Up early and ready to leave Mirissa.

Time is flying by.

After breakfast, we arranged a tuk tuk for 9am to take us along the coast to another beach – Unawatuna.

The drive took an hour, I wasn’t expecting it to take so long. Past lots and lots of beaches. Some of them were in jungle, others were long stretches of sand.

The Sri Lankan stilt fishermen are famous – everytime you see photos of Sri Lanka, always the stilt fishermen feature. However sadly, perhaps because they weren’t paid enough, there are no longer any ‘real’ ones left.

It seems that they now sit along the side of the road and wait for tourists to drive past, then run out across the rocks, hop onto their sticks.

Wave a pole around.

Then demand money.

Well this is what happened to us.

And the whole way along the coast, we saw groups of men doing exactly the same thing.

We didn’t see any real ones.

So we paid to take photos of fake ones.

We gave them the 200Rp (£1) that they asked for. I was actually surprised they didn’t demand more. They even let us have a go at sitting on the stick. But I didn’t take up the offer – too many slippery rocks for me to be able to make it across!!

For tonight, I booked a fairly expensive hotel. As a treat. We arrived at 10am, so our room was not ready. We were given fruit drinks and went to sit by the pool. So lovely.

Spent a while swimming and enjoying the scenery! On the coast – next to a small beach and breaking waves. With a view of Galle fort.

Once our room was ready, wow. We had an upgrade.

It’s the biggest room I’ve ever stayed in.

With an amazing ocean view and again a view of the fort. Amazing. A while longer of lazing around. Then we went to have a look around the small touristy town.

Basically a long beach and a long row of shops. Surprisingly, the prices here for tourist tat were much cheaper than anywhere else and we managed to barter for a lot of wooden items! Felt like we were ripped off everywhere else now!!

We had lunch along the beach, then back to enjoy the fancy hotel. Away from the Russian-filled beach.

All along the beach are beach bars and guesthouses. They must be all fairly new as according to the guidebook (and in particular for Mirissa) these places don’t exist – they are all popping up very quickly, and the place is turning very very touristy.

The sunset was ok, could have been nicer. Not had an amazing sunset here. For dinner, we went to the beach and had a final curry. It was our most expensive meal – at £4 each. But everywhere here is expensive for food. It was nice. Again, far too much food!