Day 124: Morning Surf before Colombo

I think the girls are addicted to the sometimes frustrating, adrenaline rush sport of surfing. We hopped on a Tuk Tuk after breakfast and headed back to Wiligdema beach to rent surf boards for a couple of hours.

 

 

It was another day with beautiful blue skies....

 

 

I went out with the girls and occasionally helped them get turned around and going when the waves came. I was pretty surprised at how many times they got up and were able to ride the waves into the beach.

 

 

It is a bit of a frustrating sport sometimes I think. There are many fits and starts, and when you know you can do it but fall or miss a wave, it must feel a bit like duffing a tee shot in golf when you've been able to drive one long and straight before.

 

 

I think the hardest thing the girls got used to today was how to get the boards out to the starting area. Sometimes they would paddle out against the current, but they learned to wait and go with the current eventually, making life much easier.

 

 

After two hours, we were all pretty cooked, but we'd had a blast. I'm so impressed how they just kept coming out for more and more.

 

 

We had a late lunch, and by the time we hit the super modern expressway on the way to Colombo, it was mid afternoon. When we got to the outskirts of Colombo, the expressway kind of dumped us on to slow, congested local roads. We quickly figured out that even though the driver looked at our map of the hotel (my 4G was not working on my phone, but I'd preloaded everyone up with itinerary, flight and hotel map details for the entire trip so we were covered) he had no clue where he was going. At one point, he pulled up to a random hotel and indicated "here you go", so we took over the directions and made it to the hotel eventually. No tip for you! That was a first in Sri Lanka.

 

We didn't feel like venturing out too far as we were a little zonked. Every time we come to a new city, there seems to be a feeling of being a little overwhlemed and sometimes we revert to staying in or near the hotel (this is why I had planned some of our great city stops like Tokyo and Bangkok to visit the city twice - it's always enjoyable to go back to a place you "know" so you can continue the exploration). So we walked over to a nearby mall as we'd seen a Pizza Hut sign. The mall was a total dead zone that was half closed glitzy stores and half under construction. At one point, we even walked across an entire mall floor that was dark and under construction - so weird (though the smell of MDF dust was nice, it reminded me of home!). Anyway, we found what we were looking for and had fun chatting while waiting for our "za".

 

Tomorrow, we are hooking up with a friend of mine that did general labour for me a couple of years ago. He wants to take us around the city, so it should be interesting :-).