Hi again!

First of all, we would like to thank everyone for their kind messages. It's a pleasure to read them!

We're finally free to go explore all the beauties of this 'Wonder of Asia, pearl of the Indian Ocean'! But first, let us tell you a bit about our last days in quarantine: we mostly did nothing :) on the 13/14 of April was Sinhalese and Tamil new year so in the evening at around 20:15 we heard a lot of fire crackers going off. Then around 6:17 in the morning we heard them again, but even more. These firecrackers signalled the finish of the old and beginning of the new year, with an neutral period in between. At our breakfast, there were also several traditional snacks, most of them very sweet. They seem to like a lot of sugar in everything here, default 'tea' is very, very sweet, for example.

After one more night, we were finally able to leave the hotel, something we had looked forward to a lot! After extending our visa in colombo in the morning, we left our hotel in excitement of finally being able to explore the real Sri Lanka! With the sun heating us up, we enjoyed the wind swirling around us and felt so free to be able to cycle again! While we merged with the tuk tuks, buses, cars, cows, and other bikes, we smelled so many different scents and enjoyed looking around at the colourful busy road life. True freedom, experienced in its most pure form (sweat, literally every moment of the day).

The next day, we went on a river tour with a local man who had approached us the day before. We saw some crocodiles, dragon lizard, macaques, big bats, kingfishers, and several other birds! We also stopped at a guy with a five week old crocodile and a Ayurvedic garden, where we were told about all the healing powers of plants and how they were used. Tenzing also enjoyed a relaxing massage. Next, we took a tuk tuk to a temple with a big Buddha statue, we were surprised by the amount of people there and the sad enchained elephant... It is common to buy beautiful fruit baskets and offer those to the Buddha. We'd prefer to just eat them!

In the afternoon, we took our bicycles inland towards Brief garden, a Jungle Book-like garden with a lovely house overlooking the terraces. After a turbulent night with loud music from a New Year's festival, we woke up at 6 AM so we could stay ahead of the heat. Unfortunately, we were greeted with thunder and lots of rain, so we delayed our departure by about 2 hours. Luckily, we had a dry (bar the sweat) ride to Hikkaduwa. On the way, we came across several tsunami memorials dedicated to the tsunami in 2004. In total, 300.000 people lost their lives that day, with casualties in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia, and even Kenia. In Hikkaduwa, we went for a walk on the beach and took a garbage bag with us to clean up some of the plastic bottles, jars, lamps, rope, and more. We were surprised how fast we filled up the bag and how easily people throw a bag of trash into rivers... one man, came to us with a piece of glass and we hope that we have inspired some others to do the same, or at least showed that we (tourists) care about nature and a clean beach!

The 18th, we arrived in Galle early in the morning and were greeted with praying sounds from the church. We wandered around the fortress and were surprised about the thickness of the walls; the Dutch really didn't want to take any chances. We were told that the walls also defended Galle against the tsunami in 2004! We coincidentally met up with a British girl, who we met in quarantine, and was sitting in the same cafe! She joined us the day after to Sinharaja rainforest, the one and only rainforest in Sri Lanka. We explored the rainforest by foot and saw two snakes, several kangaroo lizards, and several other (endemic) species not to mention the loads of leeches that were crawling onto our feet... We walked to a waterfall and were told that we could go for a swim. As we hadn't prepared for this at all, we went in in our underwear. The water was so refreshing and clear, and the current from the waterfall was strong like a swimming treadmill! So much fun.

After a these lovely days exploring the Dutch fortress and Sinharaja rainforest, we took our bikes again to head East! On the road we stopped at an empty restaurant for a traditional breakfast consisting of rice with dahl curry and coconut sambal! We continued our road smoothly, while being cheered on by the locals, either smiling, shouting, and encouraging us, or looking very confused and pointing us out to their neighbors!

At 10:00 we left Mirissa harbor to seek some whales, we were on the boat with three British students (normally they have like 70 people on the boat :o). We went straight to the sea wahting out for some water being spewed into the air, but none was seen. We approached some fishermen, but they hadn't seen anything, so our search continued. At some point, we saw a green turtle with a red plastic bag or fishing net it was stuck in or trying to eat (we are not sure, but bad nonetheless). While our trip continued and we kept hitting the waves, we felt less well.. at some point we just lied down, sleepy from our early ride. We were greeted by a group of dolphins, but they dived quickly unfortunately. Myrthe started to feel proper sick and when we heard it was still an hour before we would be back, we felt quite miserable, but once we stood on solid ground again, the recovery began! :)

The next day, we left for Hiriketiya beach. About halfway, we left the main road to find Dondra point, the most southern point of Sri Lanka. When we arrived, a local girl greeted us and showed us the way through the neighbor's garden and to the Dragon's mouth (a tunnel in the rocks thats spews water when waves hit it). Afterwards, we were invited for a cup of tea, which we gladly accepted. The entire family came to see us as we were probably the only ones to pass by in about a year! We continued our road and went to the WeCare hospital for animals, unfortunately, the friend from a friend from our parents (do you still get it?), wasn't there, so we cycled on towards Dikwella. We'll be staying here for two nights, meeting up with some of our quarantine friends and trying out some surfing!

We've linked our Strava profiles under 'links', we'll be using Strava for publishing our routes and short updates, which are kinda merged together here :)

Until next time!