Saturday, 2nd february, 2019
Today is our travelling day and luckily for us we had all the time to get on with our expedition without any stress!
The resort had given us a schedule as to how our departure was to take place:
11.15 am luggage pickup from our beach villa, 12.00 am vacate villa, 13.15 transfer per speedboat to Male airport and 16.00 check in Emirates flight to Colombo, 18.05 arrival in Colombo
Our speedboat left on time and it was fully loaded with tourists of all nationalities- all with a healthy tan and returning most probably back to a cold climate!
It was not busy at all at Male’ airport so passport and security control did not take long. However having lunch at the departure lounge was no great success – we had to resort to Burger King which instantly gave me heart burn……
The flight to Colombo was only an hour and 5 minutes and again we had no clear skies so I couldn’t take any good pictures
Once at Colombo airport arrival, the immigration and customs procedures were less strenuous than on the Maldives and in no time we were outside trying to find our chauffeur from Olanka Travels. Also something else I had to do was get some local cash from an ATM. However when I did get the cash, apparently I had miscalculated – I thought I was getting the equivalence of €150,00 in Sri Lanka rupees but I had misplaced the decimal point and only got 3000 rupees for approximately €15,00 ……and I used to be a banker – hahaha!!!
Anyway we were met by Mr Indika, a pleasant and polite young man who will be looking after us for the next 17 days! Obviously, the first thing that Gerry wanted to do is have a smoke, so Indika parked us with our trolley at a smoking area while he got the car.
By the time we were on our way to Negombo which is only half an hour away, it had gone pitch dark and being a Saturday evening, traffic was quite heavy! So it took us about an hour to get to our hotel and by that time it was well after 9pm. We dropped our luggage in our room and went exploring to find another ATM and a restaurant. We found the latter which was recommended by other guests who had just finished their meal – Mr Crab – a seafood restaurant and just in a few words, we had the most delicious sea food platter in the past week!
Back at our hotel, it was a quick shower and off to bed as Indika will be collecting us at 8.30 am tomorrow morning.
Ps – it’s difficult to download pictures so I will have to do that another time – WiFi facilities are quite close to nihil especially when doing my updates in the middle of the jungle…….
