Advertisement
Well now we've left the beach behind us we might as well continue with more animals so we head off to Yala National Park to hopefully see elephants, leopards, water buffalo, crocodiles, deer and various other wildlife including lots of birds…
So we arrive (by taxi of course) and check into our lovely cottage and venture out to the most expensive hotel we could find and enjoy a beer by the lake before settling in, unfortunately it starts to rain - bugger, not good weather for animal watching as they tend to stay "indoors" as it were when the weather is bad so we have to hope the weather clears up for tomorrows safari...
What can I say - someone above must be looking down on us as we wipe the sleep from our weary eyes to see the sun is shining once again so we head off with a packed lunch in our hands and the camera ready to roll... A short while later we arrive at Yala National Park and we see that while Suzanne and myself have an entire luxury 4x4 open top Toyota to ourselves, other tourists and locals alike are crammed into bone shaker Land Rovers
from 1960 like it was a competition to see who could carry the most people - I have to say we felt quite guilty but that soon passed the more we stretched our legs and moved from side to side trying to catch our first glimpse of wildlife.
Well as it would happen we didn't need to wait very long - as we round a bend we see a LARGE elephant coming towards - and then he starts really coming towards us - and this is a big elephant and I have to admit I was wondering if the owner of the 4x4 had elephant damage on his insurance - luckily for Jumbo he changed his mind and swerved at the last moment before trying to hide behind a very small bush - and in case you wondered I decided Bob wasn't a good name for an elephant I didn't want to make him madder than he already was so I decided to call him Jumbo - I'm sure he's chuffed with that.
During the rest of the day we pretty much drove around like Colin McCrae in the Lombard RAC rally while looking for more wildlife but although the
sun was shining today, yesterday's rain meant a lot of animals still didn't fancy the wet grass - poofs...
The animals we did see were plentiful and also quite keen to pose for pictures even when surrounded by a lot of jeeps all trying to get a picture and most of which are shown below apart from a very large python... Unfortunately, and it wasn't because we didn't try, but we didn't see any leopards which we were trying to spot as I think they were the main attraction - maybe next time...
What we did see was more tsunami damage where unfortunately a lot of tourists and locals were taken and only the remains of a building remain - I still cant imagine what it must of been like to have been there when it happened, however, apparently no animal died which is obviously good and I have to say quite surprising indeed.
And of course at the end of the day it starts to rain again just as it did the previous day so we decide to call it a day and head back home before leaving towards Ella the next day - by taxi...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.137s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 14; qc: 62; dbt: 0.0574s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb