Surfer dude

We are woken in the early morning by something on our roof. It turns out to be a small grey langur which is perched on the table outside our room. We doze of again and when we wake we meet the landlord of our accommodation ... only his wife was around yesterday. He seems nice but tries to sell us a whale watching trip for a really cheap price. We've read a fair bit about the whale watching in Mirissa and were in two minds whether to do it or not as it seems lots of boats chase the whales but there seems to be a few reputable companies around. Obviously just by going you are encouraging the tourist whale watching trade but it is one of the best places to see blue whales in the world and we've hit it at the right season so we spend a bit of time asking around, reading online reviews and phone some of the recommended companies. It's the real reason we came here so we plump for a place that has excellent reviews after speaking to the captain, Manoj. It's in the mid range price bracket and our landlord seems completely perplexed and a little annoyed as to why we would pay more for what, he feels, his 'brothers' firm do just as well!

We have some beach time in the morning and late afternoon. Fred spends the hottest part of the day in a very small, very hot internet cafe trying to sort through photos and doing a few blip entries until the internet goes down ... she's getting a bit behind without the luxury of the laptop. Andy plays violin.

In the late afternoon we walk up the beach to a small island at the end ... it's not much of an island but you have to wade a little to get to it. From there we have a great view of the sunset in one direction and some local surfers in the other.

There are loads of restaurants on the beach offering seafood platters so we decide to treat ourselves to one which consists of a whole fish, crab, calamarie and some big prawns ... yum.