Middle-aged flash packers

After a very disturbed night listening to whining dogs, trains, coughing and chanting (actually the chanting was fine) we got up and had yet another Sri Lankan breakfast. Chatted to the other guests. That is the one thing I really enjoy about the guest house accommodation, you do meet other people who have interesting stories to tell.
The Brit couple next to us told us when they arrived, their taxi dropped them off at night at the “shortcut” to the guest house. The shortcut is actually a treacherous, steep and muddy path, hard enough to negotiate in the daylight, let alone the dark! The woman then said she was glad the airline had lost her luggage because she wouldn’t have been able to carry her bag along the track. Now that’s a positive attitude.
As the weather forecast predicted rain late morning, we decided to climb Ella Rock straight after breakfast.
Steve decided to make things more interesting and take a slightly different route to Ella rock, the logic being we could walk back the usual route and along the train track. He had downloaded maps on his phone so knew exactly where we were going.
All went well until a rather large lady picking tea blocked our path and pointed to an alternative one. This unfriendly gesture resulted in us getting lost and lo and behold – who should appear but a friendly local happy to lead us the “right” way! Strangely he seemed to want us to pay him for his kindly advice. He didn’t appear that pleased with the 15 rupees Steve gave him (about 7p!).
It’s a total scam. The locals have made lots of paths that lead nowhere and then they “find” you and “help” you the right way for money. We saw another woman deliberately send a young couple in a different direction then when they were out of sight, got the same guy who “found” us to “find” them. We tried to tell them, but they trusted her.
Usually I might have found this quite amusing but I’m afraid I’m reaching sense of humour failure regarding the total fleecing of tourists by just about everyone here. For me, the golden goose has been well and truly throttled. Any trust I had in these people has gone.
We got to the top and the view was pretty but not world class and certainly not worth travelling all the way here for.
We made it down to the train tracks before the heavens opened. It rained and rained and rained…..my fingertips were totally shrivelled and Steve was freezing.
We found a cafe and holed up in there until the rain stopped – which it didn’t. A pizza, 2 pots of tea and a coffee later it was still raining. Still we made good progress plotting our escape out of Ella to Mirissa.
When we got back some other people asked if we’d share a taxi with them as they were also going to Mirissa. The escape is planned for 10am tomorrow.
The guest house owner is quids in as we paid for 3 nights but are only staying 2 and his son is the taxi driver.