Warey

And we are back on the coast, enjoying the cooling sea breeze, relaxing in a hotel before our flight home. We are all desperate to get out of the heat, and I’m not sure my sweat glands or clothes will ever be the same again, but it’s been an amazing two weeks, topped off by yesterday’s fantastic leopard experience!... read more

We certainly weren’t relishing the idea of leaving the beautiful airconditioning to head back into the furnace of a safari camp again, but an evil-looking centipede basically chased us away, and we were keen to see a sloth bear. We’d heard good things about Wilpattu, that it was “the best” national park etc, and well, Yala had some making up to do! So we hopped in the van for the relaxing and cool journey to Wilpattu. We arrived just before lunch and relaxed under fans in our tent before a tasty lunch under a tree. We requested a later start to avoid too much heat and started the journey to the gate with some trepidation over what furnace-like conditions lay ahead. But we needn’t have worried. Beautiful tree-lined roads meant a lot of shade and much ... read more

Pleasing to report that this time the brochures did not lead us up the dusty bumpy path in search of a pipe dream, and there are, in fact, a heap of elephants in Udawalawe National Park. First item on the agenda today was a cooking class, which actually consisted of us sitting and watching Geoff cook. They clearly read my brief! But he did a great job of curried dhal, which we then enjoyed for breakfast. The call of the airconditionined car had us almost breaking into a sprint from the tent, and we all looked as though we’d run a marathon by the time we got there! Drove like maniacs to the Elephant Transit Home where they take abandoned young to raise before putting them back in to the park. The babies live in the ... read more

We’ve cracked it, reached the zenith of turtle. First was the Philippines where we saw one and jumped in after it, next was Lord Howe where we snorkelled around them while they were feeding, next Hawaii where we watched them topsy turvy and swum with with them as they moseyed along. But we have now encountered world’s friendliest and least law-abiding turtles. Unlike the Americans and Australians, they apparently had no idea of this 5m distance rule, and quite liked to get up close and personal. So we were ... read more

Given all the sitting we’d been doing over the past week, it was obviously important that we mixed things up a bit and did some lying. Our flight to Zanzibar was quite cool as we had a very clear view of Mount Kilimanjaro out the window - its snow capped peak towered above the dark plains below and the peak next to it had a thunderstorm, together with lightning brewing overhead. We were assaulted by the wall of heat and humidity that greeted us as we left the airport but were luckily in our airconditioned transfer before too long and headed for the beach. The plan for the next few days was just to relax on the beach with some books, some cocktails and dips in the pool. Oh, kittens, play with lots of kittens. And ... read more