Mirissa!

For our weekend trip Jenn, Georgina, Hana and I went to Mirissa.  A coastal town teeming with hotels for tourists. The hotel we stayed at had a lovely pool and was right next to the beach, as in RIGHT next to the beach! My Lonely Planet guidebook describes Mirissa as being 'a place so idyllic that only a fool would ever want to leave.' One of the popular tourist attractions in Mirissa, apart form the sun and beach life, is whale-watching boat tours. Although its considered off-season at this time of year (the east coast has better ocean conditions at the moment) we decided that the prospect of seeing whales was well worth the cost of a tour. Our coordinator Nalaka helped find us a good deal and arranged our tour for us.  

We got up excruciatingly early on Saturday morning to get a tuktuk to the harbour and our boat. Or rather, we should have got up early but somehow all four of us managed to sleep in! We were in pairs in two cute little bungalows (photos to follow in next blog post) and none of our alarms worked! The first we knew of morning was Jenn banging on our door telling us that we slept in! And they had been woken up by a phonecall from the man who was taking us to the harbour, telling us he was at the hotel waiting! We got ready in super-quick time and were only 5-10mins away from the harbour so we still arrived in plenty of time. Once we got on the boat we were all handed tablets for seasickness and then given a sandwich for (a very early) breakfast. It took about 2 hours to get out into sea far enough to start spotting whales. It was quite choppy and we got splashed a lot but I found the motion quite relaxing and dozed off for about an hour! Downside of this was that I ended up with a VERY red sunburnt arm, a tshirt tan too!

When I woke up there was only me and one other man left sitting in the original seats at the front of the boat, pretty much everyone else on the boat were feeling seasick and sitting at the back leaning over the sides feeling ill! Once we got out on the flat water it was lovely, calm waters with local fisherman on traditional wee boats floating by, and the sun looked amazing sparkling on the water. 

We were very fortunate and saw 7 blue whales! We even saw one flip/dive (not sure what the official phrasing is but I am sure you get the gist) out the water which was spectacular. One of them was also a baby! It totally fantastic and I am very glad that we decided to go for it! Unfortunately I didn't get any photos, I didn't bother taking my camera out because I was concerned about the salt spray from waves getting on the lens.

the harbour

fisherman 

the harbour as the sun went down