Across the Island to Trincomalee

So we took another 3 hour-ish bus ride from Dambulla to the far eastern port town, city of Trincomalee.

For Peace Corps volunteers all of Tamil territory, at that time sometimes called Eelam by the Tamils, was off limits.  We were not allowed to go to these areas (and perhaps it was dangerous to do so).
So I was very excited to visit a new part of Sri Lanka.  Our main goal was to scuba dive.  The west coast of Sri Lanka is in the beginning of rainy season and the waters are too rough, but the east coast is just perfect for diving these months.

You can read about more the 30 year war, the ethnic conflict and the initial desire for an independent state on the part of the ethnic minority-Tamils here:  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Eelam  Peace Corps remained in service in the country until the late 1990's, so volunteers experienced some of the tension and violence from afar (in most cases).

Trincomalee now is peaceful and very blended with Tamils (mostly Hindu), Muslims (aka Sri Lankan Moors) and Sinhalese.  (I used Sinhalese and most understood me.)  The proportion of each group is almost equal, unlike the other areas we visited.

Honestly we did no sight seeing and just stayed on Uppuveli Beach.  We stayed at a hipster, backpackers hotel (not really by choice, most hotels were full by the time I booked it) called Aqua Hotel.  At first we didn't like it because there were so many young tourists, the restaurant service was slow but after a few days the place grew on us and we made friends with the staff.  We did two boat dives each day...and then dipped in the very long shallow beach frequently, ate great clay oven pizzas, and drank beer at Fernando's Bar.  We got friendly with the locals...it was very relaxing!

 We made friends with Sujith, very experienced Master diver from Negombo.

This dive is called Swami rock because of this submerged statue.  We saw several large moray eels, green and spotted.  I almost stepped near one as I was getting ready to ascend!  He came out of his whole all offended by us...big fellow.

Yvonne completes her 31st dive and has become quite relaxed and this time used her air "like an experienced diver".  (I completed 71 dives.)

The dives were pretty good, about a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10.  We really liked the dive operators Colombo Divers, all locals from Negombo.  They invited me back anytime and promised we could dive for free "next time".  In some areas there was trash and fishing nets stuck on the coral.  Coral was thriving more near Pidgeon Island, but not so great near Swami Rock (the area below the Hindu Temple).

I joked with the divers that back in "my day" I only paid 650-1000 rupees for a dive.  Now it cost 9000 rupees for a 2 dive trip. Inflation, hmph.  I now have dived in 4 parts of Sri Lanka:  Hikkaduwa, Unawatuna, Dikwella (by Tangalle) and now Trinco.