June 20,

Today we awoke and leisurely got around. No hurries today. Jeff went to the store for breakfast items. I started repacking our stuff while he was out – we had laundry done here, so I sorted and folded it away. We had yogurts and bananas for morning start with our coffee and hot chocolate. Jeff has still been able to find french press ground coffee for me, which I have appreciated!🥰 

Anyway, we were all packed and loaded by 1100. Jeff paid our host, Dilan (laundry was 2,000 Rupees-$6.54) . As we getting in CB, the little boy of the homestay came and watched us. I waved bye and took a picture of him – so cute. Dilan opened the gate and we waved bye at each other. It was a good place/stay. So on the way…

We are heading east and south now, pretty much along the coast. There is still a lot of military presence here, as there has been up here in the north. But it struck me more as we were driving now – seemed to be many more checkpoints with “more official” looking military personnel. A little bit intimidating, but they were all friendly enough, some even smiling and waving as we went by. We passed over another bridge, called Elephant Pass. No we did not see any elephants, but I sure looked for them! Actually by looking at the map, this whole upper north, Jaffna area is technically an island. It is separated from Sri Lanka except for bridges! I don't know if it is a man made separation on the very eastern coast of this bay area, but there is an opening on Google maps, anyway.

We continued on mostly good roads, arriving close to our place when we saw a huge war memorial in a water lily pond. It was dedicated to their Civil War, given the name – The Victory Monument, according to a placard. Another placard listed the designer and sculptor as a Corporal. It was impressive. We went to the building adjacent. It had pictures in display of the making of the statue, and about the war victory. It was mostly all in Sinhalese, but you were able to see military movement to reclaim Sri Lanka. It was interesting to see a memorial that had been put up so fast, in the middle of a lily pond. HUH?? Questions??

Moving on, we arrived at our place in Mullaitivu around 1400. There was a man, not the host, already here when we arrived. He was cleaning – so the caretaker? He let us in and showed us around. He doesn't speak much English, so a lot of hand signaling was going on. It is a three bedroom house – someone's home, maybe a second home. Two of the bedrooms – one on main level and one upstairs – have AC. The third on is also upstairs, but smaller and no AC. There are two bathrooms – one each level. It is very new and much nicer than our Dikwella home was (less local and more… westernized, I guess I want to say.) Anyway, the caretaker left and Jeff left to go to the store. We are only here one night, which is a shame. I could stay here awhile, I think. 

When Jeff returned, we set about making pasta. We were hungry – did not have lunch!! At 1600 we sat down to 'lunner' of green chilies cheese pasta and cucumber, tomato, onion salad… and the electricity went out. Well, without a ceiling fan going this house heats up quickly, so maybe I'm not as big fan – pun intended – of the house as I thought. Finished our meal and went for a walk to the beach.

Along the walk there (one kilometer- 0.6 mile), we were stared at, smiled at, and greeted by locals. There are no more tourists in sight, in fact, we  may be the only tourists in this town. We passed by a church being built(?), at least it was a nice looking facade front. On the beach… again it's a very local, working beach. There were men working on fishing nets, three men sorting through numerous amounts of small fish, one group taking a boat out, and one boat coming in. We walked just a bit. The beach was nice with good sand and fairly clean. Then we saw some cows on the beach! It always takes me a minute to wrap my brain around – cows on a beach. From here we head back to our place, passing by another water lily pond, smaller than we saw on our drive here. Then we also passed a couple more ponds. The lilies were blooming more in these ponds, just an observation.

When we arrived back at our place we still did not have electricity, so Jeff texted our host (as the caretaker doesn't seem to respond). It had been off for around two hours by now. The host said there is an area wide outage. Then about a minute after this it came back on. Jeff turned on the AC to the upstairs bedroom. We ate some crackers and green chili cheese (happy cow cheese). I blogged and Jeff read. Then showered and bed by 2200.