Tuna
Saturday 24 August 2013We’ve got two days ‘at leisure’ in Koggala. We are staying, apparently, in THE top hotel in Sri Lanka, The Fortress. According to the published rack rates on the inside of our room’s door, it would want to be good for that price. Our room (including the bathroom, entrance foyer and hallway) is about half the size of my house. You could swing five cats in here.
We decided to go for a walk this morning, down the road to a turtle hatchery, 35mins walk in the heat and walking along the side of the road with buses and trucks whizzing past. The hatchery is not for profit and aims to help increase the number of turtles that survive from birth. This part of the beach is popular for turtles to come to lay their eggs. The problem is that turtle eggs are often collected to either eat or sell by the locals, although they shouldn’t, and this is before they hatch and get eaten by seagulls. So this place digs the eggs up or buys them off fishermen, then they dig a hole at their place and bury them. In 65 days they’ll hatch and get put straight into the sea, fending off the birds who want to eat them. So it seems like they are doing good deeds, I hope it helps the turtle population. They also help injured turtles rehabilitate before releasing them back into the ocean.
After wandering back to the hotel and we were rather hot, so a dip in the pool fixed that. We lounged beside the pool reading our book for a few hours.
Lunch was out of the hotel at a small, local seafood place for fish and chips. We are trying, where possible, to eat outside of the hotel. In most places you are captive and have no choice. Also there just aren’t a lot of restaurant/cafes around.
The cricket’s not on, it is raining in Pommy-land, so we might go and lounge beside the pool for a while.