First, let me say, I will enjoy egg hoppers any day of the week. Today was Sunday and the hoppers were the breakfast special. They were delicious! Please, can I have them every day? 🙂
We got a tuk tuk and made it to the ATM. Mission accomplished!
We also ate at a local beachfront restaurant called Ocean 14. We indulged with lobster, crab and calamari, a gigantic beer and a Sprite for about $30. We met a nice, talkative Belgian man who rents an apartment a few blocks from the beach and only leaves Sri Lanka to make visa runs. I think he had a few too many of the extra-large Lions, but I enjoyed talking to him. He encouraged us to use Pick Me for the tuk tuk instead of having the hotel call one for us. 800 rupees versus 200 rupees.
As we sat at the open window enjoying our food, we also watched the next storm approach. It arrived and whipped through the trees with rain going sideways. One of the restaurant guys quickly ran outside and got the window panes locked in place so that we didn’t get drenched. It was some pretty impressive wind and rain with the waves in an uproar, crashing over the rocks on shore.
I don’t think I mentioned that our accommodation here in Negombo is on the river estuary, just a kilometer or so from the where the river meets the ocean. I’ve been reading about the natural environment in Sri Lanka–birds (can’t wait to see the hornbills here!), snakes (only the cobras and vipers to worry about), animals (did you know: Sri Lanka has the highest concentration of leopards anywhere in the world?) and, lastly, crocodiles–they like estuaries and brackish water. Our host says, no, there are no crocodiles in this river. Bat Bear and I am doubtful.
Our room is air-conditioned (yay!) and has more light switches than you could possibly imagine. When we arrived in the early hours, Suresh was at reception to greet us. We had an early morning juice, and Suresh showed us to our room. It’s about 3 a.m. now, and Suresh kindly returned with four cold beers. We were wide awake, still on North America time. We popped two beers in the fridge, and took the other two out back to our private pool for a dark morning skinny dip before falling into bed. As we relaxed, I was busy with my first challenge at our new villa –how to turn off all the lights. This was no small feat and not my finest moment, as I couldn’t find the pool lights, which were doing a bit of an underwater disco light show. Beautiful, but too much when you need sleep. I drew the curtains but a ghostly light show continued.
Walking around to check things out, I discovered we had at least 16 different light switches. I had to click and click again to figure out how to turn off the blue led lights that framed the wall art on either side of the bed. I contended with the hall switches, the front porch switches, the ceiling fan and the bed reading lights, the overhead room lights, the back deck lights, and I looked everywhere again for the pool lights, which I didn’t find until morning (they were outside).
Leave a Reply