I left Hikkaduwa continuing on the south coast of Sri Lanka. First stop was Galle, a pretty big city with a spectacular fort. After finding a room inside the fort, I immediately headed to the beach of Unawatuna: I took a bus and asked the driver to drop me in Unawatuna. I started walking, under midday sun searching for the beach. After 1 hours I finally found the beach, which obviously was 5km away from the city. Anyways, I discovered an amazing place: a completely desert beach, with white sand, transparent water and coconut trees. Just like the perfect cliché of tropical beaches, with the huge advantage of being completely desert. So I stared walking in the sand, changing my skin color from red to dark brown. From time to time I jumped in the water to cool down.

I came back to Galle at dusk, and I climbed over fort's wall to take some pictures of the wonderful sunset. All the local people have the custom to walk around the fort at dusk, so it was very lively. Also temperature felt down a bit, which contributed to create a very pleasant atmosphere.
Walking back to my room, I met a group of fighting monkeys! Two of them were boxing and screaming hard, while the others were simply watching. So I joined the audience for the show. At some point a monkey from the audience screamed something, which didn't pleased the fighting monkeys I think. They came in the audience to pick it up and started to fight with him as well! I hesitated to say something, but me against 10 monkeys would have been unfair.

Next day, I took a few buses to arrive to Tangalle, a place that some travelers recommended me. Tangalle is a very peaceful city on the beachfront, with a very colorful harbor and fish market. Here, for the first time, I could really see the effects of the 2004's tsunami. Dozens of guesthouses and luxury hotels were destroyed, some are being reconstructed, but most of them have been left exactly like after the disaster. A sign on a building showed how high was the wave when it hit the town: more than 2 meters. I tried to imagine the panic that a 2 meters high wave going through a small city can create.


I went for a walk on the harbor, and luckily I could watch a fishing boat just arriving from open sea and unloading the fish. I was invited to step on board by the only fishermen speaking a little English.
He introduced me to the crew and told me they just came back from a 28 days fishing trip!!
I could hardly imagine how 6 people can live for one month on such a small boat... There was a small cabin (less than 10m2) with 4 very summary beds and a small kitchen. Crazy is how every single small corner of the boat has a specific function. No empty spaces at all. One fishermen asked me if I wanted to take a tuna with me... I told him I had no idea what to do with it.. So he proposed to cook it for me. Shortly after I was seated on the boat with the crew eating an amazingly delicious fresh tuna cooked by them on board. When I told them what is fresh tuna's price in Europe, they laughed so hard saying I was a funny guy. When they realized I was not joking they couldn't believe me... in Sri Lanka 1kg fresh tuna costs about 70cts.

While we were eating, other sailors were non-stop unloading thousands of tunas, sharks and many other fishes I had never see in my life.
Owner of boat joined us for lunch and he explained me few things:
Immediately after being unloaded from the boat, fish is weighted and placed in a truck full of ice. Then it goes to capital city Colombo from where it will be sold to a fish market. Tuna will mostly go to Japan while other fish stays in he country for local market. Usually boat stays in open waters until full, which usually takes 4-5 days. This time they had to last 28 days! Hard to explain how the sailors looked like. They were stricken by salt and wind, they lost about 10kg and they had long beards. Right next to our boat, another one was ready to leave and I watched the sailors. Then I realized how 28 days in open water, fishing 24 hours a day can transform a man.
Funny fact: owner of the boat was a former football player from Sri Lanka's national team. He told me about his only international match: against Nepal 10 years ago: they lost 2-1 because referee was corrupted! Hard to imagine how this 130kg big man could have played for an international football team!
It was very interesting to see how supply chain of fresh fish starts: from fishing boat to our supermarkets. And sharing a fresh tuna's filet with the fishermen on board their boat was great experience. That is also the first time that I met truly open heart people, not trying to get anything from you but just happy to share a meal with a foreigner. I heard a lot about Sri Lanka hospitality and so far I had no chance to meet such people having visited the most touristic areas. As I hoped, by stepping outside the most traveled routes, I finally was able to meet real Sri Lankan people!

I greeted everybody and went for a walk in the city and for a rest in the guesthouse.
After a good sleep, I moved to city center again to find a place for dinner. While I was about to enter a small restaurant, I heard someone screaming my name, 3 of the sailors I met at the harbor were calling me from their tuk-tuk. They wanted to invite me to their house for dinner! Or course I took this opportunity and seconds later I was on board a tuk-tuk with 5 huge tunas and 3 great sailors!

As I suspected, sailors don't drink only water, specially after 28 days in the sea.

After a funny ride through the city of Tangalle, stopping every 50meters to cheers some sailor friend we arrived to one of the fisherman's house. His wife seemed to be a little worried to see us arriving. We were talking and laughing loud, carrying huge tuna fishes and some bottles. First they cooked the fish, which once again was delicious, then they stared with arrack (distilled liquor made of fermented coconut), mixed with very strong beer. Taste was actually really good! We kept eating fish (forks, knives and spoons are not needed in Sri Lanka, hands are more than enough) and drinking arrack until bottle was empty.Then one of them went back to the liquor store...

After a few bottles they started talking louder and louder, apparently arguing for some sailor's reason, so I had to calm them come before they come to blows. I also understood why boat's owner told me he doesn't allow arrack on board: "they start fighting after 2 bottles, and if they fight in open sea only half of them will come back", that's what he literally told me!

They were really friendly, despite we had some serious communication problems because of language barrier. I asked them about how hard was tsunami for them: one of them lost his wife and daughter, he told me his son survived by holding a tree... Hard to explain my feeling...Like everybody I have seen many images on TV from the tsunami back in 2004, but when you're seated in front of a 40 years old man telling you that he lost his 3 years old daughter and wife meters away it's another story... When I watched at TV images, I couldn't imagine what really a tsunami can do. Being here made me realize the infinite power and violence of what happened. Not only by destroying buildings, tourism business and so on. But mainly by destroying people's lives, including survivors.


That's hit! Thanks for reading me.

I plan to continue northeast in the next few days!


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