SRI LANKA PART ONE: THE COAST

SRI LANKA PART ONE! THE COAST

At Woodstock, we have a very long winter vacation, so I took advantage of the extended break to do some traveling with my mother!

In mid-January, we jetted off to Sri Lanka and the Maldives for a couple of weeks. I'll post about the Maldives later, but now I'd like to share some photos and words about my experiences in Sri Lanka.

We arrived to the Colombo airport after our lengthy flights very in the morning, and were picked up by our guide and whisked off to the Southern coast to visit beaches and go whale watching.

The beach in Unawatuna, one of the towns in the South.

The beach was fairly nice, but crowded with lots of restaurants and hotels, and lots of locals selling sarongs and carvings walked around.

Unawatuna was a nice place, lots of backpackers. We went to a little fruit market and ate some delicious mangoes. The sellers were very friendly and we left with our bellies full of samples of strange fruits!

Yummy mangoes :)

The next day, we set off early in the morning to go whale-watching. The coast of Sri Lanka there is a great spot for whale watching because of the location of Sri Lanka on the continental shelf, so the water drops thousands of meters in depth very quickly, making it an ideal place to see whales in their habitat of deep water not so far from the coast.
The boat ride out was a little bumpy, but once we got out to the drop off, we saw so many whales! 7 blue whales to be exact, and a pod of 150 striped dolphins. It looked like around 50 dolphins from the surface, but as our guide explained to us, you triple the number spotted on the surface to get the approximate total amount because all the dolphins don't come to the surface at the same time.

The harbor where we set off

Sunrise on the whale-watching trip

Arriving back at the harbor after our whale-watching trip. Notice the cool life jackets!!! :)


A blue whale!
The next day, we signed up for a Sri Lankan cooking class in the town. We made lots of Sri Lankan dishes, including curries, deviled potatoes, and a delicious dessert called wattalapang, which is kind of like a creme caramel. 

 

Spicy fish curry made with the fish we got at the market, and lots of yummy homemade coconut milk!

First, we went to the vegetable market in the Southern city of Galle to purchase some produce.

Shopping for veggies

ADeviled Potatoes that we made. Spicy, and with fried onions on top. YUM!

The Cooking Class! Lots of Europeans... and us, the silly Americans :)

We also went to Galle, a city in the South famous for its fort, built by colonial traders and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

Walking around the fort was nice, but the streets were dirt, so the atmosphere wasn't so great in the old town. They pulled out the old cobblestone, which is sad, but at least they are putting new stone in now!

 The new pave-stones they are putting in

 The coast as seen from the wall

 The Old Clock Tower from Colonial Times

The cricket pitch, as seen from the wall. Cricket is very popular in Sri Lanka!!!

Well, those are some of my memories from the coast. Next installment in the vacation series is a post about my trip to Udawalawe National Park, where we saw elephants, and about our trip to Sinharaja rainforest, where we saw lots of bird species.

Hope you enjoy reading!

Alexandra