Monday in Bentota

After a splendid breakfast featuring Sri Lankan omelette and bacon, we were taken in the hotel's boat across the lagoon to the weekly Monday vegetable market in Aluthgama. All manner of fruits, vegetables and dried fish on sale in a large and very well patronised market. I think most of the local population do their weekly shop here. A walk in the town with the boatman ended in a dress shop where Christine purchased two fetching pairs of loose trousers bearing elephant designs ( or ephelant in Zoe speak).

Back across the lagoon we sailed, then caught a tuk-tuk to Geoffrey Bawa's house at Lunuganga ( literally salt river). Here the locally famous architect spent 50 years developing his weekend retreat of 25 acres of former rubber plantation into a Portmeirionesque pastiche of buildings and gardens fronting onto a lake. Here we saw ebony, ironwood and balsa trees, both water and land monitor lizards, and probably the closest ha-ha to the equator. What particularly intrigued us was that he had employed a small army of men to lower a hill by just 4 feet, still involving an enormous amount of hand excavation, so that he could view the lake from his breakfast terrace. The labour could have been spared had he sat at the other side of the house, but that was where he liked to drink his gin and tonic at sunset. We recognised a kindred spirit.

Tuk-tuk north to Bentota railway station and lunch again at 'the loft', then a paddle southwards to examine the rocks at the nearby headland. In my day they would have been termed Archean gneisses. Looked to be very highly metamorphosed sediments.

Tuk-tuk back to the hotel, and a beer sitting on the lawn by the lagoon as the sun set gently into misty clouds.