Casuarina Beach, Lagoon Crab (Jaffna)

Sun through the clouds

The beach has many names (Kashoorina, Cadju-something), but by any moniker it’s the best in Jaffna. That we saw or heard of, at least. You can wade out waist deep for meters, kilometers we heard. I just kept walking and ran out of time to go further. The beach itself is populated by this absurd evergreen trees looking like they washed in from Norway. I think they’re called Casuarina, hence the name.

The beach is a good hour away from Jaffna, at the north west end of the main peninsula. They’re building a big access road there which should be done soon, but we took the lesser one.

The Hanuman sticker is inside the van

When we first went the beach was empty and pristine. I came again at sunset and it was full of people and pot-bellies and flesh-colored jungies, so I might recommend going around noon (the time no one recommends to go). We had a nice swim among the surreal trees.

This, I believe is a Casuarina Tree. It is weird

The water is baby blue and calm, the light waves come in fast but they seem to be pushed by the wind, not tides. The real waves break way further out, if they break at all.

While we were swimming, Shazni and Graham were hell-bent on finding some lagoon crab. They asked some fishermen who mentioned that a nearby UN building, hostel or something I think, had access to the export stuff. The best place to get Sri Lankan crab is really Singapore. The boys got lucky just as someone was going out with a bucket. I think they paid Rs. 5,000 for eight people. That’s a bit more than Rs. 600 each, considerably more than the Rs. 800 we paid to feed people on sea crabs in town.

However, it was unbelievably delicious. I’m not much of a crab person because I feel like it’s a lot of work for little meat. It’s like you have to kill the thing all over again. In this case the fishermen boiled the live crabs (I know, sorry), added some garlic and salt and butter and we ate the spread on banana leaves. These crabs were so big, it felt like eating chicken.

Literally the biggest crab I has eaten