Coconut Paradise

After a great sleep in our jungalow we got up early and took the tuk-tuk to Weligama for a surf.
When we decided to go to the south of Sri Lanka we didn’t really know where to stay. In the “on-season” you can literally surf everywhere. In the “off-season” we didn’t really know. Chatting to the locals we realised that only Weligama was surfable at this time of the year, which meant yet again a 15min tuk-tuk Drive.
Pati picked us up at 6:15 am and brought us to the beach break in the bay of Weligama. After about 2 hours we made it back right in time before the first bad monsoonal shower started.
It was pouring down! In just the few seconds running from the tuktuk to the sheltered hotel café we got totally soaked.

While waiting for our breakfast we started talking to a Dutch couple next to us. The conversation kept flowing and I think by the time we left the breakfast table it was way past 11 o’clock in the morning.
After a shower we decided to rent a scooter. We had come to Mirissa to surf and we wanted to avoid having to take a tuktuk everyday to get to the beach. So Chris drove us to Weligama and we made it our mission to find a hotel close to the beach. We had a look at a couple of rooms and apartments before stopping for lunch in a fancy restaurant overlooking the bay.

That afternoon, we were enjoying a beer on our balcony and trying to plan the rest of our stay in Sri Lanka when we heard a “Hello” from somewhere. Being on the second floor not knowing where the voice came from we looked around until finally seeing a local guy hanging in the palm trees next to us. He showed us how he cut the lowest palm tree leaves off and coconuts. He was all smiles and kind of seemed proud about surprising us - it was contagious.
The atmosphere in Mirissa felt so good.
Happy we decided to go to the same restaurant as the night before.

After a cold shower we were ready to go. (After four weeks in Sri Lanka I can’t wait to get to somewhere where we can have a normal shower. Here either the water is boiling hot - or cold. When the temperature is right, which only happened twice so far there’s literally no water pressure which makes washing my hair very hard...)

On the way out we heard Alexandra and Rob, the Dutch couple we had talked to during breakfast, ask some locals where the restaurant was where “the Australians” had been to the night before. I explained the way to them and when we both arrived at the same time asked whether it would be fine to join them for dinner.
We had a lovely night full with laughter sharing stories of our travels. We learnt that day that when you buy fried food from the streets to always check the colour of it. Dark brown usually means the food has been fried up more than just once and most likely would have been lying in the sun for more than just one day... Lighter colour means nice and fresh. This is

probably common knowledge but for us a good tip as we’ve never looked at it that way before. (And let’s be honest, we’re pretty new to this whole street food thing.)