Hikkaduwa

Everyone’s been asking for pictures (go to Jessica’s blog! Unlike me, she actually takes good pictures!) For those of you who enjoy crappy shots, here is a blog full of them.

When you have a holiday on Thursday, Friday is pretty much a write-off. Even though I knew I had to go into work (and I did actually do work), it felt like it was supposed to be a long weekend. So, in that spirit, Jesse and I made plans to go away. I needed to jump in the ocean, so we went south to Hikkaduwa for a relaxing beach weekend.

According to all of the travel books, Hikkaduwa used to be a popular hippy backpacker destination many years ago but rampant over-building and then the tsunami have taken their toll on the place. Despite the grim picture the travel guides paint, it’s still really popular and everyone here has told me that I have to go there so I took the books’ assessments with a grain of salt.

As we left Colombo, it was sunny and hot and I was a ball of sweat. En route, the skies darkened, opened up and began pouring. Not in the biblical fashion that I’ve become accustomed to here, but in a determined, persistent way that said, “I’m going to do this all weekend, suckers.” I was not going to let a little rain – okay, a LOT of rain – get me down and I tried to find the amusement in it all. As a group of monks in a van with the name “STREET LOVER” emblazoned on its back overtook us, being amused was pretty easy.

The travel books were right. Hikkaduwa is one main road – the very busy Galle Road – with row upon row of seaside hotels piled up on one another. The beach is about 12 feet deep. It was off-season and every hotel seemed to be undergoing some kind of renovation. We checked into our modest guest house (Drifters – good place; the owners are lovely. Don’t get a room facing the road). We then got soaked at the side of the road by the driving rain and the passing transport trucks as we searched for someplace to eat. Then we fell asleep to the soothing sounds (and vibration) of transport trucks rumbling by every few minutes.

When morning came, the rain had stopped but it was still overcast and (comfortably) cool. Our driver suggested that he could take us to some of the points of interest in Hikkaduwa so we agreed.

When the tsunami hit, a commuter train was blown off the tracks and 1,200 people died. The train has since been moved about 3 kilometres from where it was hit and is now in Hikkaduwa. We went to see it and then went to the site where the actual impact took place. A monument was erected on the spot the following year by the Japanese government to commemorate all of the lives lost. In the picture of the door on the train platform below, you can see darkness along the walls. That is how high the water level was.

After the monument, we headed further west. We passed a statue that illustrates the damage that the tsunami wrought (and is frighteningly like a picture we later saw of the bodies strewn in the streets.) We also passed a temple out on a small island. I’m not sure why the temple would be built where it’s incredibly difficult for people to go to it but maybe certain temples aren’t for visiting. Or it’s a true test of your worthiness if you actually make it to it without drowning.

Next up, the highlight of my day: the turtle hatchery. The turtle hatchery is this little place – about the area of a large house – that rescues and tries to protect the turtle population in Sri Lanka. The proprietor is Nimal. His father started the hatchery in 2000 and when he died, his family continued to run the farm. Nimal was working in Colombo when the tsunami hit and he came back to discover his mother, sister, wife and three children had all died. He gave up his job and started to rebuild the hatchery. Sea turtles go onto the beach at night to lay their eggs and some locals take the eggs and eat them. Some even kill the turtles for their flesh. Nimal pays local people a premium price for the eggs and then buries them in the hatchery. If the weather is warm, they hatch in 45 days. If it’s rainy, it can take up to 60 days. The shells are really soft to sustain the drop into the hole that the turtles build, but get harder as the days progress.

The baby turtles (pictured) are kept in tanks for 3 days without food to rid them of the material they ingested from the eggshell. They don’t move much from what I could see. Then they are given fish and learn to dive to the bottom of the tank for food for 7 days. Afterward, they are place out in the sea.

The hatchery has five (I think?) species of turtles, one that grows as big as 3 metres! There were examples of adult (or large anyway) turtles from each species. My favourite turtle was Victor. He is missing a flipper. I think Nimal said a fisherman cut it off but I’m not 100 percent sure. He’s a permanent fixture here since the efforts to put him back to sea have shown that he can’t survive.

I totally loved this place. If you want to find out more, go to www.srilankaturtles.com.

Next up, the mushroom factory. What? Senekka, our driver, asked us if we wanted to go to the “mistoom” factory. Pardon? “The meshoo factory.” The what? “The mistom factory.”
Uh, okay.

Not knowing what we were in for, we ended up turning off the road at the Moonstone Gem Factory. Aaahhh, “moonstone…”. This is a government-run “factory”, which is actually a mine. There was, inexplicably, a monkey chained to a tree. It looked like the chain was through his skin and the whole thing was disturbing. The guide showed us the shaft that six miners go down 100 meters and then another 2 meters to the side and they chip away to get blue and white moonstone. Jesse’s question about safety was quickly dismissed with a “oh yes, we have insurance.” One of the miners (I presume) then showed us how they clean the rocks and we were taken to the fancy jewellery store where I think we were expected to buy stuff. We didn’t.

After that, the sun was shining and we’d seen all of Hikkaduwa’s delights so we hit the beach. In the evening, the guest house owner told us about a big festival in town. We went to check it out. It wasn’t quite EuroDisney but it was packed with people, the requisite giant Buddha shrine, food, a man chanting/singing loudly into a microphone and a carousel! Unfortunately, there really isn’t a festival atmosphere to these things. There’s just a lot of standing around looking like you’re waiting for a bus. For example, look at the joy on these kids’ faces at being on the carousel. Of course, they are twice the size of the immobile horses so that might have something to do with it. Or the fact that I’m taking their picture…

Sunday was all about the beach and, oh yes my friends, there was frolicking. It was lovely, except for the man who kept trying to get my attention by sucking his teeth at me. Apparently sucking your teeth is a common thing here although this is the first time I’ve heard it. After ignoring him for what seemed ages and turning up my iPod, I looked in his direction. He was making lewd gestures. By this time I was annoyed and I admit it, I gave him the finger in the hopes that he’d stop. But a little bit later, as we were going into the ocean, I was busily chatting away to Jesse until I realized I was actually talking to no one. He’d taken off after the guy who was, um… pleasuring himself. After my knight in shining swim trunks dispatched with the pervert all was fun and frolick again. An elderly man told Jesse that the guy was mentally unstable – I’m hoping that’s not a statement on his taste in women.