Day 11: January 29

We stayed to surf for another day. I wanted to go to the southern part of the beach in Weligama, where it’s wild and there are few people, but Wolf kept being drawn to the center, where there are lots of people. He thinks the waves are better there. We agreed to go to the center in the morning and then to the wild beach after lunch.

Today the waves were less frequent. Often you just lie on the board and wait for at least some kind of wave, but the waves that do come are very good — not big, slow. I managed to ride a couple of those. When I came ashore, Wolf said, “You rode that blue wave so amazingly once. At first I couldn’t even believe it was you. I kept looking, looking, and then I realized there was no one else here in a yellow T-shirt, so it must have been you.”

Because the waves were less frequent, we were much less tired today than yesterday.

After lunch we went, as planned, to the southern part of the beach. There wasn’t a soul there, neither in the water nor on the shore. Wolf grew wary and decided that if no one was surfing, then the waves must be bad. We watched the waves. They formed very close to the shore and broke sharply. We thought about it and drove back to the crowded center, hoping the waves would be better there.

We hoped there would be fewer people in the evening, but it seemed there were even more than in the morning. The waves here were indeed completely different.

It started to drizzle. It got cooler. An amazing feeling — when you step into the ocean and it’s warmer than the air, and it feels like you’re sinking into a bathtub.

We had dinner at the fish market again. You have to choose fish carefully here; we noticed that in one place they tried to sell us a half-rotten fish — its eyes had become completely cloudy. A Portuguese man told us about that. He was choosing fish very carefully for his family. “I’m from Portugal and I know fish very well. Be on your guard!”