Blogs from Southern Province, Sri Lanka, Asia - page 4

R: This will be a fairly short post as we didn't do much here. With a long flight day to Australia to look forward to, we opted to have a few days of relaxation in a resort type place. We arrived about 4pm, and one of the quirks of this hotel was the boat transfer. When you arrive on the boat landing stage on the mainland you get whisked onto a small transfer boat which whisks you onto the hotel complex on a spit of sand isolated from the mainland. The hotel is fairly nice, 4* kind of resort. Large pool, quite a few families, three restaurants etc. But its location is quite special, directly on a spit which you can walk down a long sandy beach just outside the pool. We got upgraded to all ... read more

R: If you haven't been following us for a while, that's probably because we stopped writing about our travels. However, several people have asked us if we are going to continue with our blog, and we initially dismissed it. But it's actually quite nice to have as a record of our travels, and hopefully interesting to some of you as well. So from our current location in Bentota, Sri Lanka, we are going to start writing about our travels again. So if you are interested, stick with us. Otherwise, feel free to unsubscribe now. In time, I am also going to back fill some of our other travels, like the trans Siberian railway trip, from notes I took at the time.... read more

As it seems always the sea was still very rough for our last couple of days but I spent quite a lot of time playing in the surf and getting knocked over by the strong waves. I thought we might lose Caroline at one point when she went a bit too far out. At lunch we had a funny insident when Caroline fell between two bench seats and disappeared under the table. No drink was involved, promise. We just had a couple of lazy days in the pool and on the beach apart from packing our bags for tomorrow. Our last evening was a Sri Lankan Evening but the music was terrible so we chose a table on the other side of the restaurant so it wasn’t so bad. Feeling sad to be going home but ... read more

Although overcast for some of the day it didn’t rain so we were happy. The driver that Upul had arranged took us to the enchanting town of Galle, about one and a half hours along the dangerous coast road. I would like to have gone by train and I think it would have been safer. Probably because it was a cloudy morning and everything looked shabby and neglected I felt really sad for the people of Southern Sri Lanka who are still trying to put their country in order after the tsunami. Such an enormous task. We stopped at a memorial for the local people that died that terrible day and we saw many derelict houses along the way. The resilience of people never fails to amaze me. I loved Galle. It is full of old ... read more

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. ... read more