Day 18 – Driving a scooter to Virgin white tea plantation and along the ocean -Mirissa

26/09/2014 09:45

We arranged a scooter with our guesthouse and hit the road around 10 am after breakfast.
The plan was to go to the Handunugoda Tea Estate to see how the most expensive tea in the world is done (price for one kilo of virgin white tea is around 1400 USD).
The tea plantation was around 20 km drive from Weligama.
We stopped on the beach few times to take pictures and relax. We saw the famous pole fishermen.

The tea plantation was very interesting and informative. We also got a complimentary tea tasting and cake.

We got lost on the way back and had to ask for the direction.
Stopped for a quick bite in some stall next to the beach and enjoyed small picnic on the beach with beautiful view of the ocean.

Went to see small buddhist temple which was mentioned in our travel guide. The place was completely abandoned. It started to rain when we arrived. We waited for under the temple roof. It stopped raining after a while and we wanted to leave when old buddhist monk showed up and offered to show us inside of the temple. We agreed and were amazed by the inside decoration of the temple. There was large lying Budha statue in the middle and beautiful paintings all around the walls. The place was in a bad shape but the monk said i tis still used for the ceremonies. He explained that there are 21 statues of Budha in his different lifes. Has spectacular it was to bet he only people in this old temple guided by old buddhist monk.

We drove back to the guesthouse and had another amazing dinner – freshly cought fish with salad.
Chatted for a while with the questhouse owner about our day, Sri Lanka and Czech republic.