31.12 2020 – 2.1 2021

Our children wanted to stay at home all Christmas holiday. It was understandable; having just moved into our lovely new apartment, they wanted to enjoy the space and comfort that we gained. However, I wanted to take advantage of Steve having 15 days holiday and get out of the apartment knowing that if we stayed at home, he would end up working.

For Christmas, as you have read we went to Yala and had a Safari on Christmas and Boxing Days.  After returning home for a few days, for New Year we  travelled up north to Kalpitiya to a Kitesurfing camp, spending 2 nights in an isolated paradise living in basic accommodation amongst nature and starting to learn to kitesurf – an amazing sport to watch, but when it comes to it, so hard to do.  Our instructor made it look so easy – not even having to watch his kite whilst talking to us, instead feeling everything through fingertips – and when we asked “how?” the reply was “eighteen years of surfing every day”!

Steve organised a driver and we left Colombo on 31^st December at 11am, shortly after enjoying the first meal of the holiday, McDonalds (except me!).  The nearly 4.5hour journey was so boring with no flow or cruising due to the usual erratic traffic behaviour and random animals and obstacles (see Steve’s post on motorcycling to come shortly), but worth it.  When we arrived, a paradise welcomed us with open arms; A camp amongst the palm trees and plants with huts having a garden, beach or lagoon view.  Simple, relatively untended, and lovely. 

We were barefoot all three days and exploring the place was a joy. Pet dogs roaming so heaven for the kids, three meals cooked for us each day and served in an open dining room, painting pictures on the hut walls (with permission!) and a New Year’s eve celebratory dinner with 16 different salads and meats; nothing fancy, but healthy and delicious.

Having a drink celebrating the beginning of 2021 sitting by ourselves in the darkness on a rickety wooden bridge over the lagoon looking at the moon and the stars was very special.  Topping it up on New Year’s Day with 5 hours of kitesurfing lessons run by one of the dads I supported throughout his wife’s pregnancy and birth was just perfect.  I had never heard of kitesurfing before meeting them though Steve had as one of his friends and his wife are very proficient at it, and then wished to have a go as Kalpitiya is apparently kitesurfing heaven; the lagoon with its low sand bar massages perfect wind for two seasons a year. We will definitely return and finish our training to actually put the board on our feet. So far we know how to set up a kite, how to launch a kite, how to fly a kite keeping it safely in the air (a seven metre wing has a LOT of power and the pros have even bigger kites!), and how to body drag up and down wind; essential skills because if you become separated from the board you need to be able to recover it, and if you are injured you need to be able to drag yourself and the board to safety.

At the end of the second day our instructor gave some of the tiny tots (and at a pinch, Emi) experience rides sharing his board; incredible skill whizzing along and then lofting the Little Ones (Emi was too heavy) in to the air before coming down and kissing the water so gently there wasn’t even a splash – Every time.  Such skill.

We got home at night on 2nd January after another lesson and full of beautiful memories – with slightly sore bodies and cricks in our necks from watching our kites all the time!

I am so pleased I managed to get the family out into the open and not sit indoors on gadgets.  Emi said walking one day to breakfast: ”Mummy, this place is like paradise, you would never know that there is a Covid pandemic out there”.  So very true – and topsy-turvy because it follows our long total curfew just as countries that had more freedom earlier-on now regress in to more invasive lock downs.  The air and sea ports effectively remaining closed to human traffic are major factors; we are isolated from the rest of the world, and as yet (it will still happen one day), the more transmissible variant of the virus is not in the community.   

Enjoy the pictures below and the video montage here.

Rennie