Ambalangoda (3xfast)

At 3am we roused ourselves to get the 4am taxi to the train station. Ambalangoda the destination – and where the project I came here for will actually start! So excited to begin 🙂 it was quite a lot of people going down to kandy from ambalangoda. We were put on the train and told to count 7 stops after Colombo. Not an exciting journey – all I really remember was that it got crowded and the oranges we ate gave off amazing Citrus smells. Managed to take some pictures in the dawn but mostly slept.

We took a tuktuk to the ‘captains’ house. Seriously.. I don’t even know his name! As soon as we got in we went to the beach and I got my first burn. It’s crazily stereotypical the beach, the perfect water and sand. That one palm tree on the horizon which is slightly crooked. It made me laugh because of how postcard it all is. Then a couple of volunteers showed us hiro! An ice cream place which is awesome if you don’t mind waiting for an hour and a half. It’s got cheesy old music on (but too much beiber) and sells silly string.

Eventually we got back to the house to see the captain. He lectured is for awhile, repeating himself quite a lot >< I think he’s a hard man to work with.
But the turtles are his project.
The next day we meet the other turtle volunteers who are all lovely. Our turtle duties include, feeding, cleaning tanks, picking up beach rubbish, cleaning turtles, releasing baby turtles, any other odd jobs and staring at noan our coordinator. He’s just so pretty! 😛 The petite diving dorito.
Everything is so much fun, if hard work, all the turtles have awesome personality and are beautiful even if they’re disfigured. They all have names and most like head and neck scratches.
Releasing babies is the least work, they’re hatched and kept for 24 hours before we line up and let them run into the water. I don’t know why they’re not immediately let go – surely keeping them just drains their energy as we don’t feed them in that time? They should be released in a much more natural way – here there are suspicions of touristic value overriding turtle safety.. However, it’s a wonderful feeling to let them go and amazing scenery as you do it.
Tank cleaning is a mission, scrubbing yourself and the tank into shape – trying to make a difference in the algae. But music put on by another volunteer helps and impromptu dance parties occur regularly.
Feeding is good fun, especially with the less injured turtles who dive and swim for their food. And I have a new life skill! Fish preparation. We cut up hundreds of fish for feeding; head, then tail, then guts, oh my!
Cleaning the turtles involves using bits of coconut and sand to get the algae off their shells. The leeches we get off using tweezers, my first cleaning session a hawksbill called houdini had leeches in her eyes. Took me about 15 minutes to get them all out but I’m now happy to pronounce her leech free for the moment.
During the nights after food we all go to shangrela,the local bar. Learnt quite a few drinking games now 😛 And I’m the worst person in the room according to cards against humanity! Yay(!?)
Or there is Yoga on the beach – did that once. I don’t have the constitution, and between giggles a wave washed over us. Did not help my zen.
On the weekend we decided as a volunteer group to go down the road half an hour and end up in Galle. It’s a town built around a colonial fort and it’s very nice, very different from the rest of Sri Lanka however, you walk around and you almost feel like you’re in a European country like Italy or Spain. We had lunch at the Galle fort hotel, not cheap but damn their I’ve coffees are good. Brownies too but still not up there with my sister’s 😛 We were saying goodbye to a few volunteers at to go home and it was a nice send off. Shame about the weather that weekend, the first drizzle I saw in sri Lanka. Such a novelty! But not great when lots of shops are shut because of it. From Galle we went back along the coast to Hikkaduwa, a touristy little town good for scuba diving, parties and souvenirs. Vibrations was the club we went to, that was good fun. Crazy shuffle dancing and drums that they just didn’t stop playing for what felt like hours. 🙂 mad skills all round.
Awesome week really, only problem that occurred were the thefts in both volunteer houses. I myself haven’t been stolen from but many people complained of losing thousands of rupees and even a pandora bracelet. We complained to the captain but not much happened, it wasn’t fun becoming paranoid about belongings. Lockers were promised by Saturday/Sunday. They were finished the following Friday.
Learnt how to be careful I suppose 🙂 and invested in such items as padlocks with chain.