As dedicated readers of the blog, I’m sure you all
remember this “DON’T” from a prior post:
DON’T forget to make sure you booked the Thanksgiving trip to Sri
Lanka during the week of Thanksgiving…and not the week before. Do try to do complete this step more than 24
hours prior to leaving for this trip.
That, my friends, is a little bit of foreshadowing. Now, you’re about to hear…the rest of the story.
When we found out about our rotation in India, we decided
that Sri Lanka might be a good place to visit.
The Associate Pastor at our church was born there, and several of our
co-workers in India told us it would be great.
Since we had a few days off from work for Thanksgiving (and work is
typically slower at that time) we decided to book the trip for that week. Leave on Wednesday morning and stay through
Sunday.
Sleep deprivation is a funny thing. To make a long story short, we realized on November
18 that our flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka was on November 19. It was a bit of a scramble, but we made it
work and set off in the morning!
We arrived in mid-afternoon and got a taxi to take us
from Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, to Dambulla, which is more toward the
center of Sri Lanka. The 3½ hour ride
reminded us a lot of East Africa: similar vegetation, lots of tea, speeding
into oncoming traffic to pass a slow-moving vehicle on a road barely big enough
for a Smart Car, spice farms, and fresh produce everywhere. We arrived at our hotel, the Heritance
Kandalama, just in time for dinner.
After traveling all day I needed a beer…and apparently I also needed to
be covering my provocative legs at dinner…resulting in me being dressed in a
sarong for the evening.
On Thursday, we decided to hang out around the hotel,
tour the Eco Park, and go on a jungle trek.
Our guide was a tiny, old man who had grown up in the area. He had been working for the hotel for 10
years and learned to speak English (fairly well) from the guests he took on
tours. We navigated through some fairly
thick jungle and a few waterways…some more successfully than others. Apparently we visited Sri Lanka during their
rainy season – whoops. We saw lots of
butterflies along the way, some ancient village structures, and ended at a
small village where we were presented with some tea and AB was magnetically
attracted to a swing. No surprise
there. But this was a pretty cool wooded
swing and got AB pretty high in the air.
Wait, what’s that? It’s not
wood? Oh…it’s an old elephant leg bone? Great – even better!
Later that day we encountered several monkeys visiting
our balcony. The guests above us had
“accidentally” dropped a banana near our balcony. Given the signage everywhere telling us to
keep our doors locked and not feed the monkeys, we were surprised. The few that came all did a pretty good job
sharing, and the little guy who finished it up had a cleft palate! Very interesting.
Friday started off with Amanda getting a private yoga
session with a visiting spiritual/fitness know-it-all from the Maldives. Emily
Evelyn (yeah, that’s her name) guided Amanda though a very relaxing yoga
session…and effectively sold us on visiting her resort in the Maldives
(hopefully in March).
We then headed off to the city of Dambulla to visit the
Buddhist Cave Temples. Many years ago a
ruler of the island was deposed and sought refuge in the hills. Buddhist monks took him in for many years
until he eventually regained power. To
offer his gratitude, the ruler commissioned five cave temples to be made with
various and numerous statues of Budda placed in each one. The hike to get to the caves was quite the ascent,
especially with a wriggly 17 kg three year-old on your shoulders. And the descent included a pit stop for said
three year-old off in the forest. Grandpa
John would be proud.
The next stop was at a spice farm. Again, the similarities to East Africa were
abundant… coriander, cloves, vanilla, chocolate, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, turmeric,
etc. It was a lot of fun to see AB
experience the fun of seeing all the spices grow and then getting to try some
out at the end. The tour ended with
tasting an eggplant chutney, some spice tea, hot chocolate, and a straight-up
shirt-off (for Griffin, at least) massage with some ayurvedic lotions. After avoiding purchasing the $100 bottle of
vanilla extract, we headed out with some nice (smaller) parting gifts from the
farm. And on our way back we even
stopped at a “Wine Shop” for a couple local beers and a bottle of Arrack, a
distilled liquor made from the nectar off of coconut tree flowers.
Sidebar: Since I brought up
coconuts, I think I should describe how awesome the food was in Sri Lanka. For local food, the influence of coconut in
what seemed like everything was heavenly.
A spicy coconut dish they had at every meal was called sambol. There could be a national shortage of this
now based on my consumption… The resort
also had some great Asian and Western options – a welcome reprieve from the
cornucopia of curries we’ve been consuming.
Our journey on Saturday took us to Sigiriya Rock. For those of you familiar, this is a similar
geological structure to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming: rock in the middle of a
relatively level landscape. As the high
ground in the area the top of the rock was essentially a naturally guarded
fortress. The ascent again included a
ridiculous amount of steps. However; the
route included numerous cave dwellings, amazing architecture built into and up
to the rock, a series of beautiful frescos, and an intermediate landing point
(before the final ascent) that featured a huge entrance to the stairs above
framed by enormous lion’s paws. The only
damper (so to speak) on the experience was the torrential downpour we
experienced at the lion’s paws. Darn
that rainy season! Even still, Amanda
and I each individually climbed the rickety metal staircase to the top to
experience the ruins of a huge complex at the top of the rock.
Again, that afternoon I needed a beer (recurring theme?). We were set up perfectly to have a nice
relaxing time where AB could color on the balcony, Dad could enjoy a beer, and
Amanda could get a spa treatment. Step
one was being completed, when “The Great Sri Lankan Monkey Incident of 2014”
occurred. You guys, this experience
deserves its own post. It’s pretty
great. Stay tuned.
Moving on…we set out EARLY on Sunday morning for our trip
back to the airport. On the way, we
arranged a stop at an elephant orphanage.
For those of you who know…this is yet another link to East Africa where
the Sheldrick Elephant Orphanage is located.
This orphanage is a bit different than Sheldrick, but they guys still
have it pretty good. They have a huge
open area to roam and get tons (literally) of fresh greens to eat each
day. There were even a few two year only
“babies” that we got to bottle-feed. AB
was super excited about the prospects of doing this until she realized the
sheer mass of these “toddlers”. But
still, she and Amanda got to feed one a liter of milk…in about three seconds
flat…before the elephant proceeded to have about 15 more.
After feeding time, it’s time for the elephants to head
down for a nice dip in the river and some bathing. Amanda got an up-close view of the herd
trampling down what amounts to a loading dock into the river where they get some
nice free time to hang out. It was
amazing to get to see them in their (relatively) natural habitat while in the
river. A great way to end our premature
trip to Sri Lanka!
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