Off on a safari and back to Colombo

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Today is our last full day in Sri Lanka. It has been lovely here. Our last hotel was so nice, it was a shame to leave it.

We packed our stuff together and loaded it into our new guide's minivan and set off to Uda Walawe National park at 4am. It took 3 hours to get there. It was nice to see the sun coming up; its not often I get to do that. The park opened at 7am and it's best to get there early to avoid the midday sun. We hired a jeep with driver once there and drove all around the park for about 3 hours. The animals are totally wild and are not fed by anyone. We saw herds of elephants with their young, crocodiles, birds, water buffaloes .. When we saw one herd of elephants, the driver stopped the car and we waited quietly. The elephants came right up to the jeep looking for food. The mother was huge, we got a bit nervous when she got close and I think she didn't really like the fact we were there and lifted her trunk towards us to smell us , but then she just continued eating near us and walked off.

At 12pm we went to the nearby "Elephant transit home" where orphaned elephants are looked after and fed. We watched the elephants being fed there.

Well as you can imagine I took a lot of photos today!!

On our journey back to Colombo, the capital, we passed some tea plantations which was interesting to see.

We are now staying in a suburb of Colombo. To walk to the beach you have to walk over the train tracks and past the homes that were destroyed after the tsunami. What remained there was a lot of makeshift poor quality shacks. I didn't think at all that I would have as much contact with that as I have. There were loads of locals on the beach, playing catch, rugby etc. We of course got loads of looks. Now I know what it must feel like to be a celebrity lol . Actually two boys wanted to take a photo of us with them.

Our flight to KL is at 2pm tomorrow. There is so much to see here in Sri Lanka, you really need more than a week, I think I would return one day.

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Comments

[mum]

I love elephants but not too close up.
Fabulous. i will look again tomorrow morning. i have only seen one pic of you yet. I must have missed some.

[Tino]

Still fab
Still looks fabulous to me!! I really think you could have found room in your case for little old me, I'm only 6'2 after all...