A monitor lizard in person
Sri Lanka, 2018
Day 20: February 7
Ella - Rekawa
Sri Lanka, 2018
Itinerary
In the morning, the decisive moment came - where were we going next?…
Originally, we planned to go to the east coast. Wolfie wasn’t too keen on the idea, and I was very interested in comparing the two coasts and exploring something new in general. But there were a few buts… First, it’s not the season there right now, which isn’t entirely clear what that means - apparently, there are rains and the ocean isn’t very suitable for swimming. Second, it’s quite a long way to go just to see what’s going on there.
In short, we decided to go back to where we had already been. Just to relax and swim. The east coast is interesting, but this way we risk not swimming at all.
We wanted to make it to Tangalle, but Wolfie suggested finding a hotel a little earlier, near a beach we hadn’t been to yet. That’s how we ended up in Rekawa….
On the way, we ate rice and curry in a beautiful little restaurant of Sri Lanka’s BBC. Today we covered a record distance on the moped for this trip - 150 km in a day. Twice we were stopped by the police… Everything repeats itself, but today they turned out to be more accommodating. They let us go without any fuss and fairly quickly.
In Rekawa, we stayed at the very first hotel we decided to go into and have a look at.
Near the hotel, such an animal was moving along the road, a monitor lizard. A hilarious creature, it crawls so amusingly and sticks out its forked tongue.
Volchiy asks me to come closer to the monitor lizard so it’s clear how big it is. I’m a little scared.
The room was a bit gloomy, but we were exhausted and just wanted not to go anywhere else or look for anything. We decided that for one night, this kind of hotel would do.
We left our things. Ate the mango we had bought on the way. The mango turned out to be very tasty, simply perfect! The seller said these were imported mangoes, which is why they were so expensive and hard to find ripe.
Then we went to the beach. It’s very strange here, everything is so wild. The roads are dirt roads. Lots of wildlife. I had actually been wanting something this non-touristy.
The encounter with the ocean was incredible. It was the most beautiful beach I had seen in Sri Lanka. The cleanest sand, palm trees. Deserted. And the light… It was absolutely extraordinary. We arrived when the sun was setting over the horizon. It’s impossible to convey this in words or photographs… I just froze and couldn’t believe that something could be so beautiful. It seemed to me like some other planet. There was so much space here. The ocean had a wonderful leaden color. The clouds were so low, and they were so different and multicolored. The sun’s disk became simply enormous when it touched the water. We went for a walk on the sand. We lay on the rocks and listened to the waves. Already for this moment alone, we had not returned to this coast in vain.
Magical Ocean
Sunset
In the evening we bought something like thick kefir made from buffalo milk; they sell it everywhere here in clay pots. We made yogurt for dinner and added condensed milk and bananas to it. It turned out pretty good, but there’s no desire to repeat it….