On Saturday we decided to visit Dondra lighthouse, which is located a short distance from Matara. The Lighthouse was built by the British over a hundred and sixty years ago and offers stunning views of the coastline.
A few hours too long in the sun yesterday meant quite a few members of the team were suffering from what felt like third degree burns, which made the difficult walk up the steps of the lighthouse just that bit more painful. However, once we reached the top, after only a few problems with vertigo, we were rewarded with stunning views. The guide at the top informed us that the strong design of the Lighthouse meant it survived the tsunami, while the surrounding area was devastated. After being subject, yet again, to lets con the foreigner’s ploys at the bottom with ‘exit fees’, we set off towards a little cafe round the bay that we had glimpsed from the top.

However, the route to the cafe was not as simple as it had looked from the top. We ended up walking along the jagged coast, with some interesting rock climbing manoeuvres thrown in for good measure. At the end of the beach we came towards what looked like an intriguing but harmless patch of rainforest. However it was not as harmless as it first appeared. The area turned out to be the home to at least 4 very large Monitor lizards. Just as we were arming ourselves with sticks and rocks to fight off any attacks of the lizard variety a small child appeared, to which one unnamed team member suggested we sent as bait. After surviving the lizards den, partly due to child bait, we wondered through a small village to be greeted by locals highly amused at our lizard fighting arsenal.

After being directed to the cafe, we enjoyed another ‘best coke ever’ and some local food then repeated the trek back to Moonbridge.