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.