Homeward bound

Our journey home took around 20 hours.

We left Velassaru at 7.30 am on the speedboat.  The ride back to Male was far less comfortable than the ride out.  It felt like we were on a roller coaster, the way the boat kept shooting over the top of big waves and slamming back down on the water.  The elderly Italian lady we were sharing the boat with looked very unwell indeed!

At Male we had some bad luck.  We arrived at the check in desk all ready to request the emergency exit seats on our onward flight from Colombo to Heathrow.  Just as we were about to approach the desk, another British couple push in front of us from the queue next to us.  We couldn't believe how rude they were.  We saw them thanking the check in lady, smiling in a smug way.  Amber said 'They better not have taken our emeency exit seats!'.  I reassured her that we would have to have been extremely unlucky for this to be the case.

Our take off was delayed by an hour and a half while the engineers at Male tried to fix the dashboard dials on the plane!  Always reassuring when the 'small technical glitch' is something so fundamental to the successful operation of the aircraft.  On the other hand, better to give them as much time as they need to fix the problem than rush them and risk the dials failing at 35,000 ft.

Once we left Male, our journey to Colombo was otherwise uneventful.  We only had half an hour to catch our connecting flight, but luckily the gate was right next to where we emergedfrom  after leaving the plane from Male and we boarded in no time.

I should have held my tongue.

When we boarded the plane we realised we were allotted the seats behind the emergency exit seats.  And who should be sat in front of us?  You guessed it, our friends the queue jumpers.  Nice.  Amber was seething.

Thankfully the flight was rather empty and there was space available on the front row, where they usually put parents with small babies.  I asked a steward if we could move seats to take advantage of the better leg room (and to prevent Amber from thottling the people in the emergency seats).  He had no problem with it.  We moved.  Mission accomplished.

The flight took forever.  First of all we left behind schedule.  Then we were in the air for 11.5 hours.  It would have been fine if the plane had been one of the newer ones with movies on demand, but sadly it wasn't, so we had to fit sleep between the films we wanted to watch.  Saw some good ones though:  'Total Recall', 'Hope Springs' and 'Premium Rush'.

We were half dead by the time we arrived at Heathrow!  Then we had the whole ordeal of waiting for the bus to ate us to the car park to rescue the car.

I have no idea how Amber stayed awake long enough to drive us back home!

For all the problems we had - the driver, the hotels and the blasted weather - I have to say that I really enjoyed our honeymoon.  Sri Lanka is such an interesting country that no amount of bad experiences could really affect your perception of it as such; and the Maldives, well, we had truly rotten luck with the weather, but I couldn't fault the food or the level of service and even in the rain there is something special about being on such a small island.  I'm not sure if we could ever justify a return trip to Velassaru, but I hope we will find time to return to Sri Lanka, as there is so much more I would like to see.

Did someone say leopards?