This week was mostly dedicated to determining our plan for the final locations of our trip. That was always planned to be a finale in Europe, but we struggle with even wanting to go to Europe (day 242). Eventually we get around to making some decisions and booking the final pieces of our travel year (days 242-244, 246). On day 245 we were rescued by a tuk-tuk driver after putting ourselves into a location we couldn’t easily walk out of. It turned into a great impromptu tour of Colombo. In the final days of the week (246, 247) I turn up the intensity on my Spanish learning.

Travel Log: Day 241 (2/23), Sri Lanka

We started school at 9am today as part of shifting our whole schedule by a couple hours. By the time we leave Sri Lanka we want to get going to bed at 11pm, waking up around 8am, and starting school at 10am. All meals would be shifted the same amount to. This is to soften the time zone shift in South Africa.

After school we lounged around, and then in the late afternoon we went to Galle Face Green. That’s a more touristy area of Colombo that has beaches, malls, and restaurants. We walked along the beach and then we to an old Dutch hospital area. That area had some cool buildings but was overrun with people asking for money, offering tours, and offering rides. We walked out of there and to the big mall, One Galle Mall.

For dinner we ate in the basement level of the mall at a pizza place. It seemed to be a ripoff at first, like $13 for a slice of pizza and a bowl of pasta. The portions were enormous though. AC only made it about half way through the pasta, and BC’s was pretty much an entire medium sized pizza. JC and I didn’t order anything, protesting the cost, and we all ended up eating our fill from those two items.

We caught a PickMe back to our condo after turning down about five tuk-tuks, one of which insisted on putting his number in my phone for a tour tomorrow. I won’t be calling him and didn’t save the number.

Travel Log: Day 242 (2/24), Sri Lanka

We were all struggling today a bit. AC has a gum infection of some kind and a headache. JC and I are already over this Airbnb and Sri Lanka more generally. Our condo is constantly hot because the AC in the living room barely works. The host already sent us a picture of the meter showing that we’ve used 122kwh in our four days here. We are allotted 10 “units” per day, and I assume those units are kwh.

We’re running about 20 kwh per day over. From what I can tell even the highest electric category is still only 30 rupees ($.10) per kwh. It will cost us $40 roughly at the end if we keep up the usage, and we have no intention of stopping. With dengue very high in the area right now, we aren’t about to open the windows and let mosquitos in.

The internet speed in our condo is the worst I have used in more than 20 years. It’s 1.5 Mbit when I test it, and I haven’t had that slow of internet since the early 2000s with a cheap DSL package. It’s hard to even stream music on Pandora uninterrupted.

Besides the condo, I think we just have no interest in exploring Sri Lanka. The turtle stuff in Hikkaduwa was going to be super cool, and the beach there looked amazing. Once that turned into shit water and turtle abuse the whole allure of the island popped for me. I’m very ready to move on. I’m sure we’ll force ourselves to do at least one excursion type thing while we’re here.

We ordered Paan Paan again for lunch and it was great. We cooked the other meals at home, and didn’t go anywhere except for JC and I making a grocery store run.

We’re also having some friction in our minds with booking Europe and I don’t know why, or what exactly it’s about. It manifests in my thoughts as not wanting to go to Europe, not wanting to figure out Portugal, Spain, and Croatia. I think something else is going on though because these are among the easiest places we will go to all year from a language and culture standpoint.

Travel Log: Day 243 (2/25), Sri Lanka

I think I realized why the host of our condo might be so focused on the electrical cost. Rather than worrying about what we will pay, which is part of it, I realized we are pushing her usage into quickly escalating cost tiers. Whatever usage we have during our two weeks here will carry forward after for the rolling 30 day billing period. Due to this we decided not to run our AC at all during the day, and we’ll just run it when we sleep. It got hot as balls in here today but we survived by turning the fans up.

We ate breakfast and lunch at home and then ordered a new place called New City Food for dinner. After I got our order from the delivery driver, I came in and took off my long sleeves and pants only to hear JC say “this isn’t our food”. Seconds later I received a call from the driver and I told him I’d bring it out. I put my long stuff on again since there were monster mosquitos out there, and exchanged bags with the driver and another guy. The food was decent but we didn’t love it. My meal was very spicy.

JC and I worked on Europe planning through the day but we haven’t yet booked anything. The kids and I finished Stranger Things tonight.

Travel Log: Day 244 (2/26), Sri Lanka

Today JC and I spent the whole day, aside from school obligations, working on Europe planning. We narrowed in on a plan to start in Portugal and then split the entire time in Europe between Portugal and Spain. It just simplifies everything and reduces flight costs, allowing us to absorb the higher Airbnb costs we’re running into.

Also a key to this two-location Europe plan is that we discovered we could find places in Barcelona at reasonable but still higher than projected prices. You have to search for 32+ days to find them, which we happened to do at one point. This is due to regulations in Barcelona attempting to fight against short term party people booking Airbnbs. We think Barcelona will not only be a lot of fun and have tons of interesting things to see, but we expect it to be an easier transition for our limited Spanish.

The first step in booking was to extend our South Africa Airbnb by a few days to get us to when the Portugal Airbnb is available. Then we booked the flight which was a royal pain in the ass. It was only available in google flights through aggregators, and we didn’t see booking.com as an option when we went to book, where we did see it at one point previously.

To avoid unknown third party platforms we tried to book the flights directly with each airline, making for a self-transfer in Cape Town which we were fine with. The site for one of the flights though didn’t have a zip code field which caused our cards to fail the purchase. We went back resigned to use an aggregator, and booking.com was back. We booked through that and fought through a couple more glitches to get the flight booked.

Next up we booked the Lisbon Airbnb for five weeks. After that was locked in and accepted by the host, we booked the Spain Airbnb. These place are going to be nice and we really didn’t cheap out on them. In both cases we are within short walking distance of the main attractions, and in Barcelona we can even walk to the beach in about 10 minutes.

We just have two remaining pieces which is the flight from Lisbon to Barcelona, and the flight from Barcelona to Denver. I feel relieved somewhat that the process of planning and booking things is coming to an end for this trip. It also makes me sad that the end of our trip is near enough to be done planning and booking.

Travel Log: Day 245 (2/27), Sri Lanka

Today we took a PickMe back to the main downtown Colombo area with the intention of doing a self-guided tour of the sites. We got to the first location and felt like we got punched in the face. It was a Hindu temple on a narrow set of streets, and we were clearly out of place. We huddled for a moment after seeing a guy holding cash at the entrance to the temple. JC went and asked how much to go in, and it was free, although they clearly expected donations.

We went into the temple and walked around not understanding what we were looking at. We walked out and donated 500 rupees ($1.66). At this point we were unsure of what to do. The surrounding area didn’t look any better and maybe worse in terms of walkability and homelessness. A tuk-tuk driver pulled up and I asked if he could take the four of us, and he said yes. We asked for the price to our next location and it was 300 rupees so we got in.

The driver upsold us to his tour package. Ironically we decided against a getyourguide.com tuk-tuk tour package. That was $23/person but our driver quoted us $10/person. He took us to all the sites on JC’s list and then some, and provided some good info as well. I think we spent a few hours with him, and then he drove us back. With the ride back and tour we ended up giving him 1,800 rupees ($60). This was really a win win, with him getting more, and us paying less.

JC and I had drinks here in the hot box, and then decided to go try out a bar. We walked a half mile or so to a place called Gihans Family Restaurant and Pub. It was really awesome with nice ambience, very cool AC, a friendly bartender, and cheap drinks. They also had food so we got some calamari.

For dinner we ordered PIzza Hut and it was really good. It was AC’s movie pick so we started at the beginning of the Marvel movies with Iron Man.

Travel Log: Day 246 (2/28), Sri Lanka

Today we stayed around the house after our busy day yesterday. I did some math on what it would take to get to an A2 Spanish level, which is completing unit 4 of Duolingo. It would require a full unit per day basically to hit A2 just before going to Spain. To see how long that takes, I started a timer and proceeded into a new unit. Through the day I spent over two hours and still had quite a bit left in the unit. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to pull that off.

Our Wifi connection lost internet in the afternoon, so we ended up just hanging out in the living room not doing much. We ran some AC in the living room because the heat in here is stifling.

For dinner we ordered Paan Paan again, and once again it was great.

Today was the 8 month mark of our trip, and we booked the final two pieces of the trip. It took a lot of research but we found good flights from Lisbon to Barcelona, and Barcelona to Denver. These are great flights, we didn’t go cheap on either one of them. The cost was pretty good though considering the high quality flights. We brought down the cost some by booking the flight to the US through capital one with all of our miles. That pretty much put the flights at the original projected cost.

Travel Log: Day 247 (3/1), Sri Lanka

I finished up my Duolingo unit and it takes me about 3.5 hours to do a unit. That’s not practical to pull off every day, so I’m just going to do as much Duo as I can each day, and improve as much as I can before Spain. I got in nearly two hours of Duo today, and some Dreaming In Spanish.

JC and I went to the grocery store, and then later decided to book a tour for tomorrow that will take the entire day. We will tour through Bentota, Hikkaduwa, Galle, and a few other sites. It’s going to be a long day but we really need to see more of Sri Lanka before we leave at the end of the week. I really want to give Sri Lanka a fair chance. The people have been especially nice to us, and I want to find a way to like their country.

Since we’re low on cash and doing a tour tomorrow, we went to get more cash over at People’s bank down the road. We got about $100 worth of rupees. We noticed a long line of vehicles at the gas station. I asked Claude about it when I got back and it’s apparently some contractual dispute between petrol companies. The Sri Lanken government told everyone not to worry because there was a month’s supply of gas, but just like we do in America, they started panic buying.

I did the February budget today, at least as much as I could with transactions still pending. The numbers came out looking pretty good. Discretionary spending and food were all under control. I’ll have to finalize the numbers once the transactions clear.

We met our next door neighbor today for the first time. She is probably in her 60s-70s and she was very kind. We learned her name but couldn’t really pronounce it, and she couldn’t pronounce ours either.