Challenging our tastebuds

On Tuesday morning we had to pack up our bags again. A driver was waiting for us to take us down south to Mirissa.
We initially hadn’t planned on going there at all. Sri Lanka has got some weird dry and rain seasons. In August the south is being described as having “rough seas” and monsoon rains.
Rough seas didn’t scare us, after all we wanted to finally get our surfboards wet again. We were nonetheless a bit worried the weather wouldn’t be too good. A shower or two a day wouldn’t bother us but days of rain...
In the end as we didn’t want to go back to the east coast of Sri Lanka we didn’t have much choice.

The car was packed, surfboards on the roof this time, we started our descent. Ella has got some tiny tiny little one way mountain roads. No signs indicate who can go first, so when a tuck-tuck wanted to go the way we were coming from we found ourselves in a Mexican stand off kind of situation. We had the bigger car so our driver just went forward, making the tuk tuk go backwards until he found bushes to

squeeze into.
The drive itself wasn’t too bad. The approximately 200 kilometres we’re flying by with our driver taking us through small roads to avoid police and traffic. (Generally speaking I believe that the average speed by car here is about 40km/hour.)

About half way we both needed the toilet and found an okay looking service station. The service station had a café too. It being almost lunchtime we decided to get a couple of vegetable rotis and some drinks for all of us.
I was starving and only realised after the third bite how spicy it was. Being far away from any tourist area, this was the complete Sri Lankan food experience!
(We actually googled what Johnny Cash’s song “Ring of fire” was about - as we were both dreading the next day...)

We arrived in Mirissa early in the afternoon. It being low season down south rooms were way cheaper than anywhere we had been so far. When we saw our room we were amazed. It was on the second floor, very spacious and had two big balcony’s overlooking the jungle. It was a small Jungalow.

We took free bikes from the hotel and rode into the small town of Mirissa to find some food. After some peanut butter sandwiches and fresh fruit (the Opinel knives are great!) we finally had time to relax.
We asked Pati, the tuk-tuk driver from the hotel, to take us to Matara. We had driven through this little town before and had seen a gym.
After a quick but efficient gym session and a stop on the way back at the liquor store we were ready to relax.

Alcohol in Sri Lanka is sometimes hard to find. Even in bars you can rarely buy beer or wine. (They often have a BYO policy.)
We haven’t been drinking much but the times we did we realised that for two beers one could almost buy one or two meals (depending on where you are). The main reason for bars and restaurants not selling alcohol is that the liquor licence is very very expensive. So you either need to have friends at the police station or a lot of money to be able to pay the liquor licence...

The hotel was supposed to make a Sri Lankan dinner for us, but we found out when we came back from the gym that the kitchen would be closed for the night. The surf teacher from the hotel made up for the miscommunication by arranging a tuktuk to take us to a nice local restaurant. (We didn’t even have to pay for the ride there).

Once again we realised we needed to go out of our comfort zone more often and eat where locals eat. The restaurant was a little shack right next to the road with 4 or 5 plastic tables outside of it. It didn’t look very inviting but the food (we had vegetable curry and rice) was absolutely beautiful. And the price was even better! They kept refilling the curries and we tried finishing the massive portion of rice we had been served. All for less than 8 dollars for the both of us.

Our bellies full we walked back to our hotel.