The buffet was spectacular, unlimited cups of tea, and meat from every animal you could imagine, and some you couldn't gave a very welcome change from the choice of fish, chicken and egg curry and rice we had come accustomed to. The food was served with a kind of disdain from the head waiter who clearly saw that this kind of establishment was not where we would normally dine, but as we ate ourselves into a meat induced stupor, his disdain became comical, as we ate at least double the food that the price we paid suggested we should receive. 2 hours after starting our mission to financially cripple the hotel though the medium of binge eating, we waddled out of the restaurant back into the hotel grounds.
We relaxed here for about an hour, pretending we were wealthy enough to stay in such a place, enjoying the live music, and the ambiance around the pool area. All these people were clearly jet-set, and we enjoyed our 3 hours among them, before the moment when we would inevitably have to return to our sink-less hovel, and resume our lives and semi-tramps. Before accepting this reality we managed to walk most of the way back to our hovel before deciding that a rest was in order, primarily to let our food baby settle, but with spectacular secondary benefits. We looked up at the sky and realised that there was an utter lack of light pollution, which normally obscures the view of the stars, making less of them visible.
We could see more stars than I could ever dream of seeing in England, and the milky way, and countless constellations that I used to know the names of were vividly clear. What was extra special though was the fact that one of the large meteor showers of the year is occuring at the moment, which, in the low light conditions filled the sky with as many as 1 shooting star every minute. We lay on the beach, recovering from our gluttony for several hours, until the undoubted stellar highlight occured. There was a powercut along the beach, plunging what was left of light pollution into total darkness. This cut lasted all of 10 seconds, but right in the middle of it, the biggest, brightest shooting star I've ever seen traversed the sky, leaving a glow of its trail for several more seconds, before the power cut came to an end, bringing us back to some semblance of reality!
Across the bay there were also about 50-70 light sources bobbing up and down with the waves. We assumed this was some kind of a line of buoys, but we found out the next day it was a hareem of fishing boats, fishing at night as it provided them with the best catch. This would of course explain the fact that Fish had featured heavily in every meal we had had at Trinco up until this point, and also why all the boats seemed to be on land during the day, with nobody manning them!
The next day, we went into Trinco to give it another chance, by looking at its two major cultural sites - Fort Frederick and the garrison cemetary. Fort Frederick was built in the late 1600s by the dutch, and subsequently owned in turn by the dutch, french and british at various times over the next few centuries. It was bombed in 1942 by the Japanese as part of the pacific campaign, and has since been converted into a Sri Lankan military base, presumably to help maintain order after the civil war. The fort itself is open to the public, with only certain garrisons and barracks being out of bounds - It was interesting to compare the UK military base with one in Sri Lanka, seeing deer freely wander around the base, and bus loads of tourists pass through this base (although I am sure this is the exception in Sri Lankan bases as apposed to the norm!).
The major appeal of the fort is a Hindu Temple built in 1980, at the far end of the Headland on which the fort sits. It sounds bad to say this but once you have seen one Temple, you have seen most, and we spent little time wandering around it before heading back towards the centre of Trinco, where the garrison cemetary is. In contrast to the cemetary at Kandy, it was in terrible disrepair - it obviously had not fared well in the tsunami, although it was equally clear that little attention had been paid to the site since the Sri Lankans gained independance from the British. There were goats and deer casually walking around the dilapidated site, and it was sad to think that this was the final resting place of so many British and commonwealth servicemen, and also of Jane Austins Brother, Rear Admiral Charles Austen.
With the feeling that our original thoughts about Trinco had been confirmed, we returned to the hovel to relax by the beach for one last evening before heading back to Kandy. As the area was so hot, in the thirties, the early morning and the evening were the only times that you could relaistically leave shade for any period of time - as we found out to our skins detriment whilst on pigeon island. We relaxed in and around the sea until the sun went down, and then from then on in watched the light blue sky turn progressively to darker blue and black, and then watched the stars appear in the sky. We ended up going to bed ridiculously early that night, as we planned to be up to see sunrise from the east-facing beach the following morning at half 5!
We managed to get up, although to our disappointment it was somewhat cloudy, making the sunrise fall just short of perfect (although it was still awesome). This incentive to get up early also gave us time to enjoy the beach and sea at Trinco one last time before at about 9am the temperature became too hot to be out of shade, at which point we headed back to Kandy via another stupidly long bus!
Overall, although Trinco itself was a bit of a dive, I was glad we came for the areas north of Trinco itself, if for no other reason than the presence of fish justifying the name of this blog, changing it from an inane pun to an inane pun which at least partially descibes the trip! The beach was beautiful, and so were the fish, the wildlife and the scenery; however I am slightly split about the idea that a 200 dollar a night resort can exist 4km away from a town which is still receiving help from the UN in a humanitarian crisis... something doesn't quite add up there.
Anyway, enough rambling, I only have 1 more week here, so I should be out doing stuff. I fully intend to have a bit of a rest tomorrow, although after that I have been assured that I will actually go to the elephant orphanage, and who knows, they might have been telling the truth this time! xx
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