Life in Sri Lanka

The city of Galle.  The first thing we notice here is almost no tourists in area except a few in the fort area, which is nice after the hordes in Thailand.  It is a much different culture here and generally people are poorer here than Thailand, more like Indonesia.  They have 21 million people crammed onto a small island about the same size as Tasmania or Vancouver Island.  Sri Lanka is more interesting than Malaysia we think and culturally much more interesting than Thailand.
Getting around is cheap, a Tuk Tuk (a small 3 wheeled vehicle ) will take you most places for 200 rupees, and for 400 will take you there and back and wait while to some errands.  $1 is about 120 Rupees.  Walking around is wild with the lack of good sidewalks like most places in Asia we have been.  I got a sim card again for my trusty Indonesia Internet dongle for just a few dollars.
      It is very cheap to eat out and  cheap to buy local stuff in the grocery stores, but imported stuff is expensive.  There is no large grocery stores in Galle.  There is enough choice to provision the boat though not as good as Thailand and Malaysia. Good cheeses and rolled oats for my breakfast, cans of the good baked beans for rough passages and peanut butter are available.  Their is almost nothing as far as marine chandlery goes. There is also a good veggy and fruit market about  30 minute walk away  or take a tuk tuk.

Life at our mooring has been a bit hectic.  The second day a big 55 ft steel ketch between us and a catamaran dragged its anchor a bit in a 12 knot wind.  It leaned on the catamaran for an hour then the wind shifted and it almost hit us.  The owner did not seem too concerned just pulled in a bit of chain when he got back to his boat.  So we moved down to the other end of dock to get away from him as he was so big his topsides would hit our rigging rather than the side of boat.    The next day a large swell came into our bay and the boats really started to surge and most anchors slowly dragged in the mud as the boat came up very hard on the anchor every surge and  then surge forward aginst the shore lines hard and then back again.  The bigger sailboats where pulling the mooring cleats out of the dock, which was really only designed as a  dinghy dock. The boats should have had all their lines go ashore over the dock, which alot of us did.  But it was still  uncomfortable and we did not want to leave the boat for too long as we had to keep adjusting lines.

      An Italian boat owner went to the harbor master and really complained and so they put another dock at other end of bay  and then ourselves and few others moved over there and it was much better, we now feel it is safe to leave the boat.  We are still med-moored and a line to the dock and ashore, but much less surge here. Also much closer to everything including the showers.  It is almost a kilometer to walk from our original mooring place to the showers or front gate where you show your pass to leave port secured area.
  Walking around the port area you see a lot of stray dogs and I even had a pack of them run at me snarling once.  I often have to carry a few stones it my hand to hurl in their direction if they get too aggressive.  Just the action of bending down to pick up a stone usually makes them back off.

     After a week here we did a 5 day tour  with a car and driver.  Mojombo crew kept an eye on our boat while we where gone, thank you Gary.  We stayed in nice hotels which is very rare for us as they were fairly cheap and dinner and breakfast was included as part of the deal worked out with our guide. You can also stay in guest houses which are cheaper, around $20 a night.  I won't bother with all the details of our tour, just some of the highlites.
The  guide showed up with a driver as well when he picked us up at 6am, so we had two people looking after us for the same price.  The driving around Sri Lanka is slow, you are generally doing 30 to 60km an hour and constantly passing slow vehicles and tuk tuk's.   The driver was excellent.  The nature of everyone here seems to be to see how much money they can get from you, while still being friendly and smiling.  Our tour guide tried hard to give us a good trip, while at same time pulling little stunts to get a few extra dollars from us.  We let it go sometimes as often it was quit funny and they are poor.
    We did a dusty jeep ride through Yala nature park, to see elephants in the wild and water buffalo and other animals.  In Ella we did a great hike up Ella rock and also little Adam's peak and the highlight was a climb of the holy mountain, Big Adam on our last day.   It is said every Sri Lankan should climb this 7200ft mountain once in his life as it is a pilgrimage for Buddhists.  It took us a bit over 4 hours round trip.  It has abut 5000 steps and about 11km round trip, and very steep last half.  As you get higher the stairway is carved right into the steep cliffs with solid hand rails, and is about 10 feet wide.
   There were thousands of people on trail, very few tourists. Young and old and fat and thin were climbing and sometimes chanting.  They were in sandles or barefoot and sometimes two people would be half dragging an old person or very overweight person up the steps and going so slow they would be 12 hour up and down.  The trail is lite the whole way for night climbing which thousands did  and there were tiny shops all the way up selling water and refreshments.  It was an incredible experience hiking up, it was not a nice quite nature hike but more a people and religious experience.  We had to stop short of the top by 50ft as it was so jammed with people you could not move.   The best time to do climb apparently is to start late afternoon and come down in the dark if you want to be on top with no crowds.  We started just after 4am and most tourists and people start around 3am  to catch the sunrise,  also we were on a Saturday which is not good.  It gets quit cool up on the mountain and good to have something warm with you.  The last few days we have been up in the hills and it is much cooler than the coast, very pleasant.
We went to the guides home after our tour for a tea.  It was a simple affair with a small wood stove for cooking  and a gas hot plate he used sometimes as well.

See previous post  " Sri Lanka a slow voyage"  for much cruising info on Sri Lanka and Galle, under Info seciton.