We find out that social media has been cut off due to an incident in Kandy while we were there, a small truck knocked off a wing mirror of a tuktuk. The truck driver was very sorry and gave money to repair it, but one was Muslim and one was Buddhist, and so started riots and not very nice things. Therefore the government locked down social to stop incorrect info and scare mongering being spread.

 

At first I thought my phone was having issues so I updated my apps, I swapped wifi networks, then I googled and found out it wasn’t just me! Quite a step to take by the government, pretty much crippling us tourists connecting with home. Luckily my mum has an iPhone and the iMessage was still working so I could quickly inform the Mothership of happenings, and that we were safe. Fortunately email was also still working.

 

The social media drama aside, we still got out and about. We visited the Halpewatte Tea Factory where BK drew comparisons to how they process hops for beer brewing! It was very interesting to have just seen the tea being picked by the tea pickers to then see it get processed ready to be shipped out in big bags. The building was very tall, lots of up and down steps during our tour!

 

After that we transferred to Tangalle, on the south coast. Our driver, Saman, was very informative and stopped to let us see a waterfall, a pepper tree, get some curd and honey, and a bathroom/iceblock break. He also drove us through a ‘nature road’ where we saw lots of wildlife. Finally we were at the coast and glad to be even further away from Kandy. We settled in and went for a walk.

 

We were staying right by the beach so the next couple of days included walks on the beach, laundry, supermarket, buying new jandals for me since mine broke, plenty of local food and generally lazing around.  We had a particularly good lunch experience at a place called Dream Family restaurant. The Dad catches the fish, the Mum cooks it, and the son serves it. The food was delicious, and they gave us free ice cream to finish up, ice cream always goes down well!

 

Another fun experience I had, when going to the beach to look for the rest of my family who were, supposedly there, was getting convinced to help pull in fishing nets with the fishermen, there were 8 guys tugging, and weakling me it was quite fun, but I was too preoccupied in my mind looking for my family to fully engage and see the net 100% pulled in.

 

We tried to see turtles but the only option was going out in the dark at 8:30pm, to hope to see a Mummy turtle lay eggs somewhere between 9pm – 11pm, just too late for us so we skipped it.

 

Then it was time to move on to our next stop. We went by public bus. Bus drivers here are crazy! But we loved being with the locals and R had many admirers. All up travel cost NZ$11 for all of us to travel 2 hours west along the south coast.

 

We all still had energy when we arrived so BK and C went to the shop and little R and I had a swim at the beach. That evening BK wasn’t very well so not much sleep was had!

 

After a quiet morning and afternoon, BK felt well enough to go out so we chose to go to a turtle hatchery. It was amazing to learn about the different turtles, we saw some injured ones that fishermen had brought to hatchery to recover. Then we got to release a baby turtle which was only 1-2 days old! I placed it on the sand and it found its way to the water and a wave came and scooped it up and pushed it out to sea! He was so little I didn’t dare ask what the survival rate was…

 

After a good solid sleep by everyone we were picked up by our driver and taken to Galle Fort, it was so interesting to see a museum full of Portuguese, Dutch and English artifacts. We saw the wall that was supposed to have stopped the Tsumani in 2004, but the waves came through an open gate and flooded the place out anyway.

 

Our final day in Sri Lanka was spent on a 2 hour train trip beside the ocean to Colombo, we got a group of 4 seats together but a few stations later a monk got on, and it turns out the sign on the wall above R’s seat says its for ‘clergy’ and he wants to sit there, so we all reshuffle and then the monk gets a lesson on hatchimals, care of little R and her toys! After getting off the train It was a bit of a mission to get to our accomodation. Our host had told us to ask the bus driver to drop us in a particular, random, place. Several people around us tried to speak to us in their language and make sure we were sure that’s what we wanted, once we were dumped on the side of the road with our gear we realised what they were trying to say! Fortunately I was in constant contact with our host who within a few minutes came and got us and took us to where we were staying. When we got there we realised how much we had been compromising on our accommodation in Sri Lanka. This place was lovely and the attention to detail was much appreciated. Even though we were only there 13 hours it was the best place we stayed at in the whole country! It was NZ$33 per night, and we got two rooms so a total cost of NZ$66. We had a lovely dinner by the lagoon as the sun was setting which finished off the day perfectly.

 

We did awesome on the budget. The only thing we didn’t do which would have taken a big chunk of money was a safari, but after reading you ‘only’ see elephants, birds and lizards we decided a safari could wait for an African trip. Also our Thai experience with the elephants was more than enough to help with the wait.😎

 

Sri Lanka – $435 under

Total budget – $654 under

 

Now we head North West, one more stop then we arrive in Europe!

 

 

Till next time,

 

Claire

 

P.S. Social media still wasn’t back on when we left, lots of embassies were making noise about it damaging tourism and business etc. so I think it was due to come back on in the next couple of days. I was very thankful for our VPN that allowed me to tunnel through the Internet and make it look like I was in Australia, therefore staying in sporadic contact as I had to be on reasonably fast internet to get the VPN to connect. All a bit of a challenge!