Riverina Hotel

5 readers found this review helpful

I'm now back after 2 amazing weeks in Beruwela, Sri Lanka enjoying the Indian Ocean, very cheap food & drink, some incredible wildlife and a cultural experience like nothing before.
The cost of living is amazingly cheap - £10 for a 3 course meal for 2, with drinks in the tourist areas! Of the beaten track, it was much less. A 100km train ride was around 75p!
Hotel Riverina was everything you would expect from one of the higher end establishments in the resort.
The rooms were spacious, cleaned regularly and thoroughly by a team of very friendly house keeping staff - special thanks to Gnanaruthna on rooms 301-312! Top bloke.
The aircon was reliable, the mini-bar well stocked, and not too pricey, and room service/coffee shop snacks perfectly acceptable with a decent variation. The rooms were cleaned or checked 3 times a day - a main clean in the morning, a quick check, and mini-bar top up in the afternoon, and the bed prepared and mosquito tablets changed in the evening. The flower on the pillow each night was a cute touch.
The pool was clean, and all surrounding areas well kept - thoroughly tended each morning and tidied throughout the day. There are loads of Chipmunks running around during the day, and a fair few crows, but both are well behaved and not too intrusive.
Also look out for the fruit bats swooping around after dusk! Awesome to watch whilst floating in the pool!
The food was excellent - a wide selection served as a buffet/banquet, freshly cooked, and well prepared. It is best to get to dinner and breakfast early as sometimes the buffet options will have been sat since serving starts.
Evening meals were 1200 Rupees - about £6 at time of writing.
Evening entertainment was variable - the karaoke night was particularly dire, but there is a local live band on Monday nights who do some very good covers, albeit with strong Sri Lankan accents!
We also ate at the Terrano Lodge by the river, an Austrian themed restaurant which I thoroughly recommend. Maharaja on the beach north of the river was also very good, along with the Aida Restaurant by the Railway Bridge.
Highlights of the trip were a visit to an Elephant orphanage, watching wild monkeys, going on Safari and seeing bears, elephants, crocodiles and very rare birds, climbing to the top of Sigiriya Rock - a 2000 year old palace built on top of a huge outcrop, releasing baby turtles into the sea, swimming in the pool at night whilst fruit bats swooped a few feet above us, 30c + all day and night, and even the monsoon rains which only lasted an hour or so came down warm!
We met some great people over there, but I've got to mention Kumara, a tuktuk driver who became a great friend and took us to some great places. A lot of tuktuk drivers will try to overcharge you, or take you to shops to earn a commission, but Kumara was as straight and honest as they come. If anyone is visiting Beruwela, I will pass on his mobile number!!
There are touts/guides who will offer to take you to their friends/fathers/brothers gem shop/wood carving shop/clothes shop/spice garden/ayurveda massage centre etc, but all are on commission, and the sales people in these shops are VERY persistent.
We found that the official tours arranged by First Choice were reasonable value, and took two separate overnight stays with them - 1 to Kandy.
Pinnewela, Dambullah, & Sigriya, and another to Udawalawe, Yala and Galle, all entry fees (pricey at some places) and 5* accommodation, breakfast and evening meals were provided.
Although both were very reasonable - approx £75 per person per day, we later realised the trips were sub-contracted to local tour operators who do the exact same trip themselves with the same English speaking guides for around half the price!
We went on a number of trips to temples, tea plantations, ancient monuments, coral reefs, rainforests, historic cities, and also a National Park Game reserve for my girlfriend’s birthday. We stayed in a wooden cabin in the park, which meant we could not leave the room at night as wild animals wandered freely around! We only had wild boar snuffling around, and a Lizard in the room when we woke, but the previous night an elephant was in the grounds!
The road trip to the Yala national park was with a guy called Desha - from deshatours.com - and as it was only a group of 4 passengers so it was a very laid back affair. Desha had a Vengaboys tape that perked everyone up on the longer stretches of the journey, and the minivan we were travelling in became known as the Vengabus! He is worth contacting if you want a high quality, but good value and informative trip.
We also took a number of day excursions arranged by the local "Beach boys" - look out for Luba and Miguel outside the Riverina - well-spoken, polite, friendly, and non-pushy and set us up with some very good trips to local places such as Sinharaja rainforest, Hikkaduwa coral reef and the turtle sanctuaries.
We paid around £15 per couple for most trips lasting most of the day - depending on entry fees.
Again the guides may take you to gem stores etc, but we found these to be less pushy and better priced than the shops the street touts took us to.
The standard of Driving in Sri Lanka is awe inspiring - in that it amazed me people were not dying every few seconds!
There is still huge areas still devastated by the Tsunami, 50,000 died in Sri Lanka, and even though we were on the West Coast, the wave was still 12m high - reducing many concrete buildings to rubble, and leaving no trace whatsoever of the shack type houses.
It's not all grim - the people are incredibly resilient, and eternally grateful that us tourists still visit, despite the civil war that was going on in the North and East of the country (it's relatively peaceful at the moment, and the coast south of Colombo was never really affected by it anyway).
The locals are some of the most polite and civil people I have met on my travels!
If you only learn two words of Sinhalese, then make sure they are "stoo-tee" - Thank you, and "Aye - you - Bo - Wan" have a long and happy life. This latter phrase is used a greeting, a farewell, and also as a very effective term to use to get rid of street touts.
They tend to graciously accept defeat when you politely say no thanks, Ayubowan to them!
We will definitely be going back, and despite the 11hr flight it is only 4.5hrs ahead so jetlag is not an issue. Transfer time to Riverina is about 3.5hrs, but if you get Ralston as a rep, he will make it seem so much less!
We really could not fault it (except for the chillies disguised as green beans - BAD mistake to make!) and would recommend to anyone to take the opportunity to go!