Sri Lanka - Part two 🐘

 We were up at 4:30am to set off at 5am for a safari in Yala National Park. It was beautiful while the sun rose, and our accomodation had given us a take away breakfast which included tiny bananas! Sri Lankan bananas are small and sweeter than what we're used to in the UK.

I didn't go on the safari expecting anything as there's always the risk you won't see much but we were not disappointed. Highlights were the Asian Elephant, plenty of Crocodiles, Grey-headed fish eagle, Ruddy mongoose, Purple-faced langurs, Spotted and Sambur deer, Wild boar, and lots more bird life too. We also had time to sit on the beach and eat our breakfast, so really not a bad way to start the day.

After this we were back on the road heading towards Bentota. We stopped roadside to see some huge bats which were actually flying foxes, me and Matt were both amazed by the size of them! We also ate some curds with honey as we were in an area where there were plenty Buffalo and therefore plenty of curds. I was surprised how much I liked it. We also stopped at Galle Fort which is a Dutch Fort, original built by the Portuguese. We had a good walk about and again manged to dodge the heavy downpours.

We arrived at our accomodation just outside Bentota which was right on the beach so we had a good explore and spotted lots of (after some research what we believe were) Horn-eyed ghost crabs scuttling across the sand. They very quickly disappeared into burrows in the sand so no decent photos were taken.

The next day we took a boat trip in the morning along the Madu River. We saw monitor lizards and an array of bird life. We zigzag-ed through the mangroves and stopped off on a couple of different islands. On one we saw cinnamon production and got to try some cinnamon tea, another was a Buddhist temple which had the impressive statues and ancient books to view. There was also a place to stop where your sit with your feet in the water and the fish all nibble at them.

We then had quite a chilled afternoon, walking through the town at Bentota and then strolling at the beach. We also had some fresh King Coconut which I actually really didn't enjoy, but Mohan was good at getting us to try Sri Lankan things. Although very warm, it wad cloudy and windy and the waves were very rough so not really a day to swim or sit at the beach. We did sit and read for a while at the beach by our hotel later, before we had a lovely dinner.

On our last day we headed up to Colombo, Sri Lankas capital. It was a much different feel to any other place we'd been, all the other cities/towns were mostly shack like shops and nothing high-rise at all but Colombo has the tall buildings alongside the crazy Sri Lanka roads. We had a good wander at Galle Face, an area along the sea front, where the city meets the sea. We saw Indpendance Square which was built to commemorate Sri Lanka becoming independent in 1948 after going through Portuguese, Dutch, and then British rule. We also visited the Dutch hospital, which during the Dutch occupation was the countries leading hospital, the building itself had hardly changed over the last two centuries but it now houses shops and restaurants.

After this we headed to our final hotel for our Sri Lanka trip where we said a final goodbye to Mohan, thanking him for all he'd shared with us. It was then an early night for our flight out to Kuala Lumpur the next morning which is where I'm writing this now! 

Lots of love,
Lisa and Matt 💕