Elephant and Elephants

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The reason we've skipped two days from 13th to 15th March is that we flew in overnight on the 13th and so most of yesterday's events happened on the 14th! Confused yet?

We woke at 7-ish... I opened the balcony doors and walked out - the heat hit me, and the sounds were incredible. Birds calling everywhere! I was greeted by another water monitor across the paddy, lounging on the wooden walkway.
Roy moaned for about 2 hours about having jet lag.

On our way to breakfast we met our next door neighbours - a British couple - who said they'd seen the crocodile on the footpath on their way back from dinner last night. Well, they called in an Alligator - but after further debate and investigation, we all agreed that it was a crocodile. We also discussed the snake and apparently it is not venomous.

Breakfast was lovely - the bakery basket was full of mini breads, cakes, pastries - roy was in seventh heaven! We also ate yogurt with tropical fruit in it. Coffee and fruit juice. After breakfast we walked on the trail around the resort. We saw beautiful butterflies and birds (black headed oriole, kingfisher) and the odd water monitor!

Back to the room for a cool down in the plunge pool and then we headed round to the main pool for a proper swim. Vil Uyana provide you with a sarong, beach bag, towels, hat and sandals - all of which are extremely useful! We chatted to our neighbours again - they'd been out on a elephant back ride, which we were about to do.

At 1, we met Seelan. He took us to a place at Habarana where you can do an elephant back ride. I had mixed feelings about doing this - I'm not so keen on domesticated or trained animals - but actually, it was great fun. Much better than I expected. On our way out to the track, I spotted a chubby little Sri Lankan boy hiding behind a hut - as he peeked out I could see that he was holding a stick with a bunch of bananas on it. Ah - how cute, I said to Roy, he's got bananas for the elephant. Should have known better - as we rounded the corner the stick shot up in front of Roy - "100 rupees sir". We bought them, of course, and Roy had fun feeding them to Rani - our elephant. She was amazing! She walked us down to and in to a lake, where she picked water lillies (the national flower of Sri Lanka) and her mahout (trainer) used the long stems to make them in to a necklace for each of us. Next we made our way down a steep and narrow track to the river - how she picked our way along it so gracefully! Once in the river, she gave us both a PROPER soaking! We were asked if we wanted a "shower" and said yes. We thought, after 2 or 3 sprayings, it would stop. We were all ready very wet! But no, the mahout kept on shouting to her "Deri udari" - the command to spray - and she kept on doing it! After about the 11th drenching I was getting a little bit fed up of it! Then she took us back to the "office" where we met up with Seelan.

In hindsight, and on reading a bit more online about elephants in captivity this week, I am not sure I'd do an elephant back ride again - I'm still unsure as to how ethical it is. But still an experience that we'd not tried before.

From Habarana, we headed up to Minneriyia National Park - a place where we could see elephants in the wild. It's a beautiful park - nothing like an African jeep safari experience. For one thing, the jeeps are constructed so that you stand up in them and poke your head and upper body out of the roof. Not the most comfortable going over some of the pot holes in the park! Another factor is, of course, that the range and number of animals is a lot less. However, we were fortunate to have a Serpent Eagle swoop over our heads and then pose nicely in a tree just above us for a while. We also saw mongoose, peacocks, bee eaters and a host of other birds. And then, as the huge Minneriyia Tank (reservoir) came in to view, we saw about 150 elephants feeding on the banks. There were babies feeding, juveniles playing, matriarchs charging jeeps! We actually were blocked in for a while as the elephants had forced our jeep to move (we were the only one left at the Tank) as they wanted to graze on the grass we were parked in. Eventually, we had to make a run for it, and were charged a couple of times on our way through. On our way out of the park, at dusk, we came across a small family of eles in the jungle, but they just stopped to watch us and make sure that we were on our way out. Great drive.

Seelan had the most fantastic straw hat on for the safari - complete with elastic chin strap to hold it on. Roy took one look and said in a broad Yorkshire accent: "That's a reet 'at you've got yoursen there, Seelan - nowt'll bother you in that." Needless to say, Seelan didn't understand him!

On the roads were the usual assortment of dogs, cows, elephants, monkeys, bikes, motorbikes (with whole families on board) and pedestrians doing stupid things! At one point, a guy decided to cross in front of us, then noticed us heading towards him (fast) and seemed to stop in mid air - it was comical, like one of those suspended animation things they do in cartoons! He could decide whether to go forward or backwards and his face was a treat! Seelan was kind enough to stop while he made his mind up....

We were back to Vil Uyana at about 7pm and decided to run a bath. The room had a huge stone bath - big enough for two. Seemed like a good idea, until we ran out of hot water after only filling about 3 inches of the bath and both ended up having to get a cold, shallow bath! It was also tricky to get in and out of because of the way it was designed. Great idea - in theory! In practice, not so good.... will stick to the shower in future.

Dinner: Bread basket, bottle of white.
- Crab & Mushroom pancake
- Vegetable broth with blue cheese profiterole (I did ask the chef for the broth recipe - this was wonderful!)
- Arrack sorbet
Roy: veal and duck, mash, veg, sauce
Jan: Kingfish, Tandoori prawn, rice, veg sauce
Roy: Pineapple mousse, chocolate cake, chocolate "christmas tree"
Jan: Tropical fruit platter

We were in bed at 10pm again, we have an early start tomorrow.

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Photos

Serpent Eagle
Minneriyia National Park

Elephant family
So cute how they've lined up in order of size

Copying mum
The best way to learn!