OK, the downside to a vacation in the south of Sri Lanka:

The trip out.

The punishing trip from Colombo’s airport to, say, the little village of Koggala (coming in, that is), is mitigated by the fact that when it’s over … you’re on vacation.

Going back … no real reward. Just a brutal, “why did I do this?” commute.

Before we left, I took a walk on the beach. Waves rolling in, warm water, perfect sand … had to, right? Seemed like I was the only person on the beach for miles. The prints my bare feet left were the only ones in sight.

The reality, however, is that the west coast of Sri Lanka is packed with people. You may not see them right off, because of the palms and the ground cover, but they’re there. Reminds me of Oahu’s north shore. You’re not really alone, even if you feel as if you are. Someone is sitting behind that bush, and watching you.

Before picking up the journey, a word on the South Beach Resort. It’s simple, and fairly spartan (no TV, a dongle needed for internet, at $1 an hour), and some reviewers have complained at the lack of this or that amenity. But what do you want for $45 a night (in October, anyway)? The place has an amazing view, waves crashing 30 feet from the seaside rooms (see below), “look at me” sunsets every night (see above) and friendly staff. Dinner onsite is shaky, if no one has sold the kitchen something fresh from the sea, and you can’t really walk anywhere without engaging dozens of local residents in conversations about services they are willing to render for a low, low cost … but a tuk-tuk ride to Unawatuna takes a half hour and costs about $5, and you can find lots of good dining options there.

So, hotel by day, tourist spot every second night or so, and it’s fine. Wonderful.

The extent of our immunization preparation consisted of a hepatitis A shot. The local water seems OK, but bottled water was cheap and easy to find.

I would recommend the South Beach Resort to anyone who is OK with the concept of a hotel with minimum services. The rooms are clean, breakfast is included, the view is fantastic, and you can check out a local wedding downstairs about every second day.

But then you have to leave.

We got into the van mid morning. for what we hoped would be a commute of less than four hours … though we didn’t really expect it to be that short, which was why we left the hotel at 10:40 a.m. for a 6:50 p.m. flight.

As mentioned earlier, the A2 road is lined with villages and homes almost every yard from Koggala to Colombo, and a driver never, ever has open road ahead of him. Lots and lots of smoke-belching buses and commercial vehicles and construction vehicles, and a zillion tuk-tuks and motorcycles and bicycles, pedestrians darting across the road and an eternal beeping and honking of horns as drivers signal their presence or express their frustration.

Saturday is worse: It’s market day, and vehicles and people and even cattle are everywhere.

If you have ever even suspected you might be prone to motion sickness, this ride will be torture. I was OK for the first 1.5 hours … and after then I was back in my childhood, bobbing on my father’s sailboat and wishing someone would kill me. Nausea for hours as we stopped, started, paused, surged, swerved, panic-stopped, breathed exhaust fumes and fought for every car length.

Luckily, I had some ginger chews from Trader Joe’s, and those kept things from getting messy. But more than once I wanted desperately to escape the van and just sit and wait for my stomach to catch up. But traffic never allowed.

We needed 4 hours and 45 minutes to fight through the traffic (almost the same amount of time it took us upon our early-morning arrival) and which included gridlocked real cities (Mount Lavinia, Colombo, Galle). Only about 130 kilometers, but when you’re averaging less than 30 kph …

I was oh, so happy, to get out of that van at the airport.

We shook hands with Sampat, who had decided to come along on the ride, even though we can hardly communicate with him. (He has two children, it seems, ages 2 and 4, but no wife, from what we could tell.)

Pradeep did not drive; he told us just before we left that he had been drinking the night before and was not up to it. No, really. Anyway, Sampat gave the driver someone to talk to, in each direction.

At the airport, Leah thanked Sampat for saving her life. I think he understood the gratitude, if not the words.

And, note to tourists: The torturous ride in the van will be your third-biggest-ticket item on a trip to the south. Figure $100 in each direction. But, too, the beaches close to Colombo do not look nearly as nice. If you want a great beach, pretty much figure you have to go to Galle — or further.

I was happy to have a three-hour wait for the flight. Gave me time almost to recover from the barf ride. The flight back was packed, as per usual (although we managed to get an exit row), and a bit shy of five hours. So, 12-plus hours in transit. Just how it is, when you go to the south. Thus, include enough vacation days to make it worth your while to lose a day to travel on each end.

The Sri Lanka government says that a four-lane highway (A2 is two lanes, one in which direction) will be open next year, or perhaps the year after, and that could change everything — including side trips to nature preserves or other cities which are four-plus hours away, each way, at present.

Also, plans have been made to open a second international airport, in the southeast of the island, perhaps by 2013, and landing there also would make the trip to Koggala shorter.

It will be interesting to see how a big road changes tourism in the south. Will it mean the end of mom-and-pop hotels like the South Beach Resort? Will it mean someone other than Germans and scuba drivers make the trek? Maybe.

Upon arrival in the UAE, we blew through passport control, had about a five-minute wait for a bag, walked through customs, caught a cab and covered 40 km in about 20 minutes on a four-lane freeway — a drive that would have taken us more than an hour in Sri Lanka. That the UAE is a far more developed and far more economically advanced country is obvious in about the first five minutes back in-country.

So, go, if you can shrug off the commutes at either end. Don’t expect to see much, unless you want to hire a driver and spend entire days getting to distant places. But if you can sit on a balcony and listen to the pounding surf and read and not feel antsy … then Sri Lanka could be for you.