Heading to Relaxville

Due to the "Sri Lanka Troubles" (as our minimal english capability waiter described them) the Yala wildlife park opened an hour later than the usual 6:00 am. This meant that we missed out on the best time of the day and thus possibly some of the highlight creatures contained within. No complaints considering the circumstances. It was very pleasant hurtling towards the place in our private jeep with the warm wind blowing through our hair and constant hint of smoke in the air which has been all over the island (except the high plains). After slowing down and bumping over seamingly hundreds of speed humps to witness the same show of guides running off buying tickets to get in to the place. This time there were significantly large monkeys roaming around (adding to the ambiance). Into the park we headed. The smell in the air changed from smoke to manure infused smoke. This got particularly strong near the waterholes. For obvious reasons.

Elephants, Leopards, Bears all reside here (apparently). We got to see a bucket load of others. Possibly the best were the spotted dear (lots of). Didn't have the lens to make calendar grade pics so it's all mostly captured in the grey matter. Oh.. and here... Buffalo, Water hog's, Mongoose (actually saw two - is that Mongeese?), Crocodiles, bigger deer (with serious antlers), eagles, bee eaters, jungle fowl, pigeons, peacocks, storks, a rabbit, boars, a kingfisher and a dog that Non-blogger befriended over lunch.

There was serious competition between this guy and the screaming crows at our beachside resting place. It was here that we first heard that the boxing day tsunami ripped through here as well. A huge loss of life as a result. Well human lives at least. No idea of the animal count. Sri Lankans have really copped it over the years and continue to do so. Mother Nature events one can sort of come to terms with. The atrocities of yesterday scream to and scrape at the bottom of your soul. Adequate words quite simply escape the abilities of this blogger so we'll simply continue with the attempt at light hearted humour sprinkled with the spice of cynicism. After consuming what we could of our (appropriately packaged) breakfast we shared the leftovers with the driver crew. Well our generous guide did. And the scraps went to the chaos of the dog and the crows. A stroll on the extremely picturesque beach afterwards (accompanied by the pooch) revealed a viscous swell hitting a high bank of sand. Down the wave line our eagle eyed guide pointed out fishermen's shanties which (hopefully) that's where our friendly pooch hailed from (stray dogs in national parks is not a good look).

It was a lot of fun in the park. Would not go back at this time of day combined with this time of the year, however given different circumstances with the chance of shooting some of the creatures at the top of the food chain it would certainly be worth a revisit. Camera peps... with a camera... We shot back out of the park by retracing our tracks. By then the opportunity to grab an another photo of a buffalo lounging around in a tepid pond was not enthusiasticly embraced. We had another trek to undertake. Landing back at the rooms we had the luxury of an extremely late check-out to refresh, pack and fill out customer satisfaction forms on the way. Wish we had of known our saviour guide spent the night trying to sleep in the car as he was driven out of his quarters by bed bugs. Yuk. In hindsight we'd not go there if we knew our transporting friend (aka guide) is to be treated so poorly. Then the last stage of the non-stop adventure began. A 5 hour drive up the coast at increasing pace and difficultly. It was bucketing down as we left Yala. There were fountains of waterfalls cascading off the hotel roof as we loaded up the boot and headed north(ish). The rice paddies were filling up much to the delight of the local farmers and everything was getting a damn good wash. People happy (apart from their sense of togetherness as a nation being torn apart) because the rains had come. All of a sudden we drove out of the deluge and the thought arose.." maybe the monsoon hasn't got to our next destination yet?". Bzzzz. Wrong . Doesn't matter though. The only people we saw being physically unable to deal with or stressed about the rain were tourists. Must have the wrong apps on their devices. The drive up along the coast was a heap longer than the new(ish) inland super highway. We stopped at the local area where the local fishermen stand on poles in the surf to spear fish. To eat. Other times of the year they'd be out in their boats collecting commercial quantities to pay the bills. The idea is they used to do this when they couldn't launch the boats. Minimal catch per day simply to feed the fam. And then along came the golden age of tourism. So now instead of catching fish, they catch tourists bucks. All year round. Our knowledgeable guide refused to let us be party to their exorbitant lifestyles by suggesting they were asking more for a photo opportunity (say 5mins work) than he earned in a day (and a night putting up with bed bugs).

So we left them without getting a snap of them standing on thier touristy placed poles and got back in the car and drove off. This is a conundrum. Should we perpetuate their exploitation of past cultural practices or not? I guess it's another example of areas coming to grips with the global age of tourism. Personally I don't need a picture of a guy standing on a stick pretending to be spearing food for his livelihood... because I have a T-Shirt depicting it. Been there. Done that. Have the Tshirt. It's good quality too. Only cost a couple of (back home) bucks) Our grandprix driver then upped the anti (and thats saying something) by bludgeoning his way through the traffic (possible post upcoming just on this topic) as the next deluge came down. It seems these afternoon dumps are very location specific. As in 15mins later the area seemed totally drought un-affected. On our way through Galle we admired (whilst continuing to move forward) the old fortifications which threw us right back to Europe. Name the country and/or the time and place. It was a bit of a shock to see the blantant history of the three colonial conquests that we'd heard about over the last week represented here in long lasting architecture. Getting close to the relaxing section of this soiree the pressure was on to perform more bullocking of everyone else on the road to get to here (Bentota). Due to the "Troubles" every bag coming into the hotel is being searched. Quite thoroughly and quite rightly as well. Problem is when you have tiered tourists with mouths that move before brain kicks in. Example number one : Blogger ... (Who knows how tightly everything is packed into the suitcase) "careful when you open it, it will explode... Oh shit I didn't mean to say that..." Example number two: Non-blogger (who has underware leaping out of her case as it's opened) .."it's not as if there is bomb in here". Luckily the staff were either immune to the nuances of our language or (more likely) were not listening to our foreign gibberish and were using eyes instead. So here we are. Great room with the delicate sounds of thunder seeping in through the windows. Interesting town to explore. 4 days to do it in. Now it's time to relax and chill. Expect the blog entries to be a whole lot shorter from here on in. By the way - the country is still under a nightly curfew 8:00pm to 4:00am so whilst the immediate threat has subsided - we still have interesting times ahead.