Sri Lanka Part 3

We took a 5 hour 3rd class train journey (where we had people lining up to place their children on our knees JUST so they could sing us English songs they knew - like Jingle Bells for e.g. - wonderful!) and a 2 hour bus ride (from hell!) in order to reach the foot of Adam's Peak.

We got there at 10 p.m. but wanted to start the walk up to the top at 3 a.m. (in order to reach the top at sunrise you see - we don't mess around!) so suddenly found ourselves with 5 hours to kill in the middle of nowhere. We ate in the only shack that served food and WHAT a mistake that was. The food was obviously lethal but we felt too rude to decline (and nobody there spoke a word of English) so we ended up eating and then KNOWING we would be sick. Alex even tried to barf round the back (on a wild boar nearly which came out of nowhere, startled) by putting his fingers in the back of his throat - so that our climb would not be ruined.

We ended up sleeping on the floor of the reception in a fully booked guest house for a few hours (Alex periodically slipping off to the toilets - though miraculously we were not sick) until 3 when we set off in the complete dark.

I should say that pilgrim monks come to Adam's Peak every year to climb to the summit and kiss Adam's ACTUAL footprint. There is a string of lights to the summit which is 2,243 metres high (Alex tells me) which is very beautiful to see from afar.

All joking aside, you are in the middle of mountains and jungle so this lit 'stairway to heaven' looks like a trail of stars into the sky... in fact it is very difficult to tell where the lights end and the stars begin... they go so high up into the mist.

I am getting bored of writing now so I will just say that the thousands and thousands of steps you take the the top (it took us 2.5 hours without a rest) are relatively tough (although kids and mothers carrying children do it, all be it slowly) it was one of the most amazing experiences either of us have ever had. The climb into the clouds of mist and moisture at the very top was incredible (on vertical stairs cut into the rock) and when the sun came up at 6:30 it was truly amazing (but very cold!) because it was the first time we could see our surroundings, having arrived and then walked by night.

Alex thinks he can get the pictures up on the next post which I will call Sri Lanka 4.

Sri Lanka Part 2

Well, well, well. It is New Year's Eve today and Alex and I remain in Kandy. I doubt very much that we'll be drunk tonight! Maybe a fire work or two launched from our balcony at 10 p.m. when the whole city goes to sleep?

So what have we been up to of late?

On our first day in Kandy we walked over to the Temple of the Tooth (in the wonderful Dan Cruickshank's footsteps! - Diego alone will understand this) which is where they house the ACTUAL tooth of Buddha! Wow!

Obviously on the way to the TOTT (ha ha) we were hassled by about 100 Tuk Tuk drivers and a brilliant 'praying con man.'

The praying con man was standing, as if in prayer, as Alex and I approached him along the huge artificial lake. He stopped when we arrived and announced that he was a dance teacher who was very excited indeed about the huge birthday celebration on THIS VERY EVENING! What are the chances of that!? That Alex and I should arrive on December 28th! The birthday festival of dancing children for the kings of Sri Lanka, India and somewhere random like Nepal! The hitch was that tickets would only be on sale for the next 10 minutes, after which we would have lost any chance of taking part in the greatest cultural celebration Kandy had seen in centuries.

This was all utter bullshit and he got a little violent when we said a polite no thanks.

But back to the Temple of the Tooth and it's shrine filled gardens, monkeys, monks and elephants!

Locals throng to the Temple each day to see the tooth of Buddha. It is most definitely THE tooth because a while back a doubting king tried to bash the thing in with a hammer and, in some sort of retaliation, the tooth rocketed into space, became a bright and beautiful star for a night or two and then returned to an even bigger temple which, I suppose, the king felt he HAD to build after a display such as that one. You don't actually get to see the tooth (you don't actually get to see a lot of things here in Sri Lanka!) but you do get to see a lovely temple and a very nice gold box which might just have the tooth in it or, as was the case when a pirate from Portugal stole the box, a replica to discourage thieves. All brilliant though, let's be honest here!

After the Temple and an amazing lunch (which Alex very proudly ate with his right hand like a local) we caught the 5:10 p.m. train to Hatton... but I will write about that in a second because it was wonderful and took us to Adam's Peak and because Alex thinks he might be able to get a picture on here from his camera (in a slow Kandy based internet cafe?).

Sri Lanka

This is the first chance that I have had to get online since we got here. We are 4 days in to what is so far an amazing trip. Glorious news.

We were on an Emirates flight when December 25th kicked in. This meant that the stewardesses took off their already silly hats (they look like they have toilet paper hanging out of them) and replaced them with even more ridiculous rudolf antler hats and wandered around taking pictures of families and saying things like 'Merry Christmas.' The pilot at one point claimed to have seen Santa fly by. This was obviously brilliant.

We spent a few hours in Dubai. Enough time to wander around the huge mall in the desert and have falafels and halllloooomeee cheese and humous and all those wonderful things for dinner. It is very strange to be surrounded by more wealth than you have ever seen in your life one second and be using a squat toilet (i.e. a hole in the floor next to a hose pipe) the next. Odd. I felt unclean for the second flight!

...which lasted another 5 hours or so, the highlight of which was seeing India from the air. You could just about make out mountains and rivers and some of the coastline. We also saw 'Adam's Steps' which are the small islands that join (or just about join) India to Sri Lanka. They are called 'Adam's Steps' because when Adam left Eden (i.e. Sri Lanka) he must have walked these islands back to blah blah blah... whatever. But more on that later! Yes!

We had an interesting 4 hour drive from the airport in Colombo to Hikkaduwa on the coast with a lovely driver who insisted on honking his horn a MILLION times during the trip. Talk about offensive and defensive driving! Jesus! We stopped for coconuts (red King Coconuts of course) en route ha ha.

Along the coast road you very suddenly come across the area where the tsunami hit/reached. This meant flattened buildings and foundations (even a year later) and lots of signs asking for help. This then went on for hours. You have desolation to your left and sea to your immediate right. We arrived on Christmas day which was obviously one day prior to the anniversary of the tsunami... this meant that preparations were underway for a rememberence day (on our Boxing Day).

Hikkaduwa is pretty built up and FILLED to the brim with Australian surfers. We wanted to stay in the A-Frame surf shack (with the skate ramp and Bob Marley records playing) but couldn't get a room. Thank God. We ended up instead in a place called the Curry Bowl with our new friend Sunni who is a very tiny, ridiculously gentle man who smells faintly of a Bentley (the drink not the car) and has interesting red teeth/gums. He is a wonderful, wonderful man (and is now looking after our surfboards while we travel about the country) (It turns out that the reason Sunni smells like a Bentley is because of his chewing tabacco which contains nutmeg).

I'm getting tired now so in summary:

The surf has been pretty good... small and relaxed waves with the odd big wave or two thrown in (we have surfed 3 reef breaks all of which remind us of breaks in Barbados only more consistent). There is very little aggression out in the water and Alex and I aren't too bad compared to the rest of the crowd... which is nice. Saying that, there are some very good local surfers and one is pretty aggressive.

We went diving which was a let down (we still loved it but there were no fish...). Despite being 'Advanced Divers' according to our cards, neither Alex nor I could remember how on earth to set any of the kit up... on which side the regulator hangs or how to deflate your BCD etc... Thankfully, once underwater, everything came (flooding back? Oh God.) back to us.

We did a sundown walk around Galle's famous fort and that was utterly, utterly magnificent. Saw no other tourists and watched monks in their orange robes setting up candles around the great walls, people playing cricket and just a million other wonderfully 'foreign things' (stray dogs massivley on heat, tuk tuks, fishermen in their G-string pants fishing on tall poles, beggars, touts, men jumping off rocks into the sea etc...) that made us feel like we were back in colonial India (the fort is Dutch I think but there are homes within the sea walls that reminded us of plantation houses in Barbados). We had lobster and drank rum and Arrack (coconut rum basically) in an enormous house that looked out onto the fort wall and the sea. It cost nothing but you felt as though you were dining in some royal yacht club (in baggies of course!).

We took a ride in a Tuk Tuk whose driver had actually been hit by the tsunami while on the job. The driver told us about his experience... leaping out of the three wheel motorbike-kind-of-contraption and onto and up a light-pole. He loved the British (like everyone in Sri Lanka) and had a British flag on the front of his new Tuk Tuk (paid for by a British couple he met after the wave destroyed his original Tuk Tuk). His story was harrowing enough (he told us about the wave crashing through the fort and down the street towards him) but then he launched into what at first seemed like a sad Sri Lankan song (perhaps written about the tsunami?) but turned out to be Elton John's 'It's no sacarifyyyyice' song. Alex and I sang loudly with him all the way back to the Curry Bowl (30 minutes Tuk Tuk ing). That was wonderful.

We had a 6 hour train journey (a proper old diesel train where it was so full of people you had to hang on by the doors!) (well kind of... sometimes Alex and I were at the open doors hanging out... but not for 6 hours!) to Kandy (in the centre of Sri Lanka) where I am now off to sleep. Good Lordy Lord! Tired!

The UK Part 4 - Mother of God!

Our flat very nearly burnt down last night...

... with us in it.

Here's a picture taken the morning after. Shite! You can see the motorbike (that started the whole thing off) in front of the now burnt out dry cleaners.

The UK Part 3

Is it possible to have fun in the UK?




This is Croyde on Easter weekend. The water temperature was 5 degrees and the waves were double overhead. There were no sets that day... just wave after wave after wave. I took this picture after actually failing to paddle out. The shame of it!

5 degrees in the water means 5 mm wetsuits complete with hoodies, gloves and booties. We looked like a bunch of gimps. That's Diego, me then Alex (left to right).



We went back to Croyde in the summer when the waves were smaller and I fell in love with longboarding. I look 60 in a wetsuit anyways so it makes sense. Between surfing we would collect mussels from the rocks for cooking in a cheap white wine sauce. Oh Jesus.


This is in Wales. We spent the morning climbing up the cliff and the afternoon jumping off of it. I'm loving my stance in this shot. Beautiful.

Barbados

I think I am getting the hang of this now. Alex you should give it a try as it is ridiculously easy.

Here are some random pictures from back at home. Starting with Bottom Bay where we grew up.

This is the walk down to Bottom Bay back in May '05 when the island was looking very lush (who cares!).

Here's a picture of young Alex (mi hermano) out at Soup Bowl. He is sporting his old Michael Bolton haircut. The shot is blurry because we had Alex's digital camera in a plastic bag.

This is me. Same surf spot on the East coast.

Flip! This is perhaps the greatest photograph of all time. Genius.

Bowl by night.

Bowl by night 2.

Ecuador & The Galapagos

Today I'm just going to post some photos of a two month trip I took to Ecuador back in 2002.

Picture 1 is of a particularly lovely rope bridge near Banos...






This picture is of a fella I met while sailing around the Galapagos Islands for a week. I am proud of the photo but it would be wonderful if it was of somebody else.
This shot is of the boat we were on for a week there. I felt like Darwin himself and actually read a book about Boobies. God.
I took this photo on the bus to Jatun Sacha Reserve in the Amazon basin. Brilliant. I'm just waiting for the call from National Geographic! (a Gavin comment?)
Here is the view from the rickety, 30m high bird tower at the Jatun Sacha Reserve. It was 5 in the morning and you can see a volcano off in the distance.
And, because I am tiring of this now, here is a final photo of Nino who worked with us at Titos Santos.