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Published: December 19th 2012
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After a week at the rescue centre and our first taste of cricket, already taken with Sri Lanka we were keen to move on to see other parts of the island. We negotiated a lift with the driver and van that had taken us to Colombo and planned to take a route along the coast up to Tissamaharama.
Mark had identified our most luxurious accomodation to date which also included a bit of air-con and cable TV.... which of course showed the cricket. We took in a number of recommended sites on the way. The first stop was at Mirissa, despite lashing rain we could still see it was a beautiful sandy beach and bay, well worth spending some time in during hotter weather. Taking in an obligatory temple a fascinating underground Buddhist enclave with literally thousands of paintings of "Buddha tales". We carried on up the coast to an English built lighthouse and were really pleased to be allowed up to the top. It was a slightly shakey climb, but the views were fantastic and we were both pretty excited at our first ever lighthouse ascent.
It was dark when we finally arrived at Tissa and we were
up at 4.00 the following morning to visit Yala National Park. We'd booked a safari and although there were no certainties, there was the possibility of seeing Leopards, Elephants, Sloth Bears and Wild Boars. We were fortunate that we had the most eager driver, who made us get up much earlier than everyone else to ensure we would be the first in line to get through the park gates. This paid off and we quickly saw a Leopard sleeping on a rock – it stayed in sight for a while.
After this rare sight we saw spotted deer, wild boar, iguana, chameleon and a male elephant, along with a fair bit of bird life. A cameraman from the Discovery Channel was at the park, a team had been at Yala for the past month, so we thought it was probably a good place to easily see animals in the wild. We also saw mongoose, lots of water buffalo, crocodiles and pelicans. Yala park is coastal and we drove to a stunning beach with a memorial to the victims of the Tsunami.
We headed back to our accomodation for a lunch break and the views were gorgeous – we
looked out over a beautiful lake with birds and wildfowl right in front of us including loads of beautiful Kingfishers. After refilling and resting we left for our afternoon trip to Bundala National Park. This isn't as highly rated as Yala, but Leopard aside proved to be better than our morning trip. Bundala is full of birds, we spotted over 59 different types common to Sri Lanka including the peacock (the national bird of India) which can be seen all over the place. As well as the birds there were grey langur, red faced macaque, mongoose, chameleon, monitor lizard, tortoise, jackal, spotted deer, crocodiles and hares. This park also ran along the coast and again another beautiful beach – with fisherman catching lobster from the point.
On the way out of Bundela we came across a small family of elephants, we stopped moving immediately and they must have been less than 3 metres from us. There were 8 that we could see all different sizes. We sat and stared at each other for a good 15 minutes. It was quite intimidating as there were two young elephants in the group and obviously the mothers were very protective. When they
kicked dust at us and flapped their ears we knew that they weren't happy! After a while they settled back down to their eating and we took the opportunity to leave with a load of photos and videos to keep our memories fresh.
It was an incredible day - one of our best so far. The animals and birds were quite simply breathtaking and the lakeside accomodation one of the best we'd had so far.
We were up bright and early again the next morning and took our first Sri Lankan bus journey of any length - 5 hours to a small village called Ella in the hilly central area of the country. The bus journey was pretty arduous - the speed, the heat and excessive acceleration and braking made for a bumpy journey. The highlights were the food sellers that jumped on everytime the bus stopped for 30 seconds with all sorts of treats. They walked down the aisle shouting loudly about what they had and then jumped off the bus quite a while after it had resumed its journey.
On arrival at Ella it was a good deal cooler and we decided to head straight
off for a walk we'd read about up to a small hilltop viewpoint. After waving off local guides we attracted a follower of a different sort - a small dog - that decided to follow us all the way up to the top of the hill and all of the way back- a 5km journey. Half way down the dog spotted a very large iguana and made a mad dash across the side of the valley - but the iguana made it to safety. The route took us along the railway line where we met lots of local people returning home from their day at work and school, nearing the end of the track our dog and two others gave chase to a troop of monkeys.
Fortunately we just had the one train to dodge. After the walk we rewarded 'Ella dog' with a big tin of mackeral for his efforts and sneaked off back to our guest house. Much later that night we were stunned to find that it had somehow found its way a good mile or so to our residence and caused a commotion with the owners dog. It settled down for the night and refused
to move from outside the guesthouse.
Next morning we were up and about early (again) and on the move, catching the train from Ella to Kandy. We'd heard the route was scenic, so splashed out some 4 pounds each on 1st class observation seats at the rear of the train. The rumours were true and we found the views over the tea plantation covered hills very beautiful. Nearly as good was another local dog which decided to chase after the train and actually kept up with it for quite a while! That tells its own story about the speed of the journey - the journey of about 150 kms took nearly 8 hours......
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