Nets

A major development in the fishing village in Ratmalana while we were there was that a freind of della and don funded new nets for the village.

The nets are "pulling nets" which are pulled from te beach by up to 40 men. This is a big change from the standard fishing method used by Udaya and the village, which is line fishing from small boats. There are a maximum of 4 boats that can fish, so that's a potential step up from 8 men to 40 each day during the season. Usually, if large pulling nets are used, they are rented from commercial net owners, who take a sizable percentage of the profits from the catch. Our proposal is that after buying the nets, a proportion of the profits from the catch are used for purposes dictated by the charity. We'll see how this gets on when the season starts in November.

In the meantime, here is Udaya sitting proudly with the new nets:


In Trinco, we had a chance to see how successful the nets could be. The sight of so many men pulling the nets can be quite dramatic:

and they can catch some pretty sizable fish. Check out this stingray. They caught 6 of them in one catch from the beach.


and you can see just how heavy this guy was in this video clip. It takes three men just to pull it accross the beach:

An adventure in the East

Against the advice of Della who had been there just a couple of weeks before, we decided to brave the road to Trincomalee, a coastal town in the East that had only opened to travellers since the war a few weeks ago.

We'd heard that the road was too busy being built, and that there were too many army checkpoints, but that didn't put us off. In the end, the road wansn't exactly finished,

and it was quite tiring

but we made it and it was well worth it.

After a couple of months of raging waves and no swimming in the sea, here was the land of white sand and proper tropical sunrises:
Apart from hanging out on the beach, with Jacob swimming in the sea for the first time in his life, we took a boat snorkelling briefly around one of the few bits of decent reef that they have not destroyed in Sri Lanka. How great is snorkelling? Its been so long since we've done that in a tropical sea...

And the town was fascinating. Lines of fish drying in the sun by the road:


Trinco is Hindu. There were a couple of interesting temples, including one in a really dramatic position out on the rock overlooking the harbour. And we were loving the Hindu imagery:

We also ventured down to the town beach to see the hundreds of fishing boats lined up ready to fish overnight. So much had been destroyed in the Tsunami here that it seemed that most of the boats had been bought by international agencies. The fishermen were just hanging out with some preparing boats to go out that night. Of course, as is the case everywhere, there were children playing cricket and dying to be photographed, and Sophie was an immediate star with the locals.

Monkey Magic

There were a lot of them. Mostly in Habarana, at the hotel, some in Tincomalee, loads at the Kandalama, and then some scary ones on the way up to the rock temples at Dambulla.

J loved them of course, but they can be a pest. You have to watch out for your stuff when they are around. Still, they have such expressive faces and human-like characteristics, you can't help watch them for ages.

The best photo I did not get was of two monkeys hanging out on a branch in Habarana, then diving off on purpose about 30 feet into a lake and swimming to the edge. I had no idea they did that.

But my favourite was of course this one of a couple of them on our balcony at the Kandalama hotel.

Just for completeness

I should finish this off. There is a lot to say, as we've now been back 2 weeks and my last post was with more than a week to go.

So what happened in the meantime...

Monkeys... Trincomalee... Kandalama... Siguria... and farewell to Sri Lanka and our friends there.

I'll try and get through it all when I have a spare minute or two.

a 4 year old's view

In the absence of more text from me check out J's view of the trip as written/dictated in a letter to his friend Sebastian.



Note in particular how the most important thing on the trip was Mr Magoo, the old cartoon that he discovered on satellite TV out here. Sophie's bowel movements are also of course worth a mention.


Read it on this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/saulvenit/3797956387/sizes/l/

More Perahera

Got a bit behind on the blog as we did not have a any internet access for a week and we were just too busy having a good time travelling around the place, snorkelling, elephant riding, monkey watching and climbing ancient monuments etc etc.


Back in Colombo, and only one day left now, so I will have to post some more on the trip, plus the final visit to the school and "village" on the beach after we get home. There is a lot to say...

In the meantime, I have managed to upload the extra picture and the videos on to the Perahera blog below, so have another look at it for the full experience.