The night trip to Unawatuna, turned out to be much more pleasant than a day one. It’s cooler at night, here neon signs and colorful billboards takeover the concrete landscape. Buddha statues large and small blink in multicolored lights, even harder to ignore. Clothes, jewelry, sweet shops and “food centers” line the straight road from Colombo to Galle.( I whisper a prayer for Nigeria’s Electric Power Supply).Our destination, Unawatuna, is a holiday beach resort ten Kilometers from Galle, considered to be amoung the most beautiful beaches in the world its lies magnificently along the coast of the Indian ocean.
Several stops later the air-conditioned bus takes us to roads closer to the guilty mercury sea. As we pass the small towns and villages on both sides of the narrow road, I’m reminded that these were the worse hit areas of the tsunami, thousand died here. I reflect on one of the world’s worst natural disasters, yet I’m thrilled to be here and look forward to swimming in those same waters.
Rickety homes for the fishermen folk remain frightfully close to the Sea, though its dark I can see as the bus speeds past, most homes and shops have been rebuilt. The road itself has been well repaired; life has gone on for the living. Only a few derelict homes remain, like ghost among the living the houses stand lonely and worn, as if to remind the world---- “tsunami was here".
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