Sri Lanka:Beach, glorious beach, glorious sea!

Beach, glorious beach, glorious sea!

Is precisely what I was singing (Mal debates the legitimacy of calling it singing) on viewing our new location.

Spectacular.

Now we are on honeymoon! It rained for the first few days, but I actually didn’t care, the forecast looked good and I was happy. We took a walk along the empty beach that first afternoon, during a break in the rain and we couldn’t resist the urge to go for a dip. It resumed raining during our cavorting in the Indian Ocean and that is a most unusual sensation: having the rain pelting down on your face while in the water. It was warmer under the waves than out in the rain. When the lightening started in the not so distant sky, Mal suggested, like a parent coaxing an unwilling child, that we really should return to the room; unfortunately to face the two

rucksacks full of dirty clothes.

I’d like to remind everybody who has a washing machine how lucky they are. Hand washing clothes is hard work. If ever we decide where we are going to live, and find jobs, and have enough money for our own place, a washing machine will be top priority!

Sri Lanka is more expensive than India, we were prepared for this, but it was difficult to find a fair price for anything. The Sri Lankans are used to having package holidayers paying top dollar for everything and take full advantage of this. So during those first three days we scouted around the beach and town looking for a decent room where we weren’t extorted.

As it was Christmas, and the honeymoon part of the honeymoon, we wanted somewhere nice; and we found it. We had to bargain hard but we got it, a lovely large bungalow room and right on the beach.

Fantastic, and for just over US$8 a night, it really was a bargain, it didn’t have hot water or a TV, but it was perfect all the same! It probably helped us, not them, that although it’s high season, the area is really quite- due in part to the recession and to the ongoing civil war, but also we are told that the country hasn’t really recovered from the tsunami. Pre tsunami, every bar, restaurant and guesthouse was full, but we found the resort like a ghost town. But after the billion people in India, this was nice.

The first few nights in our new room I woke up thinking it was lashing rain, perhaps maybe thunder and lightening, panicking I even went outside to check: but alas it was only the crashing waves, lit by the brightest starry sky! In the deep silence of the night they are loud and hypnotising, Mal had to call out for me to return to bed.

We blissed out, it was simply heaven.

Swimming in the Indian Ocean each day, wrapped bobbing on the water in each others arms, we didn’t need to be told how lucky we were. We also thought about everyone at home in the December cold and were grateful to be in Hikkaduwa.

We had plans to visit other beaches and cities down the cost, but we couldn’t drag ourselves away from this beautiful beach or lovely room; not to mention re-packing our bags as I had fully moved us into the room, making it homely, putting our books on the shelves, folding away our clothes and such. Really, we thought, could anywhere else equal the location we had? Was it possible there was a nicer beach, with a perfect room, right by the water front, for such a bargain? We didn’t think so, thus we stayed put in our little paradise for the next two weeks, eating, swimming, surfing, body boarding, sunbathing, diving and generally just being really happy!