Well I have left my blog for far too long and with the prodding of my mother, (thank you and I love you) I will do my best to catch up from where I left off last year in Sri Lanka… Good grief it seems like an eternity ago that I was in Sri Lanka with Brian a friend and a guy I work with. Well I will not go through the whole story that I promised you, sorry. I will however give a brief overview of the rest of the trip as best as I can recall it.
Well we left off with Don Williams and we travelled towards Kandy to go see the Elephants. It was a great experience and one that was a bit strange as well. They call themselves Elephant orphanages, I am sure they do this so that dumb white guys will go and see them to support the elephants and help out keep these amazing creatures alive. In fact they are just another business that tries to get as much cash from you as possible with the lure of riding the biggest creature you have ever seen and do it as cheap as possible so that they can put food on their table at homes. I fully understand this and I did really enjoy the experience… for some reason though they put us two large men on one elephant which we found out was pregnant, I am not sure it was totally humane but we did it anyway and I do feel bad for the girl but hey I did give them 40 US dollars and I was wanting my elephant experience. We rode for 20ish minutes where we went up a hill through a swamp and finally finishing at a river where we could wash the elephant. They asked us if we wanted to be sprayed by the elephant but on closer inspection of the water and the poop floating downstream we decided to pass the very tempting offer. We then had to tip the mahout (elephant trainer) a few dollars for his time and effort for which we got some very cool photos of us beside the elephant. We were off now to head to the beaches of Sri Lanka. We had our driver and for the life of me I cannot recall his name…lets say John, a good Sri Lankan name. He told us that the driver to Una Watuna beach would be around 5 hours from Kandy. Time estimations in Sri Lanka are always cut in half by what I have found to be true. The trip that was supposed to be 5 hours which is a large amount of time was in fact closer to 12 in a non air-conditioned van.
We made it down to the beach and in the morning found ourselves in an amazing place with a beautiful sunrise to meet our hangover. I may have felt like death warmed over the view was spectacular. We also found out that day that the tsunami that hit in 2004 was directly on this beach. There were still signs of buildings that had been shifted off their foundations or stripped of everything but the concrete floors and posts. It was a eerie sight to see.
We made friends with a tuk tuk driver immediately and whenever we thought about going somewhere he was never more than a few seconds away from us. I am sure that it is a great business plan to be friend the tourists and make them feel comfortable and keep them close to you. He took around the areas and told us where the best places to buy Sri Lankan stuff were. (I am sure it was all relatives that gave him a kick back on our purchases, but hey when in Rome…)
We spent a serious amount of time watching the waves come in and out of the bay, I read a few books and had a beer or two. The food was fairly good and the fish was of course to die for. It was a very chilled time in Sri Lanka and although it was not quite what we were looking for it was a great time to check out. I am not sure I would go back there as I have many other places I would like to go but if I was ever looking for a place to totally unwind and read a book on a quiet beach, Sri Lanka would be one place I would consider.
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