other direction didn't want to take us because we were too close and we had our big bags. So we started the road on foot and finally ended up hitchhiking. Unawatuna beach is similar to Mirissa beach, i.e. it is a series of restaurants on the sand and there is a small shopping street very nice to reach the main road. We tasted our first coconut juice, well it wasn't great!
GALLERY
We visited the city of Galle in the rain. We started by visiting the fort, i.e. the old town. We appreciated the architecture which is different from what we saw previously, indeed the Dutch colonization left traces. We went around the ramparts and stroll through the small streets, it's a real shame because the fort's enclosure must really be prettier under the sun! We then wanted to take a walk in the centre, called the new city, but we quickly shortened our walk: the city is dirty, polluted, noisy... in short, everything we love!
KOSGODA
We made a quick stopover in this city to visit a turtle centre, Sea Turtle Conservation. At the beginning, we had planned to sleep one night on the spot before going back on the road but finally after having gone round in circles in the almost empty streets and refused the only two inns we saw because the price was too high, we said hello to the turtles and we left straight after. The turtle center is interesting to do, there are babies, injured turtles, albino turtles... it was fun to do anyway!
BENTOTA
So we arrived in Bentota just after the turtles. We found an inn and it was more like a house just for us! We had our small living room, a kitchen, a garden terrace, our bedroom, bathroom and balcony! It was great! It was great! That day was a full moon day, a holiday in Sri Lanka and everyone was at the beach. Entire families walked around, the children played kites, the others crickets, some bathed, football games were played everywhere on the sand, it was a real family and festive atmosphere and it was really nice to be involved in all this! The next day, we enjoyed the beach. It's not the same as in Tangalle, Mirissa or even Unawatuna, here the sea is calmer so it's more pleasant.
COLOMBO
Here we are in the capital, one month after our arrival in the country. Like any capital city, Colombo is a big city, but it still seems clean to us. There's traffic, big buildings, they honk all over the place and you see a Macdo for the first time. We will only cross the city by bus because there is no point in walking around. We join Negombo and more precisely the first inn in which we slept, we finish as we started!
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