SRI LANKA: GALLE AND THE JOURNEY HOME

We had time for one last meal and a visit to one more city before heading to the airport. Lunch was at an open-air restaurant on the beach where the view almost made up for the mediocre food:

We opted for the seafood platter. It had very good calimari, yucky overcooked tuna, dry shrimp, and okay spiny lobster split down the middle:

We drove from the restaurant to Galle, a large city on the southernmost tip of Sri Lanka. As an important port city, it was basically taken over by Portuguese colonizers in the 16th century and is supposedly the best example of a Portuguese fortified city in all of Asia. When the Dutch came in during the 17th century, they added their own touch, making the city an interesting hodge podge of architectural styles.

Our first stop was the fortress. The clock tower was built in 1882 on the spot where the Dutch belfry once stood:

SRI LANKA: ICONIC FISHERMEN, A SEA TURTLE SANCTUARY, AND SOME SOUVENIRS

On our last day in Sri Lanka, we were slowly making our way to the airport, trying to see every bit of the country that we could along the way. Sanjay stopped at one of several places where fishermen were at work--but according to Sanjay, their work is getting tips from tourists. They sit on a tiny platform mid-way up a tall pole, perhaps made from the trunk of a slim tree, and cast their lines out into the waves:

If you look very carefully, you can see that the man on the right has a very small fish at the end of his line, which he kept dangling where we could see it. It doesn't exactly look like dinner:

The expanse of rocky shore and the tropical green water was gorgeous. I wouldn't mind sitting on a pole and looking at this for an hour or two:

If there is an iconic photo of Sri Lanka, the fishermen are probably it, which means if there is an iconic souvenir, this woodcarving is it. We saw them in numerous places and bought a small one--about 8" tall--at a woodcarving shop:

SRI LANKA: LAGOON PARADISE BEACH RESORT AND A SNAKE HOUSE (NO WORRIES, THOSE TWO THINGS ARE UNRELATED)

Our last night in Sri Lanka was spent in the Lagoon Paradise Beach Resort in Tangalle, Sri Lanka. Again, it was in a spectacularly beautiful setting. Our room was enormous and had very high ceilings. 

The bathroom was almost comically large. It was bigger than our master bedroom at home--but almost empty. There was a toilet:

. . . a sink attached to the wall, and an open shower:

There was a lot of empty space. Seriously, you could move about six pieces of gym equipment in here and add a big screen TV, and it would make the perfect workout room.

We made our way across a bridge to the restaurant:

. . . where we ate dinner at a table in the sand on the beach. The only light was a candle, and we were serenaded by the irregular beat of waves against the shore. What the place offered in atmosphere, however, it totally lacked in food quality. To say our dinner of giant prawns and shrimp cocktail was mediocre is kind. Our breakfast the following morning was equally mediocre:

SRI LANKA: BUNDALA NATIONAL PARK

After multiple trips into Yala National Park (three for Bob, two for me), it was time to move on. We returned to the hotel and had lunch, then packed up for our final safari at Bundala National Park, a one-hour drive away.

Honestly, by this time I was pretty tired of driving along dusty, bumpy roads looking at/for the same animals we'd already seen everywhere else. This was to be our sixth half-day safari drive (although I skipped #4), and wasn't too thrilled with the thought of another.

Bob, on the other hand, could have keep going for days.

And so on we went to Bundala National Park, situated on the Indian Ocean and the smallest of the four national parks we visited--just 13 square miles.

In 2005, UNESCO declared these wetlands to be a Man & Biosphere Reserve.  The focus of the park is definitely on birds, although we saw other animals, including one lonely elephant.

It was very different from the other national parks we had visited--flat and open and marshy:

SRI LANKA: YALA NATIONAL PARK

The third national park we visited in Sri Lanka was Yala National Park, the most visited national park in the country. Covering 378 square miles, the area was designated a national park in 1938.

Bob went on an early morning drive while I slept in, but I joined him and Sanjay for the afternoon drive and a drive the following morning.

It was nice to have this instructive diagram at the entrance, and I'm glad I didn't bring my trumpet along on this trip. If I can't play it in Yala, what's the point of packing it?

I love this logo:

The first thing Sanjay pointed out to us was this weird rock in the mud:

SRI LANKA: UDAWALAWE NATIONAL PARK

There are 26 national parks in Sri Lanka, a country the size of Virginia. During our 8 days in the country, we visited 4 of the parks. We started with Minneriya National Park, and our second park was Udawalawe National Park, established in 1972 and covering 119 square miles. 

You never know what you are gong to find on the road into a national park in Sri Lanka--maybe an enormous, ponderous land monitor :

. . . or maybe a Buddhist shrine:

. . . or maybe a sign with a name you can't pronounce. (We learned that it's pronounced "Ooo-duh-vah-lah-vay"):

We climbed into a safari vehicle waiting for us in the parking lot and headed into the park, wehre we spent the next five hours rocking and bouncing along uneven dirt roads, which is really not my thing. However, we had all kinds of sightings, including 15 more elephants, which is my thing.

One of the first things we noticed once we were inside the park was not the elephants, however, but wide swaths of cleared ground. Sanjay told us that lantana, a ground cover common in California and other warm climates but not in Sri Lanka, had been introduced in the country and was invading many of the parks and other areas, choking out much of the native vegetation: