I may have said it before, but Galle is without doubt the worst harbour I have ever been in. Firstly, it is quite open to swell from the south which surges back and forth constantly. The yacht pontoon is a joke; it consists of a string of interlocking floating cubes which are anchored at either end but the move back and forth with the swell that enters the harbour. To this pontoon are tied the sterns of about 8 sailing boats, the bows held off by anchors dropped on the way in. Generally the boats move in unison, but not entirely, so lateral mooring lines are important. Getting on and off the boat can be a major challenge as it moves back and forth relative to the pontoon; many have fallen into the water in the attempt. Since we arrived conditions have been resonably benign, but by all accounts this was not the case in the days prior to our arrival and some boats suffered damage. Secondly the water is filthy; our little corner fills up with all sorts of rubbish, and who knows what is dissolved in the water. Thirdly, it is a working harbour - no real objection to that as these are necessary - with a cement terminal right next to the yacht pontoon. When we arrived there was a ship discharging its load, mostly into trucks but a good part of it was picked up by the breeze, later landing on our boat. Fourthly, there are no facilities - there is no electric hookup, no water and no showers. The last two compound are compounded with our inability to use the watermaker due to the state of the harbour water in which we sit. And fifthly there is a 15 minute walk from the yacht pontoon to the security gate, which is where normal life starts. Taxis and tuktuks are not allowed past the security gate, so we have to make the walk under the hot sun through (depending on whether it has rained) cement dust or cement sludge 2 or 4 or 6 times a day. Paula took a fall in the slippery sludge after the rain one morning, and ended up in a muddy puddle. We have not yet worked out how we are going to manage the walk when we come to provisioning for the next passage - have you ever tried walking home from the supermarket carrying a month's shopping?
So why are we here? We ask ourselves the same question, but the answer is (a) we didn't realise quite how bad it would be before we came, (b) in terms of sailing from Thailand to the Maldives with a stop in Sir Lanka it is the natural place to stop and (c) Sri Lankan regulations do not allow us to stop in any port other than the one through which we entered the country, so we couldn't change now even if we wanted to.
They are (slowly) building a marina which is located close to the security gate and further from the harbour entrance which will make a stop here more pleasant in future years, when it is eventually finished (some say a year, although I suspect this was said a year ago as well).
Despite the conditions in the port, we are enjoying being in Sir Lanka. It is full of colour, of smells, of tastes, and is different from the SE Asian countries in which we have spent the last few months.
We had been hoping to do another lengthy land excursion in Sri Lanka, but these ambitions have been restricted somewhat by nervousness about the state of the mooring. We have got away for a few days, but with one eye on the weather, with regular calls to check on conditions in the port, although so far so good.
On Saturday we took the train from Galle through Colombo up to Kandy which is the main town in the highlands in the centre of the country. Having seen the buses haring along the roads around Galle, train travel had additional appeal, and it was a very pleasant trip. Dirt cheap too (and we didn't even go third class). Kandy was the last local holdout against the colonial powers, whose resistance was finally ended by the British in the early 19th century. It has its share of temples, including the Temple of the Relic of the Sacred Tooth, which houses what is claimed to be one of the teeth of Buddha, rescued from his ashes after he was cremated. The relic itself is hidden away although the temple itself is really beautiful, and very well preserved.
A replica of the tooth is the centrepiece of a big festival procession in July/August involving 100 elephants. There are therefore quite a few of these animals in the area, and we visited one elephant centre on a trip out into the surrounding valleys. The kids had another ride, and got to bathe the elephants, and we learnt all about how cruel the howdah (wooden seat) we sat upon in Laos is considered to be. These places are a bit difficult - it is interesting to visit, but you want to be happy that the animals are being properly treated, but all you have to go on is what you are told at the elephant farm. No doubt next time we will find out that the fruit we bought for the elephants is bad for their digestion....
In a similar vein, Sri Lanka must win prizes in the "don't trust anybody" competition. According to our guidebook crime is extremely low ("the theft of two bikes is considered a crime wave"), but no-one ever looses any time in telling us how so-and-so should not be trusted. The motivation in most cases would appear to be to encourage trust in the teller, but it is hardly subtle. The main risk seems to be getting ripped off by layers of commission on anything you might buy, with the prime recipients of said commission being the rickshaw drivers. Getting laundry done was an interesting experience. We arrived after 10 days on the boat with several bags of dirty washing, so found a rickshaw driver - "please take us to a laundry". He suggested going to a village rather than the city centre, so we thought "ok, we will go with this for a while". The while was about a 30 minute ride out into the countryside, then up and down some very steep lanes to a house on a hill. What are we doing here...? The old guy in the house sorted our dirty shirts, sheets, pants and the lot into piles, counted it, got a calculator, wrote out a bill (mostly in Sinhala) that came to 7,000 rupees (about £35). We were slightly taken aback as this was about double what we had paid just about everywhere else , but figured we had come too far to go back, and eventually settled on a price a little lower, after a three way negociation involving us, the laundryman and the riskshaw driver. Although much of the discussion was in Sinhala, I think the clincher was the driver agreeing to cut his commission.
In town later on we noticed the absence of laundries (in fact we didn't find any) which might explain why the price was so high. It was later explained to us that the caste system - which is still very much alive here - puts landry people as the lowest of the low, but also prevents anybody else from doing such work. Basic economics: Inelastic supply and strong demand leads to higher prices.
We took the classic hilltrain from Kandy, which wound its way up and down valleys and over hills clad in tea plantations. Trains here go very slowly - it took us over 6 hours to do probably less than 200km - but the views were great and it was comfortable, and having seen the roads we were happier being on a train than being thrown around on a bus. That was yesterday, but today we ran out of track, and did take the bus for the shortish ride out of the hills to Tissamarahama, which is down near the south coast. It is also near to Yala national park, home to wild elephants and leopards, which we plan to visit tomorrow.