Life’s a Beach (and a Mountain)

I love this bay.  Unawatuna is still undeveloped enough to feel as though one has personally ‘discovered’ it.  The bay is a perfect size.  The most striking attribute is the mountains at each corner.  Most of the southern beaches are relatively flat.   There are no large hotels yet, and part of the road is still unpaved.  Yet, there are at least eight other beach access restaurants within a half kilometer from this hotel.  The big tourist season in the south is November, December, and January.  I’m sure it’s more crowed with European visitors at that time as now we’ve only seen, perhaps, a dozen.

The name of one mountain we hiked down today Rumassla.  If I can get the story straight, according to Indian mythology, the out of the place hunk of mountain should be in far-way, northern India.  Hanuma, the monkey god, was on an errand to bring a medicinal herb only found in the Himalayas.  By the time he’d flown there, he forgotten the exact name of the plant.  So, to save time he picked up a whole chunk of the mountain sure that it would contain the needed medicine.  On the return route he dropped five pieces of it in five different places along the way.  He must have been quite the god, as the existing mountain here is several kilometers wide.  Strangely, it does support types of plants found in no other places in Sri Lanka.

We took a tuk tuk to “Jungle Beach” and then walked back from that side of the mountain, first visiting, the Japanese friendship dagaba and then the Sri Vewakarana Temple.  A very nice monk showed us around.  We came back down the hill following an unmarked trail and passing through a rice paddy as well as the back yards of a few houses.

We lunched at Coral Light restaurant and napped.  I finally went swimming this afternoon.  Now as light is beginning to fade, all of the day visitors have gone.  Perhaps pizza and beer, later?