Sri Lanka 1998

by Neil Hambleton

SCDC goes to Sri Lanka

Cast:

Rob and Ineke, making a guest appearance
Brian, Vivian, Alexander
Keith (the manta was THIS BIG, and I saw 10 of them) along with Jan, Eleanor and Kate (who did a great job of looking after Jack and Joyce).
Tam
Dominic and his wife, Dai Xia
Marc and Sheren
John and Jan
Neil, Louisa, Joyce and Jack
Roger and Jenny (Y - Divers)
Roger and Susan
Andrew and Marcia
Andrew (brief appearance)

Sat 24 Jan

We arrived at the airport in plenty of time (for once). Louisa then had to spend half an hour standing on the conveyor belt, taking all of the batteries out of our torches. I don't know what made us look like Tamil Tigers, since Brian had just gone through, despite having more torches, several mean-looking diving knives and a Spare-Air.

Well the flight sign for Air Lanka is UL, which seems to stand for "Usually Late". Our flight certainly was, so we all installed ourselves near the bar for some pre-flight refreshments. Once on board we had the only intellectual discussion of the trip. If you dropped a weight belt into the Marianna's trench, how long would it take to reach the bottom? The follow up questions surrounded how long it would take Steve to find and recover it, and whether a circular search would be his preferred approach. Finally how many bars there would be on the way back up. It was felt that this would seriously impact the recovery time, as Steve would feel obliged to stop and have a drink in each one. There was also a less intellectual discussion on who Marianna was, what was special about her trench, and did she work in Bangkok's entertainment industry.

We got to Colombo at 1 a.m. local time. It was quite an interesting journey into town, as half the population seemed to be playing cricket in the streets. As we got into Colombo proper, we got a reminder of the civil war that is going on. There were lots of checkpoints manned by heavily armed troops. Our hotel, The Intercontinental, seemed to be in the middle of it all. This is not to protect the tourists, but because it is next door to an army barracks. Keith asked why they had let the hotel build in such a sensitive military area, and was told it was because the hotel was there first.

Sun 25 Jan

Down for breakfast remarkably early considering how little sleep we'd all had. I suspect this was only because it had already been paid for. Keith wandered outside and nearly got arrested a number of times for pointing his binoculars the wrong way. He was told he could only look at the sea. He also found out that the military were all so jumpy as they were expecting a large bomb in Colombo at around midday. By the time he had told the rest of us it was 8 p.m., and we were 150 miles away. In fact the bomb went off in Kandy’s major temple instead. I had a walk around and within half an hour, I'd been offerred various massages, a nice girl, and the opportunity to become a benefactor of a school for the blind, which seemed to be run by a very shady character, and his deaf, mute companion. There was a big military presence, with not very well hidden machine gun posts all over this area.

I got back to the hotel just in time to find that we had also paid for lunch. Unfortunately I was not in time to eat any of it as the bus was leaving. Off we went roaring down towards the South coast and a place called Weligama. In what will come as a disappointment to many of us, this journey provided proof that size does matter. The bigger your vehicle, the faster and more dangerously you can drive. Mere pedestrians, cyclists and tuk-tuks just had to get out of the way. In fact cows seemed to have more right of way than people. In the south of Sri Lanka I suspect this is less of a religious and more of a practical issue - a cow will make a bigger dent in your car.

We passed lots of cows and goats, along with some ox-carts loaded high with all sorts of things. There were signs plastered everywhere. Lots were for martial arts clubs, and some for a Bob Marley concert. In addition there was the delightfully named Ganga hotel, and there were also posters for Ghou Lies - I never did find out what these were.

Weligama Bay Beach hotel was pleasant enough, once we'd persuaded them that the kids didn't need a room to themselves and probably shouldn't be paying the adult rate, since they are only 5 and 7. The service at the hotel turned out to be fairly poor. You would order a drink and wait half an hour for it to turn up. A couple of days later, they would come round with a handful of chits, and try and match drinks to room numbers

Mon 26 Jan

Late start to diving, and it was from a big old fishing boat. It looked so unstable that Jenny refused to go. We dived Yala Rock, which is quite a big site, with large boulders surrounding a central cluster of rocks, with many caves and swim-throughs. Lots of fish life, including some large angel fish and butterfly fish, moorish idols, coral trout, grouper, trigger fish, goat fish, sweetlips, etc.

The wind got up in the afternoon, so Eddie the Divemaster said it was too rough to go out. In a determined effort to get a second dive, several of us hiked over a nearby mountain to see what the next bay looked like. It looked nice, calm and sheltered, and about 18 inches deep. At around 4pm the wind dropped a bit. Brian, Marc, John and Jan and myself went out to dive on Weligama reef. Visibility was not as good, and the site was not as interesting as the morning one. Marc managed tofind loads of nudibranchs to photograph, so he came away happy. On the way back we came to the conclusion that Keith would have seen more snorkelling than we had on the dive. Marc went on to say that Keith would have seen more in his soup than we had on the dive. So we weren't too surprised to find that Keith, Kate, Andy and Sheren had all seen a large Green Turtle. Keith went on to relate how wonderful the snorkelling had been, how many fish and how much coral there was. He didn't seem very impressed with Marc's talk of nudibranchs.

Roger and Susan had had a worse experience snorkelling. They came back covered in oil after one of the fishing boats had discharged a small slick. They went and complained to the hotel manager, who said that he couldn’t do anything in case he upset the fishermen. Apparently he’d rather upset his guests than do that.

Tue 27 Jan

We took 2 boats out today, the big fishing boat, and one of the dive boats. Things got off to a rather bizarre start. Keith dropped his fin into the water. His mask was inside the foot pocket when he dropped it, but not when he retrieved it. He told his buddy, Brian, who (not surprisingly) was already fully kitted up, and in the water. Brian went down to find the mask, and unexpectedly came up with 2 masks and a snorkel. Unknown to Brian, on the other side of the boat, Rob had dropped his snorkel. Standing up to see where it had gone, he tripped over and fell in, dropping his mask as well. We were diving Prinz Heinrich's Patch. This site is similar to many in Hong Kong, a mainly flat bottom with some rocks and boulders. The main difference was the visibility and the variety of fish on show. Similar life to what we had seen on Yala Rock, along with scorpion fish and morays.

In the afternoon 5 of us dived Marissa Point, which was near a sheltered bay. It was an excellent dive, although Marc spent most of it smashing his camera against the rocks to try and get it working again. At the point itself, in the surge, we were repeatedly buzzed by 2 very large Pompano. I was getting low on air, so we headed back towards the boat at about 2 metres, and came across a large octopus. (I breathed my tank down to zero, before signalling coolly to my buddy and making a controlled ascent to the surface) / (I suddenly found I couldn't breathe, so thrashed around frantically before heading to the surface like a rocket) (delete as applicable). Any novices reading this article please disregard the last sentence, as this is an advanced diving technique!

We went to the nearby Chez Frank’s for dinner, which took 2 hours to arrive. In the meantime we were treated to a virtuoso performance of "It’s a small, small world" by a mechanical centipede, for which Jan W. had made the mistake of donating the batteries.

Wed 28 Jan

I got up early this morning for the newly created 7 a.m. dive. Unfortunately so did 10 other people, and there was only room for 8 on the boat. Later, most of us were caught out by the impromptu change of breakfast room, but not Tam. As he described it, "I just saw food, so I went in."

This morning’s second dive was on Yala Rock again. Visibility wasn’t as good, and there were fewer fish. However Brian and I did come across a black lionfish, whose spines became a mixture of black and white after Brian annoyed it. At lunchtime Sheren made the mistake of ordering spaghetti. It turned up complete with a large quantity of ants. Since they weren’t moving she almost finished the spaghetti before complaining. The waiters stood around looking at it for some time, while Marc pointed out that he hadn’t ordered ‘antipasta’!

In the afternoon I managed to go snorkelling. And guess what? It was the first day that no one saw a turtle. The 2 kids came out as well, and despite getting cold both enjoyed themselves. The snorkelling was very good, with moray eels, cornet fish, a big parrot fish, needle fish, butterfly fish, damsels, and even a barracuda.

In the evening we had a Chinese New Year barbecue out on the beach. The hotel had even cooked some reasonably authentic Chinese food as per Tam and Louisa’s instructions. It was a pretty good evening, and ended in the bar. Here Keith put forward his theories on underwater photography, which included the belief that a 15mm fisheye lens has a 270-degree field of view. Rob and I were a bit skeptical. Imagine the budding young photographer getting his photos back from the shop only to disappointedly remark: "Oh no, I’ve gone and got both my ears in all the pictures again!"

Thu 29 Jan

Today I was able to say that I had seen more lobsters than Keith. He’d found 2 on the dive, but when I got back, there were 3 in my shower. Louisa had arranged for Chez Frank to cook them for us for lunch. Since the staff didn’t know how to cook cheese lobster they invited Tam and Louisa into the kitchen. They cooked a lovely lunch for Joyce, Jack and myself. And then we got the bill. Instead of the agreed Rps 100, they wanted Rps 950, and then they overcharged us for the soup as well. After a major argument we gave them more than I wanted to pay but less than they wanted, and walked out.

16 of us set off for Yala National Park that afternoon (no relation to Yala Rock). Keith had organized a trip out there to see some wildlife. It took 5 hours to get there instead of 3. The price for the buses went up, the price for the jeeps went up, and the price for the hotel went up as well. Roger’

s Law states that In Sri Lanka, if you take the "final price, with no extra charges", and add 30% you get to the actual price. Still we ended up in a far more organized, more professionally run hotel, right next to the National Park. It turned out that the staff had all been trained at a hotel management school - ironically in Weligama! Fri 30 Jan

Up at 5:30 for a 6 a.m. start. Of course the jeeps didn't turn up until 6:30. We then had to go to the park office to get entry permits. Even though we were dealing with a Government agency, Roger's Law applied here too. We ended up with 2 and a half jeeps. Keith and family drew the short straw, with their driver and guide taking up the best seats, and leaving the others crammed in, and Keith hanging out of the back. The guides started by telling the drivers to head for some rocks where leopards are often spotted in the early morning. The drivers refused. When we finally did get to the rocks towards the end of the trip, one of them had the audacity to point out that it was too hot for leopards now. I'm not quite sure what we were paying the drivers and guides for, the drivers couldn't drive, and Keith saw more than his guide did (what a surprise). Ours wasn't so bad, but how Keith's managed to miss a huge, full-sized elephant was a bit of a mystery. However he did know all the bird names - although he didn't know which birds they belonged to.We saw all sorts of things, Sambal deer, mongeese, monkeys, crocodiles, buffalo, wild pig, eagles, Brahminy kites, loads of peacocks, along with several elephants, including a 'tusker'. This was a particularly unimposing animal, about Louisa's height, which almost looked embarrassed at all the attention it was getting. Anyway the Dwarf Tusker of Yala caused quite a traffic jam with 5 jeeps surrounding it, and the Wilson's off in the distance as their guide had missed this elephant as well. On the way back to Weligama we stopped off at a blow-hole, where the sea water is pushed through a narrow cleft in the rock, and spurts up out of the top. I took Joyce nearer to get a better view and I knew we were in trouble when I could see a beautiful rainbow in the spray. It was soon obvious why we'd had no problem getting a ringside seat. Next stop was the Wewurukannala Vihara temple. This is a Buddhist temple, and unlike most of them is a little more bloodthirsty. One passage had paintings of all the sins of this life, and their punishment in the next. There were even some life-sized figures to emphasize the point, including one poor unfortunate who was being held upside down with his legs apart, while 2 little devils sawed him in half. The kids loved it. In addition there was an 8 storey high, seated Buddha. I could tell he was 8 storeys high, by counting the number of floors of the building that he was leaning against. Only one other stop, and that was when the army flagged us down and persuaded our drivers to buy tickets for their Christmas raffle. At least I assume that was what they were donating for.

Back in Weligama we heard the Chez Frank sequel. I will quote Rob on the subject, as he, Andrew and Ineke were the main actors in the drama...

On the way back to Weligama we stopped off at a blow-hole, where the sea water is pushed through a narrow cleft in the rock, and spurts up out of the top. I took Joyce nearer to get a better view and I knew we were in trouble when I could see a beautiful rainbow in the spray. It was soon obvious why we'd had no problem getting a ringside seat. Next stop was the Wewurukannala Vihara temple. This is a Buddhist temple, and unlike most of them is a little more bloodthirsty. One passage had paintings of all the sins of this life, and their punishment in the next. There were even some life-sized figures to emphasize the point, including one poor unfortunate who was being held upside down with his legs apart, while 2 little devils sawed him in half. The kids loved it. In addition there was an 8 storey high, seated Buddha. I could tell he was 8 storeys high, by counting the number of floors of the building that he was leaning against. Only one other stop, and that was when the army flagged us down and persuaded our drivers to buy tickets for their Christmas raffle. At least I assume that was what they were donating for.

Back in Weligama we heard the Chez Frank sequel. I will quote Rob on the subject, as he, Andrew and Ineke were the main actors in the drama...

We saw all sorts of things, Sambal deer, mongeese, monkeys, crocodiles, buffalo, wild pig, eagles, Brahminy kites, loads of peacocks, along with several elephants, including a 'tusker'. This was a particularly unimposing animal, about Louisa's height, which almost looked embarrassed at all the attention it was getting. Anyway the Dwarf Tusker of Yala caused quite a traffic jam with 5 jeeps surrounding it, and the Wilson's off in the distance as their guide had missed this elephant as well.On the way back to Weligama we stopped off at a blow-hole, where the sea water is pushed through a narrow cleft in the rock, and spurts up out of the top. I took Joyce nearer to get a better view and I knew we were in trouble when I could see a beautiful rainbow in the spray. It was soon obvious why we'd had no problem getting a ringside seat. Next stop was the Wewurukannala Vihara temple. This is a Buddhist temple, and unlike most of them is a little more bloodthirsty. One passage had paintings of all the sins of this life, and their punishment in the next. There were even some life-sized figures to emphasize the point, including one poor unfortunate who was being held upside down with his legs apart, while 2 little devils sawed him in half. The kids loved it. In addition there was an 8 storey high, seated Buddha. I could tell he was 8 storeys high, by counting the number of floors of the building that he was leaning against. Only one other stop, and that was when the army flagged us down and persuaded our drivers to buy tickets for their Christmas raffle. At least I assume that was what they were donating for.

Back in Weligama we heard the Chez Frank sequel. I will quote Rob on the subject, as he, Andrew and Ineke were the main actors in the drama...

QUOTE

When we arrived that night, Ineke gave the manager a prolonged bollocking about the way they treated you and Louisa. His only defence was that he claimed you used "a lot of ingredients including cheese (which I knew about already), noodles (which I didn't, but they're bloody cheap here anyway) and that he says there were a total of 5 people etc. Even so, Ineke said, to agree Rs100 and then up it to Rs900 is totally unreasonable. He pointed out that in the end he only received under Rs300 anyway. I told him that I would check the facts (which of course I couldn't as you were in Yala) and if I thought he was still wrong I would "ensure that no expats from Colombo would eat in his restaurant again". An empty threat of course, but I wanted to make a point. Half-way through his meal, Andrew came across a piece of raw meat in the middle of his salad that had more tubes coming out of it than Brian's diving gear. I called the manager over and asked what it was and what it was doing in the salad. He didn't know how to handle the situation and seemed genuinely perplexed. He took the plate to the kitchen and had a discussion with the chef (poisoner?). Nothing more was said at the time! Later I asked him what was happening about it (Andrew had inexplicably lost his appetite by then anyway). He said, and I quote: "small mistake by the chef", to which I replied that it seemed like a bloody big mistake. Presumably because Andrew had eaten half his meal before making the grisly discovery, he tried to charge him half price! Needless to say Andrew didn't pay anything for that meal. I'm still not sure whether or not it was deliberate, but that's immaterial as far as I'm concerned since even if it was accidental, the chef must have been colour blind not to have spotted it. Andrew suffered no ill effects fortunately.

ENDQUOTE

Well since Chez Frank had failed to convince Andrew that raw chicken heart was a traditional Sri Lankan delicacy, we opted to go to the Diver's Rest for a real Sri Lankan curry. The proprietor advised us to bring our own beer, as he was worried his stock wouldn't last. He was right.

Sat 31 Jan

I did the early morning dive, Yala Rock again. We came across a shoal of about 100 Moorish Idols, very spectacular. For the second dive, Brian found Eddie a new dive site, complete with 2 diver-sized Potato Grouper, which Keith DID NOT SEE. After lunch a whole bunch of us headed off for the nearest big town, Galle. Galle has an interesting fort, with a naval base along one side. Later we got stopped by a tuk-tuk driver who offerred us a fairly cheap lift back to Weligama. I was a bit concerned that he was part of a Chez Frank conspiracy, and was going to kidnap us and drive us up into the hills to be force-fed raw chicken offal. He turned out to be a really nice guy, who lived near Weligama, and was on his way home anyway. We didn’t have much money, but Louisa wanted to get some tea. The driver was even prepared to lend us the money for it until we got back to the hotel. He went some way to restoring our faith in the people of Sri Lanka.

In the evening 8 lucky people got to do a night dive on Yala Rock. Louisa and I went for a night snorkel instead. We saw several moray eels, including very large one. Also we came across loads of puffer fish, about a dozen cornet fish, sleeping parrotfish in their mucus cocoons, lots of crabs, shrimps and some swimming prawns.

We got back to the bar to find that they had run out of Lion Lager. Fortunately they still had some Carlsberg left. As usual SCDC made a big impression on the local beverage stocks.

Sun 1 Feb

Yet another new dive site from Brian’s chart, but only a few people got up to go diving. Most of us took the bus back to Colombo, but Roger and Susan caught the train instead. Back in Colombo Keith and I went out to try and find an ATM. A guy who made a living selling stamps to tourists helped us in our quest. It was only a 10 minute walk. He took us past the hotel that was damaged by last summer’s car bomb, past the office building which was heavily damaged in 1996 by a mortar attack, and past the Ministry of Finance building which was almost demolished by a 1996 car bomb. He told us where Prince Charles was supposed to be staying, but then went on to say that this was just a ruse, actually he will be somewhere else.

Ineke turned up at the hotel to swap wetsuits with Dominic, as Rob had mistakenly packed the wrong one when they left Weligama earlier in the week. He must think Ineke is a funny shape. Marc felt that Rob would have been better off if he had packed in the dark.

Very few people felt like eating after the massive buffet lunch we’d had, so most of us just stayed in the bar. While we were there Roger and Jenny were told that the dinner was included in the price. So rather than waste it about 10 people went to the restaurant. Jan W. checked 3 times to ensure that it was prepaid. When they’d finished, the same guy she checked with came and asked who would be paying for it. Nothing seems to be straightforward in Sri Lanka.

Mon 2 Feb

Up at 4:30 to head for the airport. Apparently we had to leave so early because of all the checkpoints that had been set up in preparation for Wednesday’s 50^th anniversary of independence. My own suspicion is that the bus had another charter, so they wanted to get rid of us early. Once at the airport Air Lanka booked us block of seats on the plane, then proceeded to split up the families so that they were all as far away from each other as possible. This helped us pass the time before the plane left by creating a boarding pass swapping market. We also found out that Keith and Jan had neglected to tell their offspring that not only were we going to a malarial area, but also a war-zone. "We didn’t want to worry them with details!" Finally on the plane, several people had raw chicken as part of their meal, prompting suspicion that Chez Frank were responsible for the in-flight catering.

Summary

I don’t think we saw the best of Sri Lanka’s diving, although it was certainly much better than Hong Kong. The fish life was good, but we didn’t see a lot of coral. John and Jan are probably best qualified to say, as they hold the record for the most dives of the trip. As for the country I have mixed feelings. A lot of the people were only interested in extracting money from visitors, but a few such as the tuk-tuk driver, or the stamp seller in Colombo seemed genuinely friendly. Certainly parts of Sri Lanka are very beautiful, and it is uncrowded. For the standard of hotels we were staying in (not 5 star but not the cheapest available), I would have expected better service, fewer problems and less arbitrary price rises.

Did I enjoy the trip? Yes. Would I go back? Yes, but there are other places I would go to first.

Finally a big thank you to Rob, Ineke and Brian in particular, organizing 25 people is not an easy task. Also thanks to everyone else who organized anything, including Keith and Jan for Yala, Dominic for the Diver’s Rest meal. Thanks also to Andrew and Marcia for letting the rest of us dive when the boats were full. They were staying a couple of extra days, but their unselfishness was appreciated along with their dry sense of humour.

Did I enjoy the trip? Yes. Would I go back? Yes, but there are other places I would go to first.

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