Speedy Tourism around Sri Lanka!

Sorry for not blogging all week, like I said, I doubted internet would be easy to come by on our mountain tour and it wasn't! Our tour finished today (Friday) and it was fantastic, we got to see so much and all at our own pace with our very own driver - Lal. Such a friendly guy and made us laugh the whole way - would definately recommend him and his tour to anyone visiting Sri Lanka.

So we've been travelling for 5 days and stayed in new places the whole way - we've covered some of the central and west of the country and I definately feel I have more of a perspective on how the Sri Lankans live - time moves slower and people are calmer (apart from in Colombo!)

Monday morning we got the train from Colombo to Kandy which is the start of the mountainous area. I have to admit, although I tried to have a nap, the rocking and rollercoaster public transport prevented me from doing so but thats all part of it I guess! Lal met us at Kandy with his very much needed air con car before dropping us at the Royal Botanical Gardens. These were amazing and really grand (although it was a bit annoying to have to pay 20 x more for the entrance fee for being 'foreign' - this is something that happened the whole way though). I don't know much at all about trees and flowers as that's James' expertise but even he hadn't heard of a lot of the things in those gardens - just really beautiful and breezy to walk through. This is also where we had our first encounter with wild monkeys and we fed them bananas which of course they loved!

From there we drove to Pinnawala elephant orphanage where there are roughly 100 elephants of all different sizes! We didn't stay long as it was so hot and I had a headache from my irritating motion sickness in the car but we got to see the walk to the river and the elephants bathing. It is so different being close to them without the barrier of a zoo and you truly realise how big they really are - I definately felt a bit intimidated and stayed near the baby elephants!

Monday was a really busy day as we also visited the Sacred Tooth temple in Kandy which is one of the largest Buddhist temples and then watched some traditional Sri Lankan dancing followed by a walking on fire show, all in all a jam packed day and needless to say, we both fell asleep pretty quick that night!

Tuesday we had the drive from Kandy to Sigiriya which is further North and we visited a Spice Garden on the way up. I was really ill so spent the 'Spice Garden Tour' on the bench with a herbal remedy whilst James actually learned something! The rest of the day is a blur as I just slept and felt sorry for myself although our accommodation was wonderful - a really pretty house in a garden full of lime trees, quite dreamlike.

After sleeping all of Tuesday, Wednesday we climbed to the top of Sigiriya which is a huge rock similar to Ayres Rock. It is the 8th wonder of the world from the 5th century and used to be the palace for the King and all his 500 wives. It was a loooong climb to the top and took a while but once at the top, the views were stunning and we had that added nice feeling of only downward steps to go! After all the climbing we thought we deserved a herbal massage treatment which Lal had recommended... full head and body massage followed by a sauna and steam treatment and a nice shower, fantastic! I think my skin still feels soft 2 days later.

Thursday was quite a chilled day really. We left the Lion Rock Hotel in Sigiriya early and drove to Nuwara Eliya which is a town 2524 metres above sea level and known for its cool climate. We went from 30 to 18 degrees that day which was quite a nice break from the sticky heat. On the way we stopped at Glenloch tea factory for a tour and a real cup of tea. Tea is Sri Lanka's main export and this factory alone collects 10-12 tonnes of tea leaves a day - that's a lot of tea! I've never really thought about the process a tea bag goes through before hitting Tesco so this was a useful tour which showed how hard some people work to bring us our daily PG Tips.

Thursday night was our last night on the tour and our last night with Lal AND mine and James' 4th year anniversary so we thought that was a cause for celebration... We bought a bottle of Arrac which is a cheap spirit over here made from Coconut, it's 34% but you'd never know it,it went down quite easily and got us all rather tipsy. The electricity went out just when we were about to have dinner so me and James ended up with a candlelit dinner on Valentines Day after all.

Today has been a day of driving, 5 hours in total and we got to Beruwala on the West coast at about 3pm to meet our friend Althaf who lives here. After being introduced to his family we took the scooters out for a quick whizz around the block and gave the locals something to look at - I don't think they're quite used to tourists on scooters in sarongs (uh hum James) - we're normally in an air con car with a driver but today, we were the tourist attraction and got quite a few waves and funny looks!

Althaf has sorted us out with an amazing hotel right on the beach, I've never stayed anywhere so luxurious - I'm sat on a huge bed watching the sunset and waves listening to elevator music - perfect!

Anyway, we're just waiting to be picked up by Althaf as we're heading over to his house for a lovely dinner, I'm really hungry so can't wait so I best get ready. Thanks for reading guys (sorry it was a long one!)