Sorry for the dearth of blogs over the last couple of weeks. Sri Lanka pretty much shut down for a week and a half this month due to the Parliamentary Elections and the Singhalese and Tamil New Year celebrations so I and my fellow VSO volunteers used the opportunity to explore the south of this amazing Island.
On the 8th April the elections passed with surprisingly limited trouble. The Sri Lankans are incredibly politically motivated and the Presidential Election in January got a 75% turnout. These Parliamentary elections had a much lower turnout at 55% (Brown and Cameron, eat your heart out!) probably due to the fact that the opposition where campaigning not to win but rather to stop the ruling party, the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) from getting a two-thirds majority. Unfortunately that wasn't to be the case which means President Rajapakse now has a mandate to change the Constitution and, most likely, remove the limit on presidential terms he can hold. His family now hold key seats including his 2 brothers, his cousin and his son (who studied in the UK and got a 3rd!).
Because of trouble during previous elections, VSO required that we "hibernate" on the afternoon of the election and the day after. This required us to stay in one place and keep safe. My compadres and I decided that the safest place to be was on the beach at Unawatuna, about 5 km south of Galle. It's so tough to hibernate!! Unawatuna, Una for short, is a beautiful bay that has become a backpacker magnet in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankans interpret this to mean that we want Bob Marley played permanently in all bars. I don't mind a bit of Mr Marley, but come on!
Close to Una is the number one spot for whale watching in Sri Lanka. Only recently did Zoologists realise that Sri Lanka is perfectly placed to see both Blue and Sperm whales. About 8kms off the coast the continental shelf on which Sri Lanka sits is at it's narrowest with ocean depths of 1km - perfect whale country. They head west between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea in April and return in the opposite direction in Dec/Jan. We were lucky enough to see between 6 and 10 Sperm whales up very close and 1 Blue whale at a distance as well as a pod of dolphins. The Sperm whales were mainly logging which, as the name suggests, means they are doing log impressions on the surface - not the most photogenic position to be in!
After a couple of nights chilling, Sam, a new VSO volunteer to Sri Lanka, and I headed east to go diving at the Great Basses, an outcrop of rocks about 16km off the coast of Sri Lanka. It had been heralded by many people as "the best diving in Sri Lanka". We arrived at Kirinda harbour at 6am in the morning and were loaded into 2 fishing boats - just 4m long wooden boats with a small outboard motor and nothing else. The fishermen who had come in from their night time fishing to sell their catch clearly don't see many foreigners so, by the time we were ready to leave, we had an audience of about 75 people gawping at us. After we left the harbour we headed to the horizon seemingly heading no where. Fortunately the Great Basses is marked by a lighthouse which, though knocked down by the Tsunami, has now been rebuilt. After the long and rather uncomfortable boat ride, the expectations for the first dive were extremely high. The look on Sam's face when we surfaced after the first day matched exactly what I was thinking, though - what's the fuss about?! I suppose I've been spoilt with some incredible diving around the world but it was a real anti-climax - very little coral and quite a few fish but poor visibility. After 3 dives on the first day, we were ready to pack it in.
The second day was better, though, probably because we'd reset our expectations. I decided to practise some Buddhist meditation underwater to pass the time. Buddhist say that you control your own feelings and it's not others making you feel like that. One meditation is to focus on 3 different people: 1 you like, 1 you dislike and 1 your ambivalent towards. The aim is to think about the 1 you dislike and to find out ways to like them. At 20m below sea level it was relatively easy to do! The last dive was on a wreck at only 7m of depth. My Buddhist meditation swapped instead to making up conversations between the fish I was watching!! Clearly madness was setting in by that point.
Where we'd based ourselves for the diving was fortunately also next to Sri Lanka's most visited wildlife reserve, Yala, so we decided to continue our animal odyssey with a safari the next day. Yala apparently has the greatest concentration of leopards of anywhere in the world and we were fortunate enough to see two on top of a rocky outcrop. My favourite siting was of mother elephant which I saw at a distance across a lake filled with storks and cormorants. After a few minutes looking at her, a baby elephant came into view. After about another 5 mins, a third tiny baby elephant could be seen under her. It stayed almost glued to her side all the time. It reminded me of Russian dolls where you open one and you get another smaller one - very cute. Yala abounds with crocodiles, elephants, jackal, peacocks, spotted deer, monkeys, mongooses and loads of birdlife, the most beautiful of which were the bee-catchers (see photo).
After so many days of animal-watching both on land and in the sea, we decided to do a bit of "temple-bashing" and so headed to Kataragama, one of the 3 most venerated religious sites in Sri Lanka held sacred by Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims alike. People pray to Kataragama throughout the year but most especially in July when pilgrims express their devotion in ways ranging from walking the length of the country to gruesome acts of self-mutilation such as piercing their tongues and cheeks with skewers! I think I'll give that a miss. The main devotion we saw was pilgrims setting fire to coconuts, holding them aloft whilst saying a prayer, before smashing them on 2 stones within the temple complex. I didn't understand why there was such intensity in the act of coconut smashing until I found out it is highly inauspicious if the coconut doesn't break. One poor man we watched didn't have any luck and his coconut remained resolutely intact. He was followed by a very slight young girl who hurled her coconut down and it smashed to smithereens. The look of horror on his face and glee on hers was a sight to be seen!
After all these days of travelling and seeing the sites, we decided a couple of days chilling on the beach was called for so we headed to Tangalla to catch up with some of the other volunteers. Tangalla has one of the most beautiful stretches of beach but, because the currents are extremely strong and there are very few places that you can swim safely, it hasn't developed. This didn't matter to me as a hammock had my name on it and that's where I remained bar a trip turtle-watching one night and a kayak around the lagoon behind the hotel (well - you can't just do nothing!).
I picked probably the busiest day to travel in Sri Lanka to get back to Galle - the Sunday after New Year when everyone was heading back from their families to their homes / places of work. How so many people could get onto a bus, I just don't know. Just when you thought it was full to bursting, they'd get another 10 people on. I made it home in one piece and it really did feel like coming home, which is a great feeling. The only downside was it meant back to work - but more of that in the next installment!
Until then, practise your Buddhist meditation (underwater if you can!).
