After our first experience on the Sri Lankan roads, a white knuckle midnight drive from the airport, all honking and overtaking, no one was more surprised than us when we hired a car. We had a bit of guidance, "avoid these areas - pointing at map - there's still a bit of guerilla warfare going on in there, be careful here the roads are narrow, potholed and winding", from Ron, our guest house manager and then we were off on our own to see as much of Sri Lanka as humanly possible in two weeks.

First stop Hikkadua, a tourist town with no tourists. There must have been at least one hundred guest houses and hotels along 5 or so kilomotres of beach and we only saw one other tourist while we were there. Strange. It did have a real paradise feel though and as we walked down the beach we were joined by an motley crew of stray dogs and dope pedlars. We declined their kind offers of cheap recreational drugs (the roads were crazy enough) and had a cheap cocktail on the beach at sunset instead before retiring to our beach-front abode for the night.
The next morning we were on the road early again for the short drive to Galle, an old Dutch fort, first settled by the Portuguese in the 1500's. We jumped out of the car to have a quick look around when we were recognised by the cook from our last guest house (a common scam we found out later, dang I'm so trusting) who took us on a tour of galle, through the local shrine, complete with the obligatory reclining buddha. The tour continued into one of his friends stores before concluding in a jewellery store, proving that some scams are universal. Once we got away from him we made our way down past Sri Lanka's only privately owned island before heading inland onto the steepest, narrowest, most potholed road it has ever been my misfortune to drive upon. A17, a main highway, appaently hasn't been touched since the British first paved Sri Lanka in the 1950's, if it was someones driveway you'd offer to fix it for them. More pothole than road and barely wide enough in some parts for a car and a motorbike, A17 still has buses hurtling along it as fast as they can go. They are corteous enough to blast their horns so you know they're coming but as for moving out of the middle of the road? Not a chance, it's the law of the Jungle out here and bigger is better. We had a small stop after a truck scratched down the side of our car tring to squeeze past us, I jumped out and the three passengers in the truck jumped out and tried to get me to admit fault. They pointed to a rusty peice of metal flapping off the back of their truck (it looked like it had been hanging there for years), I pointed to the large scratch down the side of the rental car. they said "Company Car", I said "Rental Car". They wanted me to follow them home (and to pay presumably), I just wanted to keep moving as we were averaging less than 30kms per hour flat out and it was starting to get dark. In the end I ask what the wanted to do about it and once they realised that I wasn't going to budge (or pay) we went our separate ways (and told our respective stories no doubt). We found the first hotel, pulled over and were happy just to be alive.