Sri Lanka... Day 4

We woke up on day 4 to this view...

They had asked us the night before what sort of breakfast we wanted and we decided on a mix of Sri Lankan breakfast and eggs and toast. Again, we were pretty blown out of the water by the food! We had this little noodle patties that we poured sauce on-- no clue what it was but it was delicious! A little spicy, but really tasty. There were lentils that were close to but not exactly the same as the night before and that orange dish is something called coconut sambal. Its grated coconut, onion, LOTS of chili powder, and lemon or lime mixed together. It is HOT! 

We also had a pot of tea because... well, Sri Lanka...

And then Predeep arrived and they gave him breakfast and brought him a cup of tea how the locals drink it. He told us we had to try it so we spooned some out and holy wow! It was delicious! It was really sweet and milky and reminded me of the karak tea in Bahrain without the cardamom. They seemed surprised that we liked it but brought us all our own cups before we headed out for the day. 

On the way out we saw the women in the fields picking tea. 

Predeep asked if we wanted to stop and say hi or snap some pictures so we did. 

Beautiful church on the hill as we were leaving


Buddha... sad to be leaving tea country like the rest of us!

We left tea country and headed towards our next destination. I've touched on the driving a little bit but let me tell you about the roads. For this leg of our journey we came down a giant mountain and there was a switchback every 20 feet maybe? It. was. insane. On all the days we were there I took a bonine just in case, especially sitting in the back of the van, but luckily on this day I had taken two because I barely held my breakfast in on two motion sickness pills and I would have never made it on just one. It was crazy. Everyone in the car was feeling it. If I could have rallied and thought about it I should have taken a video of our ride. Not only was it curvy as hell, but it was SO bumpy! It was like being on a rickety old roller coaster pelting down a mountain. The tires were squealing around every curve and Predeep drove like he was being chased. 

Some monkeys eating rice out of a box on the side of the road

Part of the way through our journey we had to make a pitstop and lucky that we did because the little village we had come to had a protest starting up right as we arrived and traffic was blocked the way we needed to go. We managed to maneuver out and back the way we came a little bit and we turned off into the jungle. No, seriously. The jungle. There was a tiny little dirt road we headed down, pulling off into the foliage when other cars were making their way before someone finally started directing traffic and not letting anyone back the other way. Again, it was pretty crazy!

Buddha (and Predeep) stuck in traffic.

Buddha stuck in the jungle

We FINALLY arrived in Udawalawe and all sort of fell out of the car, happy to be off that ride! 

We checked in and got our cold towels and watermelon juice this time

We checked into our room, checked out the view and headed down for a quick bite of lunch.

After eating it was time to meet our jeep and head to the national park for our safari!

The jeep was really cool and our seats were sort of tiered so we all had a good view! 

Buddha at the entrance of Udawalawe National Park




Our first animal sighting-- water buffalo!


The blue and green bird in the middle of the picture is called a Queen Bee Eater

Our first elephant sighting!




No biggie... just some elephants crossing the road!




We saw tons of peacocks-- male and female


A tortoise-- that was actually moving at quite a clip...lol!


We made our way around this huge lake and found this guy just sunning himself with his mouth wide open

And then when we drove a little bit further realized there was a second crocodile sunning itself right next to the first one. This one actually climbed in the water and slithered away after we watched it for a little bit. I don't think I've ever seen a crocodile in the wild or even really move so it was pretty crazy to see these guys.


Stella hanging out on Predeep's lap


More water buffalo...


This bird is an Indian Roller and he was absolutely stunning when he took flight. The entire underside of his wings is that bright blue! He was so pretty!

Water buffalo in the lake. There were a ton of these guys out in the water-- even pretty far out!


And with all the rocking and bumping around in the jeep a certain someone fell asleep... hard!



On the upside... a sleeping Stella meant I didn't have to explain this elephants extra...um... "trunk"... haha!


When we were at the lake we could see a huge herd of elephants across the water so we asked the driver to try and get us close to them so we headed to that side of the water.

Along the way we found this guy...



And Stella (and Quinn and Kai) slept through our closest elephant encounter!



And we found the herd!






Somehow this girl slept through the whole last part of the safari. She enjoyed what she saw of it though and at least got to see all the animals we saw, just not the number of elephants. She slept all the way back to the hotel and only woke up when I handed her to our guide from the jeep. In addition to the pictures I snapped, we also saw a stork, owl, hornbill, and common kingfisher-- the birds were hard to snap pictures of with just a cell phone camera. We also swear we saw something in a tree that we waited around to see for a while but only saw movement in the leaves. We were hoping to see a leopard but never did.


We got back into the van and headed to the elephant orphanage to feed the baby elephants!


Except, when we got there we found out that it wasn't us that would be feeding them... we'd just be watching them be fed. Obviously a lost in translation sort of situation, but we had some pretty ill kiddos after that...



But the elephants were SO cute!





We called it early after that and headed back to our hotel. We rested a bit and then grabbed a bite of dinner and the grown ups enjoyed some wine while the kids hung out and played games. It was a long day of insane car rides and amazing animals!