“Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.”

The eighth day of our trip begun with yet another group of more or less upset gut flora (they were putting up illegal demonstrations and burning everything on their way, damn hooligans!) – upset enough to force us to abandon our original plans of catching a bus towards our next destination, the seaside town of Tangalle. And thus we were compelled to burn a hefty wad of dough to hire a minivan taxi to take us straight from one accommodation to another.

Turns out it was not such a horrific waste of money to spend all that 1600 rupees – enough buy you few decent local meals in about any place on the island. Not just the speed and comfort of travel, but also the amount things you could witness in comparison to standing in the middle isle of a crowded bus in the middle of nowhere, made the deal seem worth it. Yeah, easy access to bathroom breaks is luxury when having certain kinds of problems, but seriously, who has time for such things when road sides are dotted with signs such as “Beware wild elephants!” or “Beware! Animals cause road accidents.” (Both of which I managed to miss with my camera while scouting the roadside shrubs for these aforementioned “dangers”.) The roads in Sri Lanka continue to amaze me, they are nothing like the cracked and pothole filled dirt roads you’d imagine em to be (well, most aren’t, but those can be found as well, if it really is your “thing” *Insert You know what I mean meme*), but well kept and almost unnaturally straight where ever they can be. Ofc the road that lead from the main road to our accommodation in Tangalle was the very exception that validates the rule. Never the less, at the end of the long journey lied waiting a small, cozy family run resort, a tad bit off from the shore – we took control of 1/3rd of the whole place with our one room and one gecko infested (like anything could be “infested” with something as cute as geckos) hut.

But, boy were we happy to finally see the ocean, hear the waves and feel the breeze. This was exactly what we had been waiting for.

Some cows had taken residence inside a busy highway intersection.

The Beach!

The day of our arrival went pretty much just strolling up and down the beach, smiling like idiots (that we are) and sampling the local food. In the evening we got acquainted with the ferocious wildlife of the area – while wobbling home like over-sized penguins – as we got surrounded by the slow moving hermit crabs and their faster cousins (and boy, do those things move fast and jump high!) The second day followed pretty much the same pattern as the first one – breakfast at the guest house, beer in the shade at the beach, some food every now and then, cocktails in the evening and one giant sea turtle laying eggs amidst the darkness. We first thought that there was a rock on the beach and that the turtle was behind it – it turned out that the turtle was the rock. It’s neck was as thick as the thickest part of my calf and it’s shell was closer to a meter long, if not more!

Beer? Maybe this once	Dem crawlers everywhere. EVERYWHERE!
Even The Masked Avenger need to R&R.

Third day dawned with three knights of our magnificent fellowship heading out on a quest to find the mightiest of (an unspecified) gods creations – also known as whale watching. The remaining two of our strength remained behind to guard the fort – or in other words, to lie down lazily on the beach. Our journey to hunt some fishies begun with an arduous 1½ hour tuktuk ride to Mirissa – during which we proved it possible to sleep even in a small motorized box with about no suspension at all. To our dismay the whales were (wisely) staying out of sight for most of the morning and once we finally got a glimpse of one, all the whale watching boats chased after the poor animal. In the end there were closer to 20 boats packed with tourists (there’s space for maybe 100-150 people on just one boat) chasing after the sightings of one poor blue whale – a reality very, very, very far from the image you get from watching all those nature documents where people are in a small boat sitting quietly among a group of surfacing whales. Something broke even inside such a hardened pessimist as myself… The more enjoyable part of the trip was seeing a couple more of those large turtles heading towards the shore while swimming at the surface, and witnessing the sheer scale of the shipping lanes passing the southern most tip of Sri Lanka – dozens of large container transports and many more oil tankers passed just during our couple hours of searching for a whale sighting. (And no sighting of sperm whales either, even though they should be a common sight in the waters of Sri Lanka at this time, most likely it missed it’s intended landing site.) And as the icing on the cake, on our way back, the tuktuk driver stopped next to a local shrine somewhere along the road, where there were two elephants chained to their places – they both seemed really nervous and depressed – definitely not the way I would have wished to see these majestic animals…

Some tired whale hunters.	The ocean was populated mainly by freight barges the height of a four story building.
Meso so MAD!

After returning from the disappointment of a quest, a couple more beers in the shade and a dinner back at the guest house, along side an occasional shower of geckos. At one occasion I even felt something hitting my head and when I looked down to see what it was, it was a gecko chasing a moth, neither of em giving a flying fuck about the fall, and this was not even the only occasion of em falling down on us while doing their business (or their business falling on us either).