Beaches and Bombs

The last week of November 2007 will go down in my books as one of my high times and one of my low times in Sri Lanka.

My friend Francis visited for a few days. We went once again to the hill country, and as an added bonus, we got a car and driver and had some time on the coast. It is beach season again...hooray! I know that many of you think that it's always beach season in Sri Lanka, but with 2 monsoon periods, inter-monsoonal rough seas, etc, the window of opportunity is not as wide as one would imagine. From November to March the seas are amazingly blue, the weather is great, and the water is a constant 28 degrees. We made it to Unawatuna, a nice little half-moon bay near the fort city of Galle.

Shortly after Francis left Sri Lanka there was a "Hero's Day" speech made by the leader of the LTTE. As a result, two suicide bombs went off in Colombo, the first killing one person and injuring two others, the second killing 17. The scary part about this was that up to this point, most bombs have targetted the military, and the government. The bomb that killed 17 was targetting civilians in a market area in a central suburb of Colombo. The past week has been filled with checkpoints, random police searches of neighbourhoods, and the arrest of 1000 Tamils (without charge) who were subsequently released.

"You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have the facts of (Sri Lankan) life" T

A walk on the tracks in the hill country

Unawatuna Beach

Unawatuna Beach take 2