Jungle Tide workaway, Sri Lanka

Nestled high on a hill and about a 30 minute tuk tuk ride from the centre of Kandy is Jungle Tide guest house. It's a boutique accommodation surrounded by Sri Lankan jungle with some views through the trees to the valley below.

Jungle tide is owned by Jerry and Sally, an English couple who built it and have owned it for about eight years. For the first six years of operation the face to face customer service was done by their small Sri Lankan team (who continue to work there) as Sally and Jerry were in England taking care of online reservations and other management while continuing to work other jobs to finally afford to live and work in Sri Lanka full time. The workawayer accommodation was a small room/hut with a bathroom which we shared with four other workawayer's. Although it was cramped and hot we all managed to get along well and sleep reasonably comfortably. Until someone left the bathroom door open and the light on. Cue the mosquitos.

Anyone who knows me well also knows that I'm not overly fond of gardening. Sure I love being outdoors, enjoy a beautiful garden to look at and I'm not afraid of manual labour, but working in a garden for me is using the brushcutter and mowing grass with the ride on mower. That's it. The work duties at Jungle Tide were all gardening! Weeding, cutting grass, digging, clearing, watering and so on. The tools we had were machetes, mattocks, shears, forks and a shovel. So all the work was done by hand. Here's one example of the kind of work I'm talking about....the photo was taken at the beginning of day one.

The job was to clear the jungle from the fence line behind a new house that's been built on the property. The area would later be used for a terraced vegetable garden. It was overgrown so much and for so long that the owners and staff had forgotten what the area looked like. Despite my dislike for gardening, I do believe that if you do a job you should do it well. So with tools in hand we set out to discover what lies beneath. The terrain was steep and slippery and we were never really confident of our footings as there were bank edges and holes we couldn't see. But found. The heat, humidity and stubbornness of quite a lot of plants made for sweaty and hand blistering work but after a few days we were happy with our efforts and our hosts were even more so.

Most of the jobs were really clearing type works of one sort or another. The jungle loves to grow big and tough here in Kandy. As the name suggests (Jungle Tide) as quickly as you clear the area the jungle comes back like the tide arrives to the shore. Other jobs included cleaning the roof gutters, weeding the driveway, cooking for fellow workawayer's and making tree guards.

We cooked our own meals with food supplied and on occasion we ate with our hosts and paying guests up at the house. One enjoyable thing was the pool. This was like a glistening gift and provided respite from the heat and hard slogging work late in the afternoons. The other was meeting some great people including our fellow workawayer's.

Another challenge conquered.