Tuesday 20 June Colombo

 Another early wake up around 5 am. Ann still sleeping though. Having difficulty adjusting to all the time changes. Should be ok in a couple of days. The wind is still strong but the seas have died down and the ship is not rolling as much. It is 28 degrees and light cloud. There is a warship off the port side stern that seems to be shadowing us, it may be security against possible pirate attacks or it is just going the same way as us.

We are not expected to dock now before 1.30 and it is a 20 min shuttle bus ride to the main wharf gate. We are docking in a container terminal area so no walking is allowed. It will be a mad scramble for tickets to go ashore as it will be restricted by the numbers they can fit on the shuttle buses! 

I head down just after 1pm to queue for our tickets. The queue is 20 metres long. It doesn’t take too long and we are group 8. The container area where we dock is huge. We  don’t get clearance to disembark until 1.45. Our group is not called until 2.20. Then onto the shuttle bus and it does take 15 mins to get to the gate. There was no way anybody could walk through the traffic and find their way! When we get off the bus we are swamped with Tuk tuk drivers and others offering tours. We find our bus and hop on. Not everyone is there and we have to wait for people which is understandable in the circumstances. We eventually head off at 3 pm.   The last shuttle is 7.30 pm.

We head off in the bus and Colombo has a lot of high rise buildings and some 5 star hotels. There is a lot of. Construction work on hold. All the work has been financed by China and they have called in the debt and now Sri Lanka is in dire financial difficulty.  The economy is in real trouble and they are pleased to get any foreign income from tourists, so it is a shame that with our late arrival a number of tours have had to be cancelled. At least our trivia friends have had their India tour rescheduled albeit 5hey will be leaving later.

On our tour we visited a number of the main tourist spots, such as the red mosque, a Buddhist temple and a Hindu temple. We also saw the major govt buildings. We got back to the ship at 6.15 pm. It was rushed but it needed to be.  

Tonight the clocks go back another 30 mins! It is 9.30pm and we are still at the wharf. We were supposed to depart at 8pm.