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Published: June 25th 2017
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The Flasher
Need I say more? We watched this guy doing his thing for five minutes, and all the time we were cracking up. Too funny. After a week of walking beautiful beaches and trading our prairie winter anemic look in for a healthy bronze glow, we felt rested and ready to move on to another theme in this country: discovering its abundant wildlife. So we said goodbye to the lovely Sri Lankan family who ran our guest house, all of whom came out to see us off, and made our way to the town of Tissaharamaya and Yala National Park, Sri Lanka's largest wildlife sanctuary.
Once we were set up at our guest house in Tissa we hired a tuk tuk driver to tour the town and its areas of interest. He drove us by a two thousand year old Buddhist stuppa; around Tissa's four lovely lily pad decorated lakes; stopped to check out a huge gathering of large bats hanging from an enormous old tree, sleeping as bats do and, before the afternoon was over, our driver had us drinking tea with his step father in his village family home, and had invited us to have supper with him and his wife the next day. We already had plans in place to set off on a safari and couldn't accept the offer, but we
Elephant at Sunrise
This was how the day began. Awesome. were touched by yet another genuine gesture of kindness from these beautiful, warm Sri Lankan people.
By five the next morning we were en route to Yala Park or, as the Lonely Planet describes it, the "Jungle Book". We were not disappointed. I kid you not when I say that in the ten hours that we were in the park, there was never more than five minutes between wildlife sightings. We saw elephants, water buffalo, hyenas, wild boars, spotted dear, lizards, crocodiles, and more bird varieties than either of us had ever seen before, in some amazing wetland settings. The peacocks were particularly abundant, and not shy at all about performing their mating dances in our presence. We saw no fewer than three separate dances, the males puffing out their chests, flapping their wings around, swivelling and presenting fully blown out tail spread displays. I now know the origin of the expression " strut like a peacock", cause they definitely love to strut their stuff. Then finally, as a perfect close to the day, we spotted a leopard, this being the ultimate objective and biggest challenge of the safari. The leopard was sleeping in a somewhat distant tree, completely
Water Buffalo at Sunrise
Our early dawn elephant sighting was quickly followed by this. oblivious to the presence of the thirty or so jeeps that had converged suddenly to catch a glimpse of him. It was a perfect ten day, rich with sightings of rare birds and wild animals, some of whom - like the wild boar - came within reach of our jeep. This very special experience was made even better because our guide / driver was a deadly animal tracker, and just a nice guy.. All in all, a stellar, awe- inspiring, memorable experience.
Tomorrow we will be on the move again, dropping an entire two dollars and fifty cents for the two of us on bus fare to get us to our next destination, Ella, a village in the hill country a hundred and twenty kilometres away.
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marsha
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Jungle Book sounds amazing. Please watch out for snakes. Sri Lanks must be Paradise! I love knowing that you are together, happy, and on this great adventure. You deserve it!