I did get to see the cultural show after all - quite entertaining with young women whose improbably double-jointed hands flitted around their flowered headpieces like exotic insects, and bow-stanced young men jerking around like marionettes to the drums, then flying into acrobatic twirling that would shame a dervish.  Besides humor and grace, the show also had suspense, as the young men jumped around with elaborate demon masks on, flinging their copious tangles of wooly hair within centimeters of their flailing torches.  I expected the whole costume to erupt in flames any minute!

Today I visited a spice garden near the hotel, associating spices to the plants that provide them.  Who knew pepper was a creeper instead of a tree?  And that cardamom blooms from the bottom of the plant?  The Sri Lankans have an extensive herbal medicine practice, which makes me wonder whether the recipe (prescription?) of spices found in a good curry is intended to have similar curative properties. I picked up a few overpriced items in gratitude for an interesting tour.

Next I headed down to the old Dutch fort at Galle, supposedly a charming old town but in fact I found it a bit ramshackle and ordinary compared to the charming specimens littering Europe.  I suppose part of the appeal is it’s air of being forgotten by the stream of history.  My romantic visions of old colonial splendor shrank as my sense grew of the desparate attempts to simulate something familiar in an impossibly remote and "primitive" place.

I again struggled to make some decent photos, with minimal success, mostly in close-ups, but did enjoy circumnavigating the ramparts.  Each nook was filled with shy, straight-laced looking young Indian (Sri Lankan?) couples surruptitiously necking under the privacy of a colorful umbrella.  The machinery of war turned to the purpose of love…

When sweat began to flow, I stopped by the venerable New Oriental Hotel for a lime and soda (the traditional drink of gastronomically-wary visitors here - the lime is fresh squeezed and refreshing, the fizzy soda is guaranteed to come from a bottle, and the sugar syrup on the side requires boiling to make.)

A few hours was sufficient to circumnavigate the whole promontory, and a bit outside it, and to investigate a few high-class shops tucked in among the dilapadated colonials.  Wanting to ensure my arrival back in Colombo before dark cut the afternoon a bit short - and the drive back was as exciting few hours as usual - passing three fairly dramatic accident scenes en route.

Bits of destruction from the Tsunami are evident along parts of the coast here, but the main infrastructure is back in place (all new bridges and a widened, smoothly paved road.)  Surprisingly, to my eye it is often difficult to tell a building partially destroyed by the wave from the ones that are simply dilapidated.  And as usual, nature seems to protect her own - the palms lining the beaches don’t seem to have taken much of a beating, and every scar has healed over in tropical green.

Expanded photoset here.