Advertisement
Published: March 13th 2018
Edit Blog Post
We were lucky to be able to set off on our safari at 7.30 this morning. People that had tried to leave at 5.30 couldn’t because there was an elephant in the entrance of the hotel eating his favourite trees.
We set off in the sunshine and it wasn’t long before we saw wild boar, crocodiles, deer and some beautiful birds. We also saw mongoose, land monitors, Sri Lankan Sambar deer, malbar hornbill, eagle, blue tailed bee eaters, tufted grey langur monkeys , white necked storks, kingfisher, peacocks (one with its beautiful fan tail open) and Jungle Fowl their national bird which is like a very smart cockerel. We also saw some loan elephants. Male elephants are always on their own unless they are mating of cause. But what we really wanted to see was leopard. The first one we saw was stalking in the long grass so we could only see his head peeping out.
Quite suddenly the sky’s opened and it just poured with rain. The side of the Jeep I was sitting on took the brunt of it and I was soaked through before I could get out my waterproof jacket. I was literally dripping and sitting in
a puddle of water.
We drove to where our driver thought there should be some more leopards and we waited for about an hour but saw nothing. Then we went to another location and waited and Trish saw one and Caroline and I just saw his back end and long tail slinking into the undergrowth.
By then I was nearly dry and it was lunch time so we drove to the beach and were presented with some superb curries cooked by our drivers wife served on china plates. We had the usual wonderful fruits for desert then went for a walk on the beach. The sea was rough and you could see that there was a powerful undercurrent. It wasn’t long before it started to rain heavily again and I had only just dried out. I sheltered in the toilets for a while (yes there were toilets out there in the middle of nowhere). But then thought the others might wonder where I was (maybe been eaten by a giant crocodile?) so I ran in the pouring rain back to the Jeep and got soaked through again. Its a good job it’s quite hot, 32c, and the rain is
warm. It’s not supposed to rain this time of the year so we are a bit unlucky and our Jeep was one of the few we saw without roll down waterproof sides.
There were the foundations of what used to be a hotel before the tsunami near to where we had parked which was a stark reminder of that terrible day.
We set off again and our driver took a narrower turning and the road was almost impassible. Over great rocks and through deep terra-cotta coloured puddles which were almost ponds. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what would happen if we got stuck in one of those muddy ponds or on one of the rocks out there in the middle of nowhere. The driver even had to cut back some of the vegetation so that we could get through. Exciting though. ? We made it back to a more even track and kept looking for leopards.
We spoke to some young men in a passing Jeep and asked if they had seen any and they show us, in their camera, fantastic close up pictures of one.
We then went to another spot and waited by which time I thought
we wouldn’t see anything but then I was quite shocked when one appeared out of the undergrowth and calmly walked down the track. It was amazing. They are much bigger than I had imagined.
So now, after a ten hour safari, our day was complete and as the sun was going down we made our way back to the hotel very tired but satisfied and feeling very happy.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.173s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 49; dbt: 0.1067s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb