Day 21: February 8

After settling in, we went to the beach. The beach is accessed through our palm grove. We came out to the lagoon. Despite the fact that it’s a lagoon, there are strong waves here and a rocky bottom, so it’s scary to swim. We went to the neighboring beach, the one we were at yesterday — the waves there were even bigger. It’s so amazing — the ocean, the beach, and yet it’s impossible to swim. The bottom is a little rocky and the waves are so big that it’s very scary to go in. It was the middle of the day, and there was no one on the beach except us. In our lagoon there was a small natural pool, a puddle surrounded by rocks. We splashed around there a little.

We lay in the shade of a palm tree. We saw hermit crabs. They run around here in large numbers, unafraid.

We returned to our house. In the afternoon, when we were getting ready to look for food, it started to drizzle. But we still decided to go, to explore the nearby area a little. The neighboring beach turned out to be nothing like as magical as ours. It would seem the difference was barely perceptible, yet the overall impression was completely different…

Then a heavy downpour began. We took shelter under the roof of someone’s house. The owner came and invited us to sit on the chairs on the veranda. We waited out the rain for about half an hour. By then it was almost dark; the rain had not stopped completely, but it had eased noticeably, so we headed home. On the way I saw a sign that said “Soma homestay&restaurant”. By that time we were already completely desperate to find any decent food in this backwater and had bought cookies at a local shop.

We were given a very warm welcome by the owner of the local hotel and restaurant. We ordered milk tea and rice with curry. Everything was very tasty. The portions were so huge that we didn’t even finish half. Along with the mountain of rice, they brought 4 different vegetable dishes, including stewed potatoes in gravy (as far as we understood, in Sri Lanka potatoes are considered almost a delicacy :)

We returned home in pitch darkness. The dirt road to the house had been washed out by the downpour, and there were puddles where your foot would sink in up to the ankle.

Around 9 p.m. we went to the beach to look for turtles that come ashore at night. We walked in the dark along the sand, lighting our way with our phones. There were many more hermit crabs than during the day. We saw some very large ones. Soon some man came up to us; I could barely make him out in the dark. He said that you’re not allowed to shine flashlights here so as not to disturb the turtles. And if we wanted to see the turtles, we had to pay money. I was completely taken aback by this state of affairs. Volchiy and I exchanged glances, thanked the man, and headed home, trying not to step on the little crabs that were scattering in whole swarms from under our feet.