We arrived in Arugam Bay very hot tired and sweaty from our trip from Kalkudah. The bus from Kalkudah to Batticaloa was fine - plenty of space, not too many people and only an hour. The next two buses (from Batticaloa to Attaravatti and from there to Pottivil) were an exercise in how many people can you fit into a bus - plus it must have been a shopping day as people had large bags of stuff piled all around us. By the end (around 4 and a half hours in total) we were glad to get out but had very sore bums.

We got a tuktuk to Happy Panda Homestay - a tiny 2 room guesthouse which has a lovely communal area with cushions and hammocks and big comfy beds with nice pillows! Owned by a russian surfer couple who were heading back to Moscow the next day.

We spent the afternoon walking on the beach - Arugam Bay beach is not particularly pretty, but the waves are why people come here - and we watched the surfers riding the waves from the beach. We ate at the Happy Panda - delicious seafood and pumpkin risotto, and we're so tired we were in bed early.

The room in Happy Panda was also nice and cool! For the first time I needed to use a sheet! Good nights sleep. We woke up and had breakfast (real coffee, French toast and fresh fruit and honey) whilst chatting with a Swiss guy who is a teacher and two British ladies - Tigger and Harriet who were also travelling around Sri Lanka. They let us know about happy hour in a nearby guesthouse/hotel.

We spent the day on the beach - which has a cool sand bar where there are lots of different currents and waves coming in from different directions - do its fun to swim here and see where your pulled. We had lunch (a luxury in itself as we are used to two meals a day in this heat) at Gecko - and had another western treat, a fish burger with tartare sauce which was delicious.

After we spent some more time on the beach napping /reading. I enjoyed swimming in the really large waves in the afternoon while Emily sat on the beach and watched.

We headed back to the guesthouse, showered and got our washing (clean clothes!!!!) before heading to Hideaway for happy hour where we joined Tigger and Harriet. It turned out happy hour lasted as long as we were at the table - so ended up having a lot of arrack sours and passion-8's. Hideaway was a really cool hotel set back from the road in a lovely lantern lit garden. As we hadn't actually eaten yet we headed back to Gecko's for food. Unfortunately it was too late for any rice and curry so we had a chicken burger instead which was delicious (and the chicken was not at all bony!) and some beer.

We packed it in just before midnight as we had to be up the next morning for another day of buses, this time to Ella.