Our Spring Break holiday in Sri Lanka was very much planned
as a week of relaxation - and relax we did ! We didn’t plan
on doing too much sightseeing, as the last time we visited Sri Lanka we saw a
whole lot of Sri Lanka wonders. However, one thing
we did want to squeeze in was a trip to a national park – this time we were on the look out for a
leopard !
Yala National park is a huge forest area on the south
eastern coastline of Sri Lanka and is known for being the home of leopards, deer’s,
elephants, sloth bears, and many other animals.
The park actually is known to have the largest density of leopards in the world, so we were quietly hopeful on having a sighting.
We bounced along in our jeep for 4+ hours and saw lots of animals, but the leopards were in hiding - again our safari ended with no big cat sighting. It was lovely to see a huge male elephant - they really are one of my favourites but a big cat would have been nice !
This time around we managed to visit Sri Lanka, just as the rainy season was starting and it will now thunderstorm daily, and pour down with monsoon-like rain. Mike managed to get 3 holes of golf in before a torrential downpour sent him running back to the clubhouse. Luckily, he completed the round the next morning and was happy to finish with a good score of 89.
On the theme of wet/dry, we managed to arrive in Sri Lanka on the Sinhala and Tamil New Year weekend. This is the New Year celebrations and all restaurants and hotels do not serve alcohol over this period. Mike could not believe that the first two days of our trip were dry days - luckily you could you still order some beers to be delivered to the room - just not in the restaurants or poolside ! I am sure we made up for it during the rest of the week and, we couldn't believe that our last day was also declared a dry day for Bak Full Moon Poya, which is the celebration of the second visit of Buddha to Sri Lanka. Again, we managed to get some drinks to the room …….. but next time I will have to review the public holidays before we visit.
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| the start of the rainy season |
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| Yala National Park - this is known as Elephant Rock |
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| these water buffalo have quite the swim to get back to dry land |
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| magical morning sunrise on our way to Yala |
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| Max and his handstands ! |
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| The resort had many Land Monitors - was quite the surprise as you lay by the pool reading and they appeared next to you |
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| A ruddy Mongoose ! |
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| Quite a few Crocodiles lazing in the sun |
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| a very active Warthog |
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| Water Buffalos |
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