Kalpitiya has become quite fashionable in the last five years with lots of people trying to invest on beachfront properties, mostly owned by fisherfolk and the government. Big plans for big hotels are everywhere, but so far only the ‘eco-friendly’ wobbly cabins have emerged. The place is supposed to be ideal for dolphin watching and early every morning boats go out to chase dolphins that chase fish. I, alas, missed it all because this only happens at 7 in the morning. I tried to find out what is it that dolphins actually do the rest of the day other than chasing fish, but nobody was able to answer.
When you look Kalpitiya up in a map it appears as this thin peninsula that branches out into the ocean near Puttalam and encloses a huge lagoon almost 65 km. long as its far end approaches the island again. This rather simple idea is quite deceiving, when you’re there, you realize that this long peninsula that stretches up north develops into several other smaller forelands, islands and sand banks where the border between sea and lagoon is blurred with water and land and beaches and coconut trees everywhere you look at. Absolutely stunning.
As tourism grows and some fisherfolk start to shift their gruff ways to the more polite and profitable (and relaxed) business of learning some English and boating the Colombo-ites around to the beach and to watch the dolphins, a huge coal power plant also looms in the horizon. When in Kalpitiya you’re pretty much oblivious to this since you cannot actually see it, but in the twenty or so kilometers that go from the A3 road and into Kalpitiya, not only the plant is visible but also the flourishing of new white buildings that house its employees, most of them Chinese.
The country’s virtually official policy of rejecting western-led development projects with their self-righteous conditionings, has increasingly benefited the questionable improvement of receiving billions of dollars in Chinese-led development, which of course comes free of human rights accountability demands, but it is still to be seen what will be the share Sri Lanka will have to carry. While western paternalism is hard to swallow anymore, in Sri Lanka or anywhere it insists on correcting others, its terms seem vaguely more reliable and stable than becoming involved with the other guys, but Sri Lanka is happy to take the risk. In this sense, Kalpitiya is the perfect metaphorical example of the country’s current dilemma: develop high-end beach resorts with the implications that western demands brings along, or develop Chinese and Russian style, accepting the mob-like wink that gives the chills to many.
Our friend’s lodge is placed in an idyllic location, what seems to be one of the last tips of land in the north end of Kalpitiya. While it is technically on the ocean proper, there is a sand bank maybe half a mile away that connects two islands, so for all practical purposes, what you see from the lodge is a lagoon and a sandy beach that appears and disappears with the seasons in the horizon. We made use of two of the boats to get across this virtual lake to the sandbank where we could bathe in the ocean or on the quiet lagoon side. Some people walked, like an hour to get around, while others drove since the sand connected the whole semi-circle. The two boats used were also an interesting example of how tourism is changing labor patterns in the area. While the first we used was a multi-purpose dinghy that was cleaned-up to carry a few people, the second was owned by a Muslim guy who had recently spent almost $4,000 in this new spotless white motorboat with cushioned seats and a Miami-esque feel to it. Gladly, the owner’s jumping on and off the boat in his Sarong with the water to his neck to push the boat in and out of the beach managed to kill that feeling.
