Poya Day, this meaning.. It’s a local HOLIDAY today!
Hooray!
October 24th all volunteers got the day off for the local holiday. Because we all are living with local families we are told to travel or go about out day (not in the homestays) as the families would be celebrating and having quality time with their families. Completely reasonable, Savi volunteers & I decided to take on a day trip to Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka.
We decided it would be a fantastic idea if we woke up extremely early to catch the 6:30 AM train from Colombo to Hikkaduwa to see the sunrise. We’ve all been told that this one of the prettiest coastal train rides in the world. To no surprise, it was. As this was my first train ride in all my life, it was 1,000% worth the early rise on our only day off. Though if you like sleep it’s nearly impossible to see the sunrise here.. it’s summer here now and the sun rises at like 4:30 AM and is already high in the sky by 6 AM. Therefore, we did not catch any part of sunrise.
After arriving in Hikkaduwa we were all starved & made our way towards the touristy area where restaurants & western FOOD options would be. After passing a few places up we ended up at a hotel/hostel right on the called the Beer Garden (Fun Fact: there is to be no alcohol consumed or served by any businesses on any Poya day). As we ordered breakfast we chatted with our friendly waiter & shared with him our Poya Day plans. He responded back with advice on a better itenterary. And Being with Rosie & Tarryn we were each very open with our plans and gladly took his advice. He told us our plan was nice but that if we wanted to snorkel and enjoy any water activities that we needed to do it before noon instead of late afternoon because tide rises at 1pm here. After breakfast he gave us a free tanning spot on their beach front, which was really nice since normally one would have to rent out the tanning chair. The 3 of us lounged around, tanned, rented snorkeling gear & snorkeled right on the beach. I soon gave up on snorkeling though, becuase it was a holiday here, there were so many locals on the beach for their day off it was hard to enjoy.
Tarryn & I had made our way into the water, where I soon discovered was not only filled with people but with large boulders. It was actually a beautiful sight but because there were so many people I found it challenging to maneuver around them all. After taking around 3 steps into the water is was chest deep, deep enough to swim, but being a bit short, it was challenging to move around the people and the rocks. About half way out to the snorkeling boats were, where apparantly the turtles were, Tarryn & I had one more big boulder to pass when a huge group of male teenagers broke us apart, I had to let them pass. The group was quiet big & as they passed I looked down for footing.. there was a small area of sand I could quickly set my feet down to. As I flipped my body from a horizontal position to vertical one of the boys bumped into me from the left side making me lose the footing I’d planned. As I tried to keep myself from going under I caught myself on a bouldler next to me. My leg caught the side of it and I felt an extreme stinging pain.. I felt like I most likely just scrapped my leg. Trying to collect myself to get back to a stance and swim on with Tarryn my leg stung so bad I decided to get out. No worries, I lived. haha. I had realized though that I had been stung by something, not scraped. Therefore, I tanned & read my new book for the rest of our time there.
Later on more girls from another homestay in Maharagama, Janaka, met up with us at the Beer Garden. One of the girls Tarryn had done some good research on Hikkaduwa before we made our travel plans here and she found there was a beach where wild sea turtles hung about. All of us decided this would be the place to go, AND IT WAS ! We had a good 10 min walk down the beach when we ended at cove ‘C’ like end… here there was a local man holding sea weed in the water, we paid no attention. Tarryn, Rosie & I determined to see a turtle bolted out to see. The other girls stayed to soak up some sun and catch up on reading. My leg felt better & I was more then ready for some water activity. But because of the ‘C’ like structure on the end of the beach there were two sets of waves making it very difficult to stand, or focus on anything in the water, every rock looked like a turtle. Finally the man holding the seaweed yelled out,
“There, There!” We all quickly looked. There was nothing.
“Turtle!” He exclaimed. But still I saw nothing.
Suddenly Tarryn Gasped, scaring me half to death, had me thinking there was a shark or she’d been hurt. I quickly looked up, I saw her pointing… I followed her arm to the end of her index finger. A head, a head popping out of the water! A TURTLE!!! An absolute massive head (turtle head) quickly popped out of the water, grabbed a piece of seaweed and popped back under. From this point on.. the experience was magical. The sights of the turtles only got closer and more frequent. The sea turtle we followed for a bit was half my size.. the man kept handing us seaweed to feed it. So giddy over the sight of the massive & wild sea turtle we followed it to the other side of the cove walking over the rock that split the two sides. Casually making our way over we heard the man shout to us,
“Urchin, Urchin!” “You GO AROUND!”
Immediately Tarryn belly flops to swim over the rock, Rosie shrieks, elbowing me making me lose my feeting and you’ve guessed it.. I landed right onto a SEA URCHIN! Yup, Ouch. Ouch, is right my friends. I quickly, anxiously, trying not to step on anymore limped out of the water. I found a rock on the beach, sat down and lifted my foot to my knee. The sea urchin was right below my ankle bone, closer to my heel, it looked like a splinter. My entire heel slowly going numb, I quickly squeezed on the area like a pimple and plucked it right out. Disgusting. After that dramatic pause, all was well and I was again determined to feed a wild sea turtle.
I made my way back to the water and soon after we heard another local on the shore shouting to the man we were following, “There’s one coming in, BIG ONE.”
We again made our way back to the other side of the cove… going around the rock covered in sea urchins this time. We searched for the turtle for only a few minutes and the previous ‘massive’ turtle was no longer massive to the turtle we were now eye to eye with. The man we’d been following again handed us seaweed and told us to feed it. He gave each Rosie, Taryn & I our own turns to feed the turtle, & during this process he continued to instruct us to keep moving backwards each time a wave came in because the turtle was making its way towards land. We did as instructed until we were all the way to the beach.. we were then able to touch the turtle a few times and snapped a few pictures. Soon after the group & I were again starved and had to make our way back up the beach towards food. We ate at The Dolphine Inn & Restaurant, we rinsed off our feet from the sand and made our way to the first floor, outdoor eating area where we all enjoyed HUGE sea food plates. After dinner we were on to our last stop of the day before heading back to Maharagama. From the restaurant we got a tuktuk for the mile or so journey to the Hikkaduwa Tsunami Museum. Here we were told by signs to take of shoes and to turn off all electronic devices. We stood outside of the blue house with yellow trimming & were met by the owner, she walked us through (what use to be house) giving us the tour of the museum. A great silence fell over us all as we took in the information followed by pictures of destruction from the natural disaster.
After, we quietly walked along the road to visit a Buddha statue that has been built next to the sea line, showing the height of the wave. Breath taking, unreal, my heart felt heavy & still aches for Sri Lankan’s scorched by the storm.
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