Back to the Beach

Bride and groom at Ella

Jan 22-25, 2011: Although I’m not a beach person, Sri Lanka’s perfect tropical beaches seemed to be so much a part of its image I decided I had to visit at least one. That’s why I found myself getting up early so we could leave Nuwara Eliya at 6:30 am, as my driver insisted it was a long trek to Unawatuna. Turned out he was right, and I didn’t make it any shorter by insisting on some stops.

A good breakfast at the Dream Cafe in Ella was enlivened by a group taking wedding photos, with the bride in a lovely red dress. Ella definitely made my list for a future visit, as I preferred the rugged scenery there, all steep rocky crags, to the gentler tea-covered slopes around Nuwara Eliya.

Just outside Ella we visited the Rawana Falls, but while they were pretty enough I had to share them with far too many other people. Happily I persuaded my driver to detour through a plantation to the Diyaluma Falls, where just one other car-load admired the 720-foot sweep of water with me.

The lower section at Rawana Falls

I let my driver pick my lunch stop, and ate at a posh lakeside hotel in Tissamaharama where I passed on the apparently inevitable buffet in favor of OK spring rolls and tough chicken. The view of the hotel’s pool and the artificial Tissa Wewa was good, though. While I did stop at the 2300 year old Yatala Wehera on the way in I decided I had seen more than enough under-decorated dagobas, and drove right past the Tissa Maha Dagoba on the way out, even though it is said to contain a tooth and bone from the Buddha.

Not sure which southern beach this was, just that it wasn't Unawatuna

For the rest of the afternoon the road followed the coast, where the 2004 tsunami had done so much damage. Sri Lanka’s president came from Tangalla, on this coast, and both the town and the main road have been restored. Although I saw some pretty beaches on the way, I was a bit disappointed with Unawatuna, where I stayed at the Thambapanni Retreat. (Cool hotel, but lots of stairs.)

But this was Unawatuna

The sea was a really beautiful blue, the sand was properly golden and assorted trees edged the perfect crescent of the bay. But. The crescent was lined with hotels and cafes, and the beach populated with over-large tourists in under-sized swimsuits. Rubens might have been happy, but I’ve never cared for Rubens. Despite the number of tourist shops I had a hard time finding a pair of cotton trousers to buy. The style of choice for female tourists this year looks like a long skirt, but is actually trousers, and looks seriously uncomfortable to me.

Also Unawatuna

My hotel was located well back from the beach, and my huge if bare room came with a big verandah, although the view of the beach was hidden by trees – you’d need to climb one final flight of stairs to the topmost room to get the view. The sister hotel, Thaproban Beach House, had been rebuilt after the tsunami, along with a number of other properties down by the water’s edge, and this was already proving a mistake. As I stood on their deck, I could feel it shudder with every incoming wave. A little further along a set of concrete steps have already cracked under the force of the water.

Old town Galle

I had chosen Unawatuna as my beach stop because I wanted to visit neighboring Galle and couldn’t get a reservation in the town itself. The town was as pretty as I expected, but too cute and touristy to be a really compelling destination. The colonial era walls defined the tourist area, the town proper, including the markets, was outside the walls. I did walk the walls at dusk, and I did see several good-looking places to stay, but the whole town seemed to shut down after dark. Of course, it probably came to life for the upcoming literary festival, but I would be gone by then.