Work hard, travel harder - nice on paper....

Polhena Beach and Udawadawale (post somewhat delayed by lack of decent internet connection. There are more photos to come and the ones that are in here are randomly placed, but we wanted to get something out as it has been too long).

We always knew that Sri Lanka was going to be a challenging first stop on our trip and this week the children began to feel it, particularly Eliza. Every new sight, new taste, new experience also evokes in a tired body the need for the comfort and reassurance of one’s own home. So, whilst nothing has gone wrong, this last week has reminded us that we are not on a holiday; we are on a journey. Journeys are rewarding but they are also hard work and we need to be mindful that that places greater demand on the children than it does us.  

We finally get Olivia into the ocean

This week has also marked the start to our home education efforts- MAD school as it has been christened by the kids. Mum And Dad School. Each weekday morning we sit down in a fan cooled, but hot, outdoor restaurant area of the hotel we are in. Piles of books and Kindle fires are laid out as we spend about 1.5 hours writing diaries about the previous day’s activities, playing maths games, battling through spelling and wading through reading at varying speeds.  Both of us have done small bits of teaching in our past, but neither of us would claim to be ‘classically trained’. The hardest part is keeping the class clown (Olivia) from disrupting her more studious classmates.

It is too long a period to expect Olivia to stick to phonics and practicing her letters and so midway through the MAD school morning she switches to playing some semi educational game whose educational qualities are even more dubious than our attempts at enriching the mind. 

What has been very rewarding  is seeing how quickly the older two are progressing with near one on one tuition. It begs the question on where the thousands of pounds of school fees have gone when we have seen such rapid achievement in just a week. Eliza is really developing as we have the time to sit with her and correct bad writing habits that have crept in over the last few years. Her handwriting has been transformed and it was a highlight of the week when the headmaster of MAD school (albeit with no knowledge of what was necessary to achieve the qualification) announced that Eliza has been awarded her Pen Licence.   Alfie exhibits such a keen desire to learn and get things 100% right that it brings a tear to an OCD father’s eye!  Perhaps the hardest challenge is ensuring that Olivia keeps up with her peers.  She has a wonderful appetite to learn and try and write and read like her big brother and sister.  Early learning is so far removed from normal education that although it is basic concepts, those important building blocks and foundations are incredibly hard to convey correctly to Olivia’s unstructured mind. I remember complaining how much phonics work we had to do with the younger kids as homework but now appreciate that at that stage we were just reinforcing concepts they had already learnt. The task of planting that first seed and making sure it is done correctly is far more daunting. Hopefully all the harm we do can be undone upon our return!

On top of the formal class work we try and incorporate something educational or experience enhancing into the day. Leone particularly has taken this task to hand - launching herself forward like some elegant mix between David Bellamy, Miss Trenchball and Maria Von Trapp, she drags the poor kids off on nature walks, launches them off rocks, plunges them into rivers and dangles them in front of some poor, unsuspecting animal to various different levels of resistance and enthusiasm from the kids. They are at least learning one thing it took me many years to learn - there is no point in saying no to anything Leone gets in her mind to do, you will end up doing it; capitulation is the only option.  But to her credit, all her crazy schemes end up being great fun!

Despite, or perhaps because of all the effort, during these last 10 days we have had a wonderful time. We left Bentota and travelled South to Galle and then east to Polhena Beach which is located between the more famous Marissa surfing beach and Matara, the largest city in the Southern District of Sri Lanka. Our accommodation was a pleasant Eco lodge called Turtle Eco Beach run by an expat Frenchmen called Michel.  Pleasingly, despite his many years of being in Asia, he has not lost his Gallic predisp of superiority and disdain for all others.  It creates the odd mix of a slightly grubby beach lodge managed with the air of hautiness typically reserved for a 3 Michelin star restaurant.  But it had a pool though so the kids were happy. 

We set off early one morning from Marissa harbour with an outfit called Raja and the Whales appealing as much to Leone’s theological roots as Eliza’s strong environmental leanings. At double the price of the beach Hawkers’ offers it appealed less strongly to Fred’s tight budget. Our goal was to see Blue Whales. We had been warned that there was a little bit of a swell, and they were right. The kids were fine. Indeed Alfie‘s pirating tendencies as a toddler seemed to have engendered in him the constitution of an Ox and sensational sea legs. He was merrily chomping down loosely fried eggs and chicken sausages as the 4 foot swell caused Leone to puke everywhere. Just as the engine stopped for the first time in 1.5 hours, Alfie and Olivia shouted out much to the whole boat’s amusement, “Daddy, mum has puked again!”   Poor Leone missed almost everything, but for those of us made of sterner stuff, we were rewarded with the sight of 6 blue whales and 2 killer whales. Though I think the kids were more impressed with the 3 pieces of Chocolate cake they were given in the way back to the harbour, benefitting from the fact that few others on the boat were in a fit state to eat. 

We also took our first school trip into Galle. Another early start saw us catch the 1 hour train from Matara to Galle. The heat was rather oppressive and we were clearly a curious sight for locals as we crammed amongst the commuters, sweating profusely. I thought the Hong Kong metro system marked the extreme of rail based bad manners. I was quite wrong. On pulling into Galle, Olivia and I were literally pushed back into the train by 5 Sri Lankan men desperate to get on the train quickly to secure a seat. Loathsome men. I eventually shouted and pushed the following onslaught back, aided by a few Europeans who were also waiting to board, this avoiding being stuck on the train all the way to Colombo. 

Galle is a stunning town, but hot. Damn hot, as Eliza has started saying. We tried our best to walk around the town. The kids delighted in holding a snake but the rest of the walk was probably lost on them. Too hot and too boring. In fact it was so hot that we had to take poor Olivia into a local hairdresser and get her hair hacked off to a bob to help her keep cool. For Alfie and Eliza the highlight of Galle was buying paper made from elephant poo. 

Perhaps the biggest reward of our time In Polhena was Leone discovering a gigantic turtle in the road just outside our restaurant one night. Her excited run back to our table was so dramatic, I assumed at least one, possibly two, of our kids had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. Eliza was mesmerised as a kind gentleman carried the disoriented turtle (no mean feat as it must have weighed 100kg) back to the beach and the turtle cumbersomely made it way back to the lapping water’s edge. 

Other highlights in Polhena included snorkelling, boogie boarding (where Alfie got wave dumped courtesy of Leone launching him off on an enormous wave) and just hanging out at trendy beach bars with all the surf dudes who are breaking out of the western mould wholly unaware that they have adopted exactly the same look and manner as all those around them. Radical dudes. 

Ursula and Alfie coming back from a snorkelling trip

From Polhena we travelled inland to Udawadawale National park. A little cooler and we glamped it in wonderful tents pitched above the bend of a beautiful river, where locals come each morning panning for gems. It was this river that we saw another example of the intrepid explorer that is Leone. She grabbed the protesting kids and dragged them into a river for a swim, trumping the warmer, clearer and undoubtedly safer pool. Why we choose to endeavour to do it here in Sri Lanka amongst unknown waters when in the UK we have hithero resisted such piscine urges is lost on me. But as previously mentioned, once Leone has her mind set on something then we are all in for it. The rest of the family were ‘rewarded’ when Leone Grylls swam through a swarm of mosquitoes on the water’s surface and received about 100 bites on her back. No doubt Leone has some natural cure for that, smeared from the back of a bullfrog so we needn’t be too concerned. 

Udawadawale boasts incredibly accessible safari and so a short 3 hour jaunt blessed us with bathing elephants, jackals, incredible bird life and crocodiles. Even Olivia managed to last the whole course without too much complaint. 

Sri Lankan’s internet coverage is not the best, and so this blog has taken a little longer to get out than we would have hoped. Ita length can be put down to the fact that it was typed up on a phone during the numerous long and winding journeys we have taken through Sri Lanka. So winding that we have had our first child puke (Leone winning the overall first puke prize) - Eliza, with 2 seconds warning, decorated the minibus. Testament again to Alfie’s fortitude that at the end of the journey it became apparent that he was wholly unaware of the entire incident. An incident that comprised monumental amounts of vom, pulling over, removing all the floor mats, washing them in a stream, cleaning the rest of the van with a packet of baby wipes and the van stinking of puke for the rest of the journey. He may well not have inherited Leone’s sea legs but he clearly is blessed with her observational powers.   

We travel on, getting a little better at this as each day passes but yet to find the Nirvana that the brochures promise us!

About Mirissa and Polhena Beach

Mirissa Beach is a destination stop for the surfy, backpacking dudes, lying about an hour West of Galle in the Southern Province of Sri Lanka. It boasts a beautiful long beach with pretty decent surf. It was badly damaged by the 2004 tsunami.

Polhena Beach is a tiny little beach on the outskirts of Matara, the biggest town in the Southern Province. A pretty little beach, from where, if you are lucky, you can snorkel with turtles in the morning.

About Udawadawale

Udawalawe National Park lies on the boundary of Sabaragamura and Ura Province in Sri Lanka. The national park was created to provide a sanctuary for wild animals displaced by the construction of the reservoir on the Walawe River. The reserve covers 30,821 hectares and is the most accessible safari for elephant watching I have ever seen.

“He who is outside his door already has the hardest part of his journey behind him.” -Dutch proverb 📷ReplyForward