Arugam BAy: Pets, Surf, And Self-Drive Safaris. Part One: The Pets

We spent a month in Arugam Bay for the surf and beach time it promises. It didn’t really disappoint, and we stayed at a cute, comfortable, little house for the month we were there. We rented the house from a German girl named Anne, who has been here for years, and has carved out a […]

She’s a Beauty…

I have no idea how I deserve to be with someone like this. She agreed to marry me twenty-two years ago tomorrow (she must be a bit touched in the head to agree to that). We met twenty-five adventure-filled, sometimes chaotic, sometimes painful, always entertaining, and beautiful years ago. She has been the other part […]

Step Away From The Machine, Man…

I just came in from a surf session. It was one of those rare, great sessions when you find clean takeoffs on tricky waves, you read the waves properly, make all your cutbacks, and ride clean lines for long, smooth rides. Today, the waves were sporadic, with a lot of time between good sets, so […]

Sunday Afternoon In Okanda, Part Three: The wildlife.

Part three of our mellow Sunday adventure is about the animals living in this area. As I said before, in parts one and two, we were driving the tuk tuk along the North and East borders of Kumana National Park. The only legal access into the park is by jeep safari, which is pretty cheap, […]

Sunday Afternoon in Okanda, Part Two: The temples.

Part two of our lazy Okanda adventure day finds us visiting a couple of very old temples (yes, more temples), situated on big granite domes in the middle of lagoons, forest, and the savanna country bordering the Kumana National Park. The first was a hindu temple, as mentioned in part one, called Ukanthamalai Murugan Kovil. […]

Sunday Afternoon in Okanda, Part One: The Town.

Just to warn you, this post was going to be too long for a single post, so it has become three separate posts. Read on at your leisure for part one… We took a Sunday afternoon drive the other day. We set out to check the surf at a spot about an hour South of […]

Relaxing into Sri Lanka

I woke up this morning feeling rested. Relaxed. Generally, I do not sleep well for the first few nights in a new place, and this house was no exception, but it took a little longer for me to settle in here. Tam and I have, more often than not, been finding places with air conditioning […]

Tuk trucking: On “danger buses”, bad traffic, and finding elephants.

I have been collecting video of our travels in the tuk tuk for a few weeks now. I am a terribly slow video editor, so it took a while to get this all together and posted here. Rather than make a bunch of small posts of each section of our travels, I have decided to […]

The New House

I woke up this morning at five-dark-thirty, surfed for two hours, then came back to our newly rented house. This morning routine seems to be rapidly becoming a permanent pattern while we are here in Arugam Bay (anyone who knows me knows how much I abhor anything in the early morning, especially a routine), but […]

Kiteboarding Kalpitiya… The good, the great, and the ugly.

I suppose it must be time to talk about kiteboarding here in Kalpitiya (and the surrounding area. This blog is supposed to be about wind as well as travel. I have been messing around with video editing a bit the last week or so, so be warned: There will be some videos in this one. […]