Day 12 Tuesday

The journey home

We have had a wake up call everyday from reception which our tour rep, Francesca, arranged. It should have been for 6am but it never came!  And coincidentally Ronnie did not set his alarm which he has done on every other day. The upshot was we woke at 6.30am so had 15 mins to complete the packing and get ourselves washed and dressed. There was smoke coming from our shoes but we made it. Paid the bill and had our last breakfast which by now is standard for me - exotic fruit and buffalo curd with treacle (made from the cockanut flower sap, remember?), followed by an egg hopper and a croissant, because I like them. Tea is not bad at all. It is made from loose tea and just the right strength for me so I am going to say that it is probably the nearest I will get to the perfect cuppa I set out to find

The drive to the airport in Colombo took 2 hours 30 minutes and much of it was along the new toll expressway. Thank goodness for that, as it takes ages to drive through towns and villages. Su chatted to us about various interesting facts about Sri Lanka

For example Sri Lanka has been a republic since gaining its independence from Britain in 1948.  There are 2 elections, one to elect the members of parliament and a separate one to elect the president.  Su takes Sri Lankan politicians with a pinch of salt. He says everyone calls the current president Mr Bean. He says every year he makes a speech about the state of the country and all the good things he is going to do and then does nothing for the rest of the year. Presidents seem to grow rich while in office and like to lead a conspicuously comfortable lifestyle. We saw the President’s helicopter waiting for him on the lawn of the Police Headquarters, barely enough room to turn round!  There is a lot of nepotism and corruption in politics and even the traffic police will stop you on a bogus charge but let you off if you make a cash contribution to the Police Benevolent Fund. However Sri Lanka is not categorised as a poor country anymore. It has an international rating as a country with medium income. Education is compulsory and free right up to and including university and there is a literacy rate of 97%. Uk literacy rate is said to be 99% but it is not reported to the UNESCO list. Wonder why?. Outside every school there is always a large board with photos of all the children on it. There is no slave labour here. The minimum age for working is 17 years. Tourism and tea are of course the main industries but the clothing industry is growing now and I think you could probably buy their clothes with a clear conscience. I do remember buying something from M&S and being surprised to see it was made in Sri Lanka. Nice change from China. 

Interesting facts 

• Electricity and telephone wire poles are made of concrete as termites eat the wooden ones which then fall down and disrupt supply
• The British set up lots of pony clubs and race courses in Sri Lanka but after Independence, the Sri Lankan government banned it. I think it was to do with gambling which is frowned upon by some sections of the community 
• There are lots of nomadic wasps in Sri Lanka. They build huge nests (there were several in the Temple of the Tooth), make an absolute nuisance of themselves for a few days, then move on. At the Temple we had again to remove our shoes but this time we had learned another ancient dance of dodging the dead wasps and bird poo. 
• 51% of the workforce are women and they still go home to shop, cook, clean and look after the kids in 33 degrees!
• Because of the mix of religions, Buddhists, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Tamil, there are 24 religious holidays per year which added to statutory holidays means they get 45 days holiday a year. Very nice but Su said it wreaked havoc with government services. You could wait months for a simple permit for example
• Statues of Buddha are revered. They don’t like you taking a photo of the Buddha in his lying pose as it is often a depiction of his death (right foot slightly ahead of the left) and you may never take a photo posing in front of Buddha as your back is turned on him which is very disrespectful. Buddha’s various hand poses each have a meaning. Palms together means meditation. Palm facing forward means reassurance.  Palm facing sideways means warding off evil. First finger and thumb touching means preaching. 2 middle fingers in a fist means explaining. When Buddha wears a hat it means wisdom

What I have found amusing when on the coach, are the street signs and advertising slogans. On the way to the airport was a sign saying BEWARE OF PEACOCKS. Another sign in our hotel gardens in Yala said WILD ANIMALS ROAMING AT DUSK, oooooh!.  I saw the evidence next day!  There was a street hoarding advertising scooters, which are massively popular here. It said “See the world in a new light with a scooter”. I thought that was a bit of an exaggeration. They seem also to like the white European models on their adverts for beauty products, jewellery, clothing and their are wedding shops galore. It’s obviously very big business. 

But there is a strange mix of old fashioned colonial and modern aspirational everywhere. They want to keep the traditional, the deferential and, to us, quaint  but at the same time embrace the new, the hip, the tech. So you will get a shop selling brooms made from the central stalk of a cockanut leaf, next to a mobile phone shop. 

Anyway we arrived at the airport in Colombo. It’s a lovely airport, not huge but bright and modern and could be in any city in the world. We said goodbye to Su who has been wonderful.l learned he is 46 but he looks about 30. So unfair.  While in the queue to check in, a polite assistant asked us if we would like to make a new queue at a desk which had just opened. We almost fell over our cases rushing over. So very little queuing. Once inside the departures lounge we realised we had micromanaged our rupees brilliantly and we only had about 50p. between us. That’s because the Sri Lankan rupee is a closed currency and you can only buy and sell it in Sri Lanka. However that did mean we didn’t have enough for a drink. Well you can’t pay with a credit card for a coffee!

The flight was on time but there were 2 little girls who screamed relentlessly for the first hour or two as they ran up and down the aisle. Fortunately fish curry was not on the menu this time and the wine was free flowing so all good on the refreshment front. So that was it. Sri Lanka done and dusted. Great holiday, lovely place and lovely people. 

PS. I thought you might like to hear a little more about my experience in the Ayurvedic centre so I’m ending with that. Thanks for reading my blog. 

And by the way, I do know how to spell COCONUT. 

Day 11 Monday

Day 11 Monday

Our last day and I have decided to fritter it away by the pool. One is freeform and has a shallow end and is lovely and warm according to other guests. We can see this one from our room.

The view from our room

The other pool is larger, rectangular and deep all the way round but it is surrounded by lush lawns and gardens, a cafe and the beach.

The view from the big pool

All the luxury details like  sunbeds with mattresses and towels, huge parasols, waiters gliding by offering drinks, snacks ( with chilli in them I expect). White egrets were drinking at the pool in the morning and monitor lizards came by to drink in the afternoon. I wandered on to the beach and it was just the most beautiful sight, just like a picture postcard. There were so many different corals and shells and the sea is a lovely shade of blue green.

The beach in front of the hotel. Me paddling in the warm Indian Ocean

The corals

At lunchtime Ronnie returned from his trip. He had left at 5.15 am for a whale watching excursion. He saw about 20 blue whales, dolphins and other species and luckily he managed to get an iconic photo of the whale's tail fin disappearing into the waves. 

In no time at all it was dinner time. We have been very lucky with our fellow travellers. We are all in roughly in the same age band and keen on travel. No one was late or forgot to turn up or lost anything. Everyone was good company and it was a pleasure to share a large table in the evening to chat about the day's events but tonight was another early night as our luggage had to be outside our room by 6.45am 😱

Day 10 Sunday

We had a very interesting 3 part excursion today,  Firstly a boat ride along the Madu River then a visit to a cinnamon growing island and finally a visit to a turtle hatchery. We boarded the boat after we had put on our life jackets. It was scorchio again today so it was nice to have a nylon covered life jacket sticking to our backs.

 The breeze was lovely as we sped along. We saw lots of birds, jellyfish, water monitors which looked like land monitors to me but the difference is that you can eat land monitors but water monitors are deadly poisonous. My advice would be, don’t eat either. We also saw some purple faced monkeys. Actually their faces are grey/black but when they were first spotted, stuffed and sent back to the England for identifying and categorising the poor things’ faces had turned purple.   Our boat driver said he liked English people but he didn’t like “China people” because they drink from plastic bottles and then throw them into the river.  I must say the Sri Lankan’s are very recycling conscious eg the toilet paper is made from waste wheat husks.
We got off the boat at an island and walked up through the jungle a little way to a clearing where we were given a demonstration of how cinnamon is collected. The cinnamon tree grows new lumps of stems from the roots every year. The stems are cut down, and the top layer of bark is stripped off. The  stem is then rubbed with a brass rod to heat the next layer of bark which is green. This makes it easier to remove. It curls naturally and is rolled inside the outer bark again and hung up to dry 

The leaves of the tree are boiled up to extract cinnamon oil which costs more than gold!  The bark is 

used in cooking and the oil for massage.

Back on the boat for a ride through the mangroves and photo opportunities

The mangrove swamps

Hot but happy

This area of the river is actually a semi lagoon linking the river with the Indian Ocean and is a

mixture of salt and fresh waters
On the way back we passed a 200 year old Hindu temple built on a tiny island. Not very convenient on a Sunday morning in your best clothes

Little temple

And a sail up juice bar!

 Back on dry land and off again to the turtle hatchery. It is run by a man who lost everything in the Tsunami. But in spite of the devastation of his own life, he realised that the area’s wildlife also needed also needed rebuilding and protecting.  There are 5 species of turtles in Sri Lanka, the 

loggerhead, the flatback, the Olive Ridley and I forget the other 2. Anyway turtles lay 110 to120 eggs in nests in the sand. Now here’s a interesting thing - the temperature of the sand affects the sex of the hatchlings. The warmer the sand, the more females are produced the cooler tbe sand the more males. Approximately 60% of the hatchlings are female. In nature a large number of eggs are eaten by predators. In fact only 2 to 5%. Make it to the sea, hence the need for conservation.  At the hatchery local fishermen bring in the eggs when they spot a female laying. The eggs are buried In sand in a fenced off area, labelled with the species

 When the eggs hatch, they follow a beam of light into a tank of water. Most are released into  the ocean the same night but some are kept for research and breeding. These are kept in tanks about 4 feet square and there are hundreds in each tank some one day old, some 2 days old in the next tank and 3 days old in the third tank. I don’t know what happens to them after that. But what upset me was the 3 albino turtles who were about 2feet long so a few years old. They too were kept in square tanks with no enrichment to stimulate them.  They could not be released into the wild as they would not survive. They would either be killed or suffer from the bright sunlight.   Bearing in mind a turtle can live for 100 years, I’m not sure it wouldn’t be better for them to be released and have a normal life

 however short that may be. They swam up to the side, poked their faces out of the water with their sad little eyes as if to say “Please get me out of here”

A face only a mother could love 

   Back  to the hotel to cool off in the gorgeous pool but we first stopped off at a Tsunami memorial. It was really just a 2 roomedshack at the side of the road set up by volunteers. It housed very moving photos and verbatim accounts of the Tsunami. 

What happened was, there was a small earthquake on a small island off Indonesia. This caused the tectonic plates to move by 500cms whichin turn caused a tidal wave at 9.20am. The water flooded the beach and a few buildings before receding. The people, having no experience of a tsunami thought it was over and went out to collect stranded fish but the wave retuned 30 minutes later at 9.50am with unheard of ferocity and  speed. It was 30 feet high and travelling so fast that no one could out run it, especially the children which made up a third of the death toll. It was very sobering to read the statements of the survivors but one has to admire the resilience of these people  who have  rebuilt their lives with such stoicism and still manages to smile so much 

A few hundred metres down the road we passed a statue to Buddha which had been erected to honour the dead. It is pure white, beautiful and 30 metres high, the same as the tsunami wave. Buddha’s hand is palm facing forward, the pose of reassurance. 

Day 9 Saturday

Today we journeyed on to Galle. Still on the south coast but a big town with afortdating from the Dutch colonial times. Need I say it was mad hot again today?this area was badly affected by the tsunami of 2004. At our last stop in Yala, our hotel had been flooded only even though it was on the edge of the beach. That’s because they kept the dunes in tact. In other hotels that had bulldozed the dunes to give the guests a better sea view. They were badly damaged and lives were lost.
The drive into Galle was very interesting. Fishing of corse is very important to the economy and fish is a staple food. The fish are still caught by traditional means with nets or lines and we did see the iconic stilt fishermansadly as it was weekend no one was was really fishing but a few old men with dentistry problems were happy to get on to the stilts and pose - for a fee of course.

Smile please. No on second thoughts don’t. 

The philosophy behind this type of fishing is that as they fish with a line just in the ocean so by drilling a hole in the coral and putting in a pole with a crossbar and perching, tbey avoid getting their legs lashed by the waves. 

On to the Fort which was built in 1640 by the Portuguese but ceded to the Dutch 40 yers later. They enlarged it and styled it like an existing military centre in Holland. I stopped listening after that. It had an old gate

which reminded me of those in the walls of the old city in Jerusalem and  ramparts encircling it and overlooking the ocean. At the far end was a very nice lighthouse

but that was about the extent of it being a fort. A large white colonial style building which had once been a hospital in Dutch times was now a parade of restaurants and bars (and yes we did have a Lion beer as it was absolutely frying hot). However, non of the restaurant or bars had a toilet.  You had to go to the municipal toilets at the end of the block and pay 30 rupees, about 18p but if you had bought a drink or food you could ask the bar owner for a token to get in free. So I did. I duly presented my token, completed my business and on

the way out was told now I must take the token back to the bar. Like I said, it was frying! 

So I gave my token to some bemused French girls. The rest of the town consisted of 

cobbled streets with touristy shops

apart from a museum which  had a couple of recreated rooms and a well dated 1763

 We didn’t see anything of Galle itself  except en passant  but it looked a big bustling town. What I did notice was a complete absence of McDonalds in any town, though Costa is everywhere. 

Day 8. Friday

If I wasn’t going on a safari today at 5.15am, nothing would have got me out of bed. It has been full on everydayday. The 4x4s arrived and we got on 6 at a time. They have raked seating so we were sorted by height, the big boys had to sit at the front so they wouldn’t bump their heads on the roof.

  

It was a 20 minute drive to the national park and what a shock when we got there. Scores, nay, hundreds of jeeps were queued up to get in as the gates didn’t open till 6am - think Disneyland.

  

There was a bit of jockeying for position, especially those with Chinese passengers, who all had masks on. By this time it was getting light and when we went through the gates the park police counted us in. Funnily enough they didn’t count us coming out. Free meal for the leopards possibly. Anyway in Sri Lanka there is not as big a variety of big game.as in Africa and also no tigers, I was sad about that as I really wanted to see one. The tracks were very bumpy and when it started to bucket down, they soon became very muddy. The jeeps thinned output although the drivers were with each other by phone so as soon as one spotted wildlife, everyone converged causing bunching. All the drivers waited patiently for their turn except the ones with the Chinese who beeped their horns, the masked ones obviously didn’t like waiting

In a nutshell, we saw dozens of birds. My favourites were the pelican, and of course Ronnie regaled us with the poem about the pelican, his belly can, I don’t know how the hell he can., the painted stork just gorgeous, the green bee eater, the peacocks and the kingfisher. 

The painted stork

The peacock

If you are interested in twitching send me a message and I’ll give you the full list. We saw crocodiles, monkeys,deer, lizards,wild boar with piglets, hundreds of water buffalo

Land monitor

Wild boar and piglet

Cheeky monkeys

Water buffalo

Crocodile yawning

The beautiful painted stork

Crocodile after a paintedstork for breakfast

but NO ELEPHANTS and NO LEOPARDS!   Oh dear. Actually at one bunching point the guide said there was a leopard in a tree in the distance but you had to be a recent visitor to Specsavers to see it.
However one of our party, Jean, who was even shorter than me and therefore in the back seats had bought some Marks and Spencer’s rich fruit cake so we had a very nice little tiffin break. I don’t know if it was the tiffin or the fact that the sun came out but it lifted our spirits and on theway out of the park, we saw a tusker emerging from the bushes. Hurrah!

Tusker peeping out of the bushes 

Had to have a little snooze after a late breakfast back at the hotel. Then Ronnie had chosen to go on another safai, sadly it turned out to be more of the same but in the heat of the day. I have never seen a man more desperate for a Lion beer, well any beer really
At this hotel in Yala, again we had an outdoor bathroom with an open ceiling so we were not surprised to see bird poo and little droppings, turned out to be a little chipmunk which we saw on the balcony later. But what made my day was a lot of screeching outside. I looked though the window and there was a monkey on the wall and 2 seconds later her baby jumped up for a cuddle. Magic

Mum and baby on our balcony

While Ronnie was on his safari, I went for a walk on the beach. There are sand dunes and turtles lay their eggs, which are then protected by a little wooden fence. I found an old hatch site and was surprised that the egg shells were soft and rubbery, not like chicken’s egg shell.

 
The rocky end of the beach

Live turtle nest    

 Empty turtle shells

Further down the beach I came across evidence that wild elephants do roam here as well. In fact Su said he had heard one trumpeting in the night. Feral dogs are everywhere in Sri Lanka but not so much in packs. There were 10 here and one definite leader. He did all the barking and lead the way. But they don’t approach you. Except the one in Kandy which came from nowhere and bit a man in our party on the leg.

Pack of feral dogs

Dead dog pose. 

More dead dog pose 

And unluckily, and inexplicably, he had not had a rabies jab before he left the UK.That meant several hours at a local hospital and a further visit today. He’s fine though. Anyway, a word about the dogs here. They are all the same size, same pricked ears, same short coat, same straight tail and mostly have their ribs showing. The only difference is they vary in colour. They sleep on their sides so they look dead and they sleep anywhere, including in the road and in full sun
And so for our evening cocktail and dinner  . You really could not ask for a bigger selection at the buffet. Curries galore of course, lots of local dishes, not always curried but always hot, bloody hot!

 

 No  more chillis thank you

Old Sri Lankan game  guess what your dinner is tonight 😆

 I fact I had a cheese toasty at lunchtime and it had chillis in that, lots of vegetables (with chillis) and the occasion sop to picky eaters - lasagne, shepherds pie but WITH CHILLIS. And lots of things which you simply didn’t know what they were.

Day 7 Thursday

Today.our guide, Su, told us we would be travelling down from the central highlands to the east coastal plain. He said that the climate would change from hot to bloody hot. He has a brilliant command of English an a sense of humour to go with it. We drove along steep winding roads like those in the Alps but I must say that the drivers are all very courteous, backing up as necessary. Full marks to our driver, Prianta, who  managed to get within an inch or so of the edge of the road next to a sheer drop although some of our party had to get off the coach and change their pants


We passed a Hindu Temple at the side of the road.

It was said to be the place where the king of Sri Lanka brought an Indian princess he had kidnapped, Sita, and kept her for 7 years. The monkey god brought her a message from her husband who then came and rescued her. The monkey god statue has a nice string of lemons round his neck, which is odd as lemons and oranges don’t grow in Sri Lanka but do in India

The villages we passed through all had a Hindu feeling about them - the womens’ saris were different, there were lots of little Hindu temples and cows roamed freelyin thestreets

Eventually we arrived in Udevaliva at a baby elephant transit camp. It’s not an orphanage although there are orphanages do exist but the elephants get used to mixing with humans and can’t be released into the wild. Here the baby elephants which are orphans mix freely with wild jungle elephants. There are 6000 wild elephants in Sri Lanka and 450 domesticated ones. They can live for 70 to 80 years. They live in a matriarchal herd, that is the females and the babies. The babies are fed by their mothers till they are 7 years old. When they reach maturity at 14 years, the young males leave the herd and live solitarily until it is mating time when they briefly return to the herd.  Only 7% of males grow tusks, they are called tuskers, and none of the females. So the Ivory is very rare and precious. Punishment for killing an elephant is rightly very harsh. Elephants have 6 sets of grinding teeth over their lifetime which fall out and are replaced as they wear down. Towards the end of their life, their last set of teeth become worn and they have to seek easier food to chew so they often migrate to marshy ground. Eventually they die of old age and so a lot of elephant bones are found in these areas. It has long been a misconception that they come to these so called elephant graveyardsto die. They don’t, they’re just looking for softer food.  There are usually 10 to 15 elephants in a herd but in times of drought they join up with others to form a larger herd to drink from reservoirs, where of course there is more competition.
Anyway the transit camp. The babies are fed 4 times a day on formula milk which is poured down a funnel and tube straight into their mouth

As soon as it’s over they trot off to where we were waiting and chew some grass laid out for them.

Except a couple of cheeky ones who tried to sneak up for seconds. The keeper stood at the river and let them come up to the feeding station 2 by 2 as aelephants should do according to nursery rhymes.  Their ages ranged from 2 weeks (ahhhh) to 7 I think.

There are over 40 young elephants currently at the centre

Only 2 weeks old!

A couple of them were tuskers.  There was also an older one who had had her leg amputated after treading on a mine.  They had fitted her with a prosthetic leg and she seemed quite happy but she could of course never be released. She would probably only live for 25 to 30 years as her leg would not be able to support her adult weight for much longer

You can see the prosthetic on the back left leg

And so on to Yala where tomorrow we will be up at the crack of dawn for a 5.30am start to our safari. This time we are hoping to see elephants in the wild.