Galle

Hello everyone,

Last night after I wrote, we went for a group dinner at Brizo, a restaurant by the sea. Carlos and I headed down to the seafood table by the water where the restaurant had fish to choose from. I followed Carlos’ lead and ordered a sea bass. I’ve never eaten a fish like that before. It appeared on my plate in front of me still looking like a fish. Carlos is Portuguese and eats fish in this way at home, so gave me some tips on how to best avoid bones. The fish was delicious, and the best part was it cost a measly $7 Australian. Delish. Mum had prawns. Mum and I enjoyed a drink at another restaurant afterwards and then headed to bed.

In the morning, we woke at 6am to walk to Coconut Tree Hill along the beach. This is a very picturesque spot that we figured later in the day would be busy with photographers. We had it basically to ourselves, except for a guy from Spain. He took our photo and commented that my phone was handling the light a lot better. I offered to take his photo and email it to him, and he said that would be great. Then he whipped off his shirt and did all these poses. Mum and I had a good giggle on the walk back. Thank you Enrique for giving us a laugh!

Once back, we had breakfast and then left at 8.30 for Galle with our tour group. En route we stopped to see some “fishermen” sitting on stilts and fishing. This is a traditional fishing technique here in Sri Lanka. However, Darsh told us after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, this tradition fell by the wayside and nowadays the “fishermen” only do this for photos. We all chipped in as a group, it was interesting to see how this would have been done in the past. One of them caught a fish while we were there too.

Speaking of the tsunami, I had not realised how impacted Sri Lanka was at the time. I feel like in Australia we mainly heard about Thailand and Indonesia. 40,000 people died in Sri Lanka, with 1 million people displaced from their houses. Around 3/4 of the coastline was impacted, fishing boats destroyed, railways destroyed etc. It was estimated at the time that $1 billion of damage occurred. When you consider the Civil War, the Easter bombings and the pandemic with the tsunami as well, this country has had a really tough run the last few decades. As we pulled into Galle, Darsh pointed out the cricket stadium where Shane Warne took his 500th test wicket. Apparently he visited soon after the tsunami and donated $1 million of his own money to start the rebuild.

Galle is a beautiful city which was an important harbour in centuries past. In 1505 the Portuguese landed here and built a fort. It’s rumoured the name Galle came from the fact that they could hear roosters as they approached and the Portuguese word for rooster is ‘Gallus’. The locals saw the Portuguese approaching and told the king they were drinking blood and eating white stone - but it was wine they were drinking and bread they were eating. At this time, Galle was the main harbour in Sri Lanka. It was for that reason that the Dutch decided to have a crack in the 1600s here. They captured Galle fort in 1640 and made the fort much bigger than the Portuguese had. The British eventually took over Galle in 1796 when the Dutch lost the Napoleonic war. After all the effort of building such a fortified structure around the harbour, it was handed over to the British without so much as even a gunshot. When Colombo’s port and harbour became more prosperous and improved, Galle lapsed into a decline. This was a good thing, because it was left relatively untouched and today is the best preserved colonial town in Sri Lanka.

We went for a bit of a walk as a tour group first, starting at the clock tower/northern end of the fort walls. This section and gate were added on by the British in the late 1800s, as the original Dutch entrance was fairly narrow. It was fairly dark and cloudy and tried hard to rain, but luckily the clouds disappeared pretty quickly. While we were grateful for the sunshine as opposed to rain, this in turn meant that today was the hottest day of the trip. It was 31 degrees, very humid, with full sunshine. Mum and I were glad we had brought our umbrellas as we could use them for shade.

We continued on the fort circuit and got to the Meeran Jumma Mosque, a beautiful white mosque. The gate wasn’t locked so we had a quick peek inside too. Apparently quite a lot of Turkish, Moroccan and Iranian people came here as traders. We enjoyed an ice cream over the road, the lady apologising that it was frozen so hard as she had had to put it in a different freezer with a generator due to power cuts. It was still delicious! It was in this area we also saw the lighthouse at the Point Utrecht bastion which was very picturesque.

Next we found a small souvenir shop on what we later realised was the bottom floor of a family’s house. I bought a magnet and some earrings, and we each bought a small painted elephant. We told the man to keep the change (which was less than a dollar) and he was so grateful I thought he was going to cry. He thanked us and said that so many foreigners have been generous and telling him to keep the change recently. I told him I hoped things improved soon for Sri Lanka and that I would tell people in Australia to come and visit. So go on, come!

On our walk towards some other beautiful buildings, a bird shat on my arm. Surely Collingwood are a shoe in on Monday now! We ended up at Court Square which had some beautifully huge Indian rain trees. From here we continued to the original Dutch gate, the Anglican All Saints’ Church and the Dutch Reformed Church. This was built around 1755 on the site of a former Portuguese convent. The floor was interesting - it was covered with Dutch gravestones that had been moved from a couple of Dutch cemeteries in Galle. Mum enjoyed reading some of the more recent ones in English.

We were very hot at this point, so next went and enjoyed a cool drink at Amangalla, a five star hotel in the former Dutch Governor’s house built in 1684 that was renovated in 2005. We again commented that Nan and Pa would have loved sitting on the verandah as we did enjoying the old building and a cool drink.

We continued on, leaving the fortified part of Galle through the English gate. The bird poo hadn’t worked as it’s meant to, because I had a shocking stomach ache at this point, I suspect due to the heat. Thankfully it didn’t turn out like Sunday’s stomach troubles, but we took a seat in the shade at Dharmapala (formerly Victoria) Park for a while to rest and avoid the sun. On the way back inside the fort, we could see a protest against the government occurring in the street with more people holding ‘Go home Gota’ signs. We kept our distance though.

We then walked through some of the central streets inside the fortified part of Galle. These had been fairly quiet earlier on, but were a little more lively now. We found an ice cream shop and enjoyed some more ice cream (I’ve had three today - don’t judge - it’s really hot!) and looked in some shops.

We ended our visit to Galle by having a quick dip at the beach near the lighthouse which was refreshing. We didn’t go to any museums as Rob’s guidebook didn’t speak of them favourably. Here’s one description that made me chuckle and know not to bother: “The warehouse now provides the setting for Galle's dismal Maritime Archaeology Museum, without doubt the worst museum in Sri Lanka. The lacklustre exhibits plumb impressive depths of dullness, backed by dozens of signboards written in a form of English so mangled, twisted and generally incomprehensible it makes you seasick just looking at them. Save your money.” Yeah, no thanks!

We travelled back to Mirissa at 3pm after a great 5.5 hours of exploring. We really enjoyed Galle today. Once back, the power was out and the hotel generator was broken. So Mum and I went in the pool and the beach and have come back to the power back on now! So far so good...

Love to all
Claire
Xoxox