Independence Day

 Independence Hall.. with no one around.

 The assistant driver and Sam, our guide.

 Beacon Beach and the catamarans.

 The fishing boats on the Dutch canal.

 Half of our group.

 The fishing fleet.

 A wreck from the sunami of 2004.

 Locals having a picnic in the shallows of the mangroves.

A toque macaque with young.

Sunday, February 4^th.

John woke me up for the first time and we had a half hour to pack, eat and get organized before meeting the group of 15 people in the lobby. Our guide Sam was there as were our driver and his assistant. The group if made of one American, two Australians, one Kiwi, one Canadian and ten Brits.

We took a short tour of Colombo. Today is the 70^th Anniversary of Sri Lanka’s independence from Britain and many of the roads are blocked. Prince William and Kate are here to mark the event. We visited the Independence Hall that was built in the 60’s and there was no one there on Independence Day, strange. We drove up and down a few streets to see a church and the Red Mosque that we saw yesterday. Today it was closed. Then to the Pettah Market, much of which was also closed because of the public holiday. It just reconfirmed to John and I that there is really not much to see in this city. Sam bought us all a king coconut at the market which the vendor hacked open for us and we had that as a drink.

Then we drove for about an hour to Negombo, a town up the coast. We arrived at the Beacon Hotel around one. We settled into our rooms and then went to see the beach. John and I walked the beach a bit to see the fishing boats and then we had a swim in the warm Indian Ocean, followed by a sort dip in the hotel swimming pool. Then we went looking for a restaurant for lunch. We stopped at Reggie’s, two doors away from our hotel and met up with four other people from our group. We ate on the beach while getting to know each other a bit.

After lunch we met the whole group again in the lobby and we took the van to the lagoon for a boat ride. We loaded up into two small craft and a local guy drove us up a canal made by the Dutch in the 1600’s as a means of getting spices out of the area and to Colombo for shipment to Europe. There were a few dozen small fishing boats parked along the canal. Then we followed the lagoon past the larger fishing boats and out to the ocean and then back again a different route into the mangrove swamps where we saw lots of egrets, herons, cormorants and crows. The major bird in this country is crows. They are everywhere in large numbers. We saw a group of locals having a picnic in the shallows and on one island we saw a number of toque macaques, a local monkey. Our guide cut up a couple of fresh pineapples and we had them while watching the monkeys.

After the ride we went back to the hotel and got stuck in local traffic as all the locals were going somewhere to celebrate independence. We met up again at 6:30 and drove to the Coconut Grove and had another good meal. There is a lot of variety of food here, with Sri Lankan, Indian, Chinese and Western food too. The highlight of the night was when I got talking to a young guy who was traveling solo. I asked where he was from and he said Kenya. I said ‘you don’t look Kenyan’, because he was white, and he said he was an albino. We had a good talk about Kenya, Ethiopia and traveling through Sri Lanka. He would be a good addition to our group. Then back to the hotel for the rest of the night.