Whale, Dolphin, Tourist and Container Ship Watching

I’m sleeping like a baby and my alarm wakes me up at the ungodly hour of four ay em. I wake up, gesture the damn alarm off (I can’t simply click a button because I have a brand spanking new Samsung Corby, which insists that I run my thumb along a bar in a certain way to switch it off. After a couple of tries I succeed), and promptly fall asleep again. After a few minutes, my fear of being beaten to death by hardcore photographers (hobbyists and professionals alike) and adventure travelers asserts itself and I wake up for the second time. The floors move underneath me and my head is spinning; there should be a law against waking up this early, I’m sure it’s a human rights violation or something. I call up the next room to inform them that they have to get ready if we are to leave on time. While on the phone, I also answer “Yes”, to the question “What is the time?”.  After I do my thing (showering, brushing teeth, a hundred pushups) in the toilet I go around waking up the other occupant in my room so he can get ready as well. Even with all this, we are still 10 minutes late when a disgustingly chipper sounding caller informs us that they are on the way. At ten minutes past five in the morning, we are on our way to Mirissa for whale and dolphin watching.

In the interests of completely aping movies/books that start at a random place and produce some back story later on, I will now give the back story.

Early on Saturday morning I left for the sandy shores of Unawatuna for a weekend full of sand, whales and other sea creatures – edible or not. It’s not because I was suddenly bit by the travel bug – those who know me know that I only travel from one computer to another – it’s because some people were going and I was kindly invited as well. Since I’m totally awkward among people I don’t know (while at the same time being awesome in other ways) I took along a few of my friends as well. They aren’t linked here because none of them have blogs and we all know that if you don’t have a blog, you don’t really exist online.

Anyway, after a drive with many rest breaks and one sightseeing stop, we arrived at Unawatuna Beach Resort. Owing to having worked my ass off for the past couple of weeks, we splurged and go some really nice rooms. They even had a Jacuzzi in there. I beat my roomy and marked my territory by leaving my ass hair all over the Jacuzzi.

The Jacuzzi, prior to me marking my territory with my ass hair

After chilling at the hotel for a bit, we head out to meet up with the rest of the crowd. I had no idea who our travelling companions were, just vague estimations as to their numbers. Being the nice guests that we are, we headed off towards Galle to get some beer and ice. After that we headed off towards Matara because I was under the impression that the place we were meeting up was past our hotel. Suffice to say, it was not. After heading back toward Galle again we managed to find the lane down which the place was located. After what seemed like an hour long drive (which is truth was only five minutes) we were still lost. This was actually not my fault and was simply a breakdown in communication channels. Due to being in the middle of nowhere, signal strength was varying. And some people do not realize that a ringing phone is a clear indication of someone trying to get in touch with you. Add to the fact that one of the guys actually gave us the name of the owner of the hotel (Bishu’s) and not the name of the hotel itself (Unawatuna Bay Hotel). All in all it ended well due to the road actually turning into a dead end near the hotel.

After saying our hellos to what I thought was a crowd of people (Actually it was only 6), we headed off to the beach to have dinner on the beach. Here we met a million other people (again, actually 20) whose names I’ve forgotten, but their faces stay on. Thanks to the good people of Submarine Diving School and whoever made the decision to go there, we had an incredible dinner right on the beach. I drank, then I ate, then I ate some more. In short, it was bliss. Since we had to wake up in the middle of the night the next day, we decided to make an early exit.

And then we come to the start of this post. After reaching Mirissa and signing what I assume were legal waivers in case we were suffered a watery doom at sea we finally got to eyeball our seaworthy vessel.

The white one with the upper deck (on the other side) is our boat

I won’t give you the details about the voyage because you just have to be there to enjoy it.  Once you get out of the dirty harbor, the water is just beautiful. It changes color from a translucent turquoise nearer shore to a deep blue a few dozen miles out. Some people may claim that I was asleep during most of the trip, but I was just resting my eyes. Shown below is one such instance (picture by PP)

Me "resting" my eyes between whale surfacings

The only thing missing was some chilled beer to keep the heat off.

This was before the run really started doin it's thing.

The mid afternoon sun. It actually gives an "old game sprite" look

The crowd was a varied bunch. You had the casual traveler who buys all sorts of medicines to keep the motion sickness away, only to leave the whole lot and the breakfast in the car (That would be primarily be me). You had the hobbyist/adventure traveler lot who were out for the experience (some people just like getting up at four in the bloody morning and be disgustingly awake during the whole time). And finally you have the seasoned pros that are out to get some mind blowing pictures of the environs. Everyone was very chilled and did their thing. My thing was sitting somewhere shady and snoozing between whale sightings. Sleep comes easy enough when you’re boat is gently rocking you from side to side

And the cameras. I’m sure anyone with a camera fetish would have been sporting a hard on if they were on our boat. There were zoom lenses longer than my forearm. You could have added all the zoom lenses together to make a seven foot robot complete with a heat ray. There was some impressive kit in there, probably worth more than the whole boat.

And wonder of wonders, we actually did see whales and dolphins and flying fish and tourists and container ships. After harassing a whale for about an hour and being all paparazzi like(I kid. We actually never got closer than a hundred meters. I’m happy to see that there are guidelines as to approach their space), we hit upon a pod of dolphins frolicking in the sea.  Although I was mostly asleep during the voyage, I didn’t miss much as I was incessantly woken up by the cameras on the upper deck going ape shit whenever a denizen of the sea made an appearance.

After about 6 hours out at sea, we finally headed back to shore and went our separate ways.

All in all it was an excellent trip. I had a great time even though there was every chance of a badly navigated Somali pirate ship capturing us out at sea. Even though I have complete confidence that I would be ransomed, it would be unfortunate since we would miss the five pee em checkout at the hotel.

I’d like to give a hearty thank you to everyone involved in organizing it and making it happen without any postponements or changes in plans. Excellent work!

Me in my fedora. You are forgiven for imagining you saw Indiana Jones

EDIT – To all you bitches who keep complaining about the distinct lack of whale pictures, here you go. This is from one of the photographers who was there – http://www.flickr.com/photos/photosofsrilanka/sets/72157623669928110/. Pictures by Dhammika Heenpella / Images of Sri Lanka