Decided not to set any alarms and we’d get up when we were ready! I still wasn’t feeling particularly great so I let Jayne eat breakfast whilst I sorted out the bill with the guesthouse owner. A bit of confusion over conversion rates from USD to LKR, where even she admitted she was wrong, and then had a painful moment watching her add up our bill totally wrong – three times!! Tried not to be a teacher about the situation so waited patiently until she asked for help. Managed to get it all sorted and paid before grabbing our stuff and making our way to the bus stop. There was a bus waiting when we got there and we asked a guy if it was going to Puttalam. He said ‘no’ but then another guy turned up to ask us where we were going. When we said ‘Puttalam’, he turned to someone else and they had a rapid discussion before saying ‘yes’. Stored our bags in the boot and climbed on the bus, much to the amusement of everyone on board. The bus quickly pulled away and everyone was still looking at us and smiling (something that hasn’t happened to us since India). Turns out, we’d managed to high-jack a private bus full of one whole massive family and they’d decided to give us a lift. Clearly working out who was best to talk to us, the man with limited English was asking us where we were going. By coincidence, they were driving to Kalpitiya and were willing to drive us the entire way! We gave them 200LKR (£1) and managed to get from Eluwankulam to Kalpitiya in less than an hour as the bus stormed along the roads at 70km/h without stopping! Showed them where we wanted to be dropped off and with a massive amount of smiles, waving and hand shaking, the bus left us by the side of the road, by the long road that our hotel was on. Started walking the 3km down the road but the heat was pretty intense so we had to stop midway for a rest and water break! Double checked with an aquarium van that we were headed in the right direction and the two guys walked us the last 250m to make sure we got there! Had an amazing watermelon juice welcome drink before putting on our swimming stuff and jumping into the sea. 
Decided to walk the 7km up the beach to the dive centre to organise everything for tomorrow but I only managed 1/2 km before the heat and lack of food for nearly 48 hours wiped me out. I headed back to the hotel whilst Jayne borrowed a bike a cycled the 12km via the road, leaving me to rest and catch up on blog writing. She returned about 2 hours later, incredibly sweaty so we headed back into the sea for a swim. 
Had a shower and played UNO while we waited for dinner. I managed to eat some tomato pasta and Jayne had vegetable fried rice. Got chatting to a British family who wanted to do some snorkelling too. We gave them the dive centres number and they gave them a call, managing to get on the boat tomorrow too. Sorted out breakfast times for the morning and headed to bed.
Tuesday 9th February 2016
Trans Travels 