Introduced to an enirely new Ecology: Our first days in Southern Sri Lanka.

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Here we go! It took us a long time to get here but the adventure has finally begun.

We were originally drawn to Sri Lanka by the quintessential symbols of kindly intelligence - elephants. The country hosts the largest herds of wild Asian Elephants found anywhere in the world. But it turns out they are also the perfect ambassadors for the Sri Lankan people. We have been overwhelmed by the generosity and all around friendliness we have been met with in the South. Many of the people we have spoken with have told us that we are the first Canadian and American they have met, as the majority of travelers to this part of the country are either Russian, German or other Europeans. We haven't encountered anyone from the Americas since we've arrived. We'll see what it is like when we travel to the centre of the country.

One of our favourite pastimes so far has been practicing the beautiful Sri Lankan language, Sinhala. Our English - Sinhala dictionary has proved to be a great ice breaking tool as the locals laugh at our attempts to construct simple sentences. Sinhala has its own alphabet and words are constructed using prononciation based groups of characters. The result is musical - with lots of aspirated th's and ph's.

Matt was very excited by the idea of a completely different ecology to explore and he has not been disappointed. In our first few days we have seen hundreds of Greater Short Nosed Fruit Bats and troops of Purple Faced Langurs, as well as Monitor Lizards, a variety of birds and many insects, including one ginormous cockroach that we discovered crawling up my back in the middle of the night.

Our accommodation is extremely clean, there are just some things you can't avoid in a tropical environment. We've since learned to be a little more diligent with our mosquito net.

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