Pura vida...Evita's voyage to the Seven Seas

The second part of our voyage, which at some point will get us all the way around the world. The first part was a mad dash across two oceans to Australia. This time we are taking it a little more slowly....

Vessel Name: Evita
Vessel Make/Model: Moody 44
Hailing Port: Gosport
Crew: Ian, Paula, Raul(13), Oskar(11) and Eva(9)
About:
Captain Ian, First Mate Head Chef and General Dogsbody Paula look forward to spending long periods of time in close confinement with some beautiful well behaved children. [...]
05 August 2016 | Muros
24 July 2016 | Ponta Delgada, Azores
12 July 2016 | Horta, Azores
11 July 2016 | Horta, Azores
07 July 2016 | Mid Atlantic Ocean
02 July 2016 | Mid Atlantic Ocean
26 June 2016 | Mindelo, Cabo Verde
17 June 2016 | Mindelo, Sao Vicente, Cabo Verde
13 June 2016 | Mid Atlantic Ocean
09 June 2016 | Mid Atlantic Ocean
07 June 2016 | Mid Atlantic Ocean
04 June 2016 | Mid Atlantic Ocean
31 May 2016 | Mid Atlantic Ocean (precisely!)
26 May 2016 | Cabedelo, Brazil
24 May 2016 | Cabedelo, Brazil
04 May 2016 | Santarém
29 April 2016 | Santarém
26 April 2016 | Manaus
26 April 2016 | Manaus
16 April 2016 | Cabedelo
Recent Blog Posts
21 March 2015 | Galle, Sri Lanka

More Sri Lankan Delights

17 March 2015 | Sri Lanka

Back on land again

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 [...]

More Sri Lankan Delights

21 March 2015 | Galle, Sri Lanka
Raul, Oskar & Eva


Safari Adventure (by Raul)

The most famous national park in Sri Lanka is Yala; it is renowned for its large leopard population, easily spotted by anxious tourists. We went there.

On the morning of the 18th March we got up at 4:30 to go on an adventure in Yala. We went to the entrance to our hotel and jumped into the jeep (a converted pickup). We zoomed along the dusty roads, bumping as we went. We skidded around corners and jumped over bumps. After about 30-45 minutes of this…activity(?).. we arrived at the entrance to the park where our driver got tickets and we dove in. The road was so full of holes and bumps it was like the skin of an orange and the jeep leaned at about 45 degrees at times.

When we were inside we travelled around watering holes and in the humid jungle around but saw nothing but the vibrantly coloured birds flying around in the trees and hanging onto the branches alongside bats and Indian pea-fowl (alias peacocks) and the catlike mongoose. After about 30 minutes of wandering around we finally got to see some buffalo in the tramping along in the bushes and some warthogs running about in the distance. When we drove around on the rocks we could see/smell fresh elephant dung next to piles of bones and skulls of long eaten buffalo and elephants. We finally stopped at some leopard areas where there was abundant leopard life (or so they said). We didn’t see anything there though, but after a while Mum and Dad saw a leopard crossing the road in front of us. No-one else got to see it as it ran off which was a shame.

We then went to a monkey infested area for lunch so we had to keep the ferocious monkeys at bay with sticks while we ate our meal.

After lunch we went to look for elephants to complete our “big two” (elephant and leopard). We soon saw a herd of six enormous, gracious elephants who walked briskly across the road, eating as they went. We soon saw another, lone, male eating on the spot at the same time as pooing. We drove around a bit and saw one other elephant….. and a leopard! We saw it in the bushes, it was beautiful and lithe but you could only sort of see it. That was the end to the day.

See you next time…



Wave Catchers (by Oskar)

Sri Lanka has some of the best surfing beaches in the world, and we are happy that Mummy gave us the opportunity to have a go. When we got to the beach in Galle I was amazed by the amount of surfers on the waves...

Firstly our instructor got us to do some stretching and he showed us the different parts of the board - our instructor said that we had the beginner’s polystyrene boards. He also mentioned that these boards were more buoyant and that they could catch the waves easier.

The first wave that I caught (my instructor pushed me to help me catch it) I was awestruck because when my instructor said "UP" I jumped up really easily and surfed without falling off until I got to the shallow water. Before I had always thought how difficult surfing would be but I was shocked how smoothly the board went down the waves. After about half an hour they let us go on the breaking waves where we got to go MUCH MUCH faster. At the end we got 40 minutes free time which meant we could do our own thing on the HUGE waves.

I could not believe that during the five years that my dad had spent in Australia he did not go surfing once. Now we are literally obsessed with surfing and we shall never want to stop surfing ever. We have agreed that Mummy will have to go surfing today and that we have said that we know what our future jobs are going to be.

Bye bye until next time...



Gastronomy in Sri Lanka (by Eva)

In Sri Lanka, curries are very famous, so we decided that we should do a cooking lesson so we could learn how to make them. We found a place which is a restaurant and somewhere where you do cooking lessons. It is called Happy Spice. Our host, Chintha, took us to buy the vegetables in the market. Chintha showed us lots of vegetables that we have never seen or heard of before. We made Coconut Sambol, Dahl, Red Rice, Okra Curry, Pumpkin Curry, Spicy Fish Curry and Popadums. We smelt and learnt about 11 different spices. To make the coconut milk, we grated the inside of a coconut, poured water, then mix it and sieve it into a bowl.

You might not believe it but this cooking class took three and a half hours!

Chintha talks very good English and is a very good teacher.

When we had finished making our dishes, we sat down and enjoyed our scrumptious meal.

Back on land again

17 March 2015 | Sri Lanka
Ian
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.
Where in the world...?
Evita's Photos - Main
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