COLOMBO, SRI LANKA AND AT SEA--Wednesday-Thursday, April 10-11, 2013

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COLOMBO, SRI LANKA AND AT SEA—Wednesday and Thursday, April 10-11, 2013

Colombo, Sri Lanka (Formerly Ceylon, an island nation off the eastern coast of India)--Wednesday, April 10, Day 6

Before we left home, we had booked only three guided excursions and on this day were scheduled to be driven by tour bus south to the very tip of Sri Lanka to the old Dutch Colonial Port of Galle. It was planned to run for 8.5 hours and we thought it would be a couple hours to drive down and then have plenty of time to explore the folklore museum, see stilt fishermen, and visit the old walled fort that is a world heritage site before having to return to the ship for an 8:30 departure.

We had no inkling of the traffic and congestion we would encounter in the city of Colombo---we have NEVER seen the like before. Lanes in the road are treated as suggestions only we think and we usually traveled through the city streets with 4-5 vehicles along either side our big bus in the 2 lanes. Bikes and people everywhere—sidewalks, curbside, and in the road. Tuk-tuks, scooters, trucks. Oh! My!

We started our tour by driving through the port area that is being repaired/worked on. It still needs lots of work. We then passed through a shopping area with all kinds of shops, some of which were selling slabs of teak wood stacked around the doorway and out onto the sidewalk.

Our bus continued, seemingly driving two lane back city streets, until all at once the instrument panel let out a high pitched alarm. The bus driver stopped as soon as possible and the guide and he got out, and then came back and told everyone to get out. When we did, we could see that the back of the bus in the engine compartment was smoking quite heavily. Apparently, an oil line was leaking on to the hot engine and causing more smoke than actual damage.

So, we stood around and waited for another bus to come. We were watched by some children and workers who thought this situation was entertaining. Valerie walked around a bit to take pictures and after about 20 minutes we loaded onto an older bus and continued our drive.

As we loaded onto this “new” bus, people who got on first sat in the front seats and then everyone continued sitting in available seats from front to back. Valerie and I had originally been up toward the front on the left side of the bus, but those seats were taken when we got on so we sat in the first available seats on the left side.

When a woman who had been sitting in the seats we were now occupying got on board, she yelled that she expected everyone to take their original seats and it WASN’T FAIR THAT SHE had to move and that SHE was NOT sitting in the back of the bus. We looked to the rest of the folks and the tour guide for a minute and when he said nothing, we offered then to change to other seats. He did come by and thank us for moving; however, the woman said nothing to us and acted like WE had committed a crime.

After about a 1/2 hour driving through the outskirts of the capitol city of Colombo, we drove in front of their very traditionally built wooden Parliament Building that sits in a lake formed by a river. Around the lake was a large park-like area of grasses that had some birds but they were too far off in the distance for us to see clearly—most likely some sort of heron or egret.

Shortly, we came to a toll-way that looked very new and not finished going northward, and continued our way much more swiftly. As soon as we “found” this 4 lane “freeway” we left the city and were traveling in the rural countryside. The environment was very much like the rest of the tropics we have now seen with rice paddies, vegetation of banana trees, mango, jack fruit, cashew, and coconut palms and many more varieties of trees we do not know the names of, with small villages here and there.

In the higher elevations we went through rubber plantations with trees no bigger than 12 inches across at the widest part of their trunks. They were tall and skinny and not at all what we thought a rubber tree would look like. I think I thought they would be like a huge tree like a banyan or a walking tree that would have a lot of sap.

We pulled into a rest stop that was similar in feel to the way stops on the European autobahns. However, though there were new restrooms, several cafes, and some souvenir shops, we saw no place to get gas, which seems really odd to us. Piled back in the bus after about 15 minutes and continued onward.

When we reached the outskirts of Galle, we saw large shops selling red clay pots that are used here for baking and cooking food. We also saw men playing cricket in a large cricket field. There were several fields and stadiums in various conditions and of various sizes for men and boys to play cricket.

When we finally arrived at the water front/beach area, the bus pulled into a spot to park where a group a stilt fishermen could be seen fishing near shore. This is a traditional practice of the men along this southern coast, but I believe that these particular fishermen were paid to fish in this spot as surprisingly it was just at a location that was wide and deep enough that two huge buses could pull off the highway and park side by side.

Out of the bus windows, we noticed small cemeteries and headstones scattered between the road and the ocean as we drove along. We assumed by where they were placed, and their frequency along several miles of shoreline, that these were just some of the known victims of the 2004 tsunami that hit this coast hard killing 55,000 people, destroying homes, businesses, and entire communities.

We shortly pulled into the Martin Wickramasinghe (a 20^th century Sri Lankan writer) Museum of Folk Culture and were given about 20 minutes to walk into the park and take in all the exhibits housed at his birthplace. The tour description said that the museum held over a thousand artifacts of rural life.

Valerie and I walked through the main building quickly and then parted; Valerie going to the sheds holding transportation displays and me looking in trees on the museum grounds for birds. I was able to spot an Imperial pigeon that had a really blue back and was huge. It was way up in a tall tree and some birds that I thought might be bee eaters darting around a tree in bloom. Valerie got some bird shots but we do not know what kind of birds they are and without internet connection will not know until we get home. One shot she got was a nest with a parent feeding a baby bird.

It was now after 2:00 and we were getting both hungry and dry. Thankfully, we had packed some crackers and water, but they were long gone. We were taken to the Jetwing Lighthouse Hotel restaurant where we had 20 minutes to eat. This was a very modern hotel with metal sculpture work of life-sized conquistadors all along the banister as we climbed up to the restaurant on the second floor.

The buffet had some interesting and different dishes. We weren’t too concerned about the quality of the food, but I was concerned about unusual spices and things that might upset my stomach. The dessert buffet had a number of different kinds of pudding-like dishes or mousses of unusual flavors like green tea and basil. Valerie tried several of the clay pot dishes.

As we left, Valerie asked the desk clerk about the price of a room here and was told it was $345 for 2 people with breakfast a night. I wonder how much of our tour price, which was very high for us, was in the cost of the lunch??

Finally, we reached the old walled Fort of Galle that is the UNESCO World Heritage site and we entered through the massive rock gates. The bus first stopped to show us a clock tower and wasn’t going to even let us off here until people protested. He gave everyone 10 minutes to look. I stayed on the bus with others and Valerie got off to take pictures.

While I waited, I got out my binoculars again and looked around. As I was looking toward some ships, I saw a bird on a nearby TV antenna and was sure it was a red and bright blue colored kingfisher. Valerie returned just then, and got a picture of it, but it came out poorly as a wire is positioned right across the head. The bus then continued to drive slowly through the very narrow streets of this old Colonial Dutch trading port.

The bus stopped along the outer wall and let everyone off for 15 minutes which, was not enough time to see anything. We were really disappointed here as the descriptions given of the tour lead you to believe that you would have a lot of time to wander the streets of this preserved city. The guide told us that this high outer wall did protect this site from the tidal wave of the tsunami to a great extent, but there was still some damage.

The last stop was in front of the Dutch Church, whose cornerstone was laid in 1682, and is still in use today. Several other Protestant churches are standing and seem to be in good repair, I guess because they like most of the other building here were built of rock and the walls were very thick and the roofs were of clay tile.

The bus now headed back toward the city of Colombo and the waiting ship with Valerie taking pictures of various scenes out the window of the bus as we went---the Galle bus station, shops, produce, people, carts and other things that caught her eye.

It was dark by the time we hit the outskirts of the congested city and the bus had even more trouble navigating through the heavy traffic as we came upon some sort of traffic accident on a small street and it was difficult to get around the ambulances. We did drive through the main streets of the city on the way to the port, maybe, because this time we had a different driver and he traveled different streets than our original driver. Lots of modern buildings and fancy hotels are located in the city center.

We finally arrived back at the ship about 8:00 making the ship deadline with a half hour to spare. (We learned later that it was not made by 25 passengers who had booked independent tours and the Captain was once again not HAPPY about having to wait for them.) Had dinner and hit the bed. All and all, we did see a lot of Sri Lanka just not in the manner we had hoped since it was basically out the bus window and not in any depth as we had expected to experience in the historic Colonial Fort of Galle.



Thursday, April 11, we cruised from Sri Lanka on the eastern side of India, around the tip, and then up the western coast of India. Mostly we spent the day recovering from the ordeal of the day before and sharing stories of the tremendous traffic in the city.

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