Wow, what a day. East and Southeast Asia are now behind us, and for the past two days we’ve been sailing westward across the mouth of the Bay of Bengal toward the Indian subcontinent, and today we made landfall in Sri Lanka. Formerly known as Ceylon, Sri Lanka is the large teardrop shaped island lying off the southeast coast of India, and is an independent nation with a population of a little more than 22 million. A quarter of those citizens live in Colombo, the capital, and we’ll be there tomorrow, but today we visited a much more sparsely populated region of the country, and it was really special.
We docked this morning at a large Chinese owned port facility near the tiny town of Hambantota, on the island’s southeast corner. There’s literally nothing at or near the harbor, and its construction and ultimate ownership by the Chinese is a somewhat complicated and sordid story, but it certainly served as a handy gateway to our destination, Yala National Park.
Yala National Park is huge, and covers 378 square miles of wilderness that is home to a spectacular assortment of birds and animals. The fauna are all protected and move freely through the park, and our goal for the day was to see as many of them as possible. To that end we disembarked from the ship around 10:45 am and boarded a bus for the hour-plus ride to Jetwing Yala, a high end resort just outside the park. There we were treated to a really nice buffet lunch that fortified us for what turned out to be a special afternoon.
Exiting the resort into bright sunshine and ninety degree heat, we climbed up into the back of rugged six passenger all wheel drive vehicles and headed over to the park entrance, where, after obtaining tickets, we discovered why our vehicles were so rugged. For the next two hours we followed dusty dirt tracks that could charitably be called roads as we occasionally raced, but more often shook and bounced along slowly in search of the park’s wildlife.
And man, did we see wildlife. Elephants were the biggest thrill for me, but we also saw water buffaloes, wild boars, black faced monkeys, peacocks, two species of deer, a jackal, a mongoose, a crocodile, and several birds I was unfamiliar with, including bee eaters, grey hornbills, a grey headed fish eagle, and lesser adjutants. It was absolutely, positively two of the best hours I have spent in a very long time, and I can’t begin to describe how exciting it was to scan the terrain in search of these wild creatures as we bounced along.
I won’t run on with my description of our afternoon, as I think I’ll let my photos do the rest of the talking for me. I’ll finish by adding that after a little more than two hours we returned to the park entrance, hot, tired, elated, and feeling a little like a James Bond martini—shaken, not stirred. The ride back to the harbor was mostly uneventful, though we continued to see monkeys, water buffaloes, and some of the neat birds even outside the park.
We’re now on our way around the southern tip of the island and heading up its west coast to Colombo, where tomorrow we’ll have a very different, urban experience. Can’t wait to tell you about it, so stay tuned.
View of the Indian Ocean from the deck of Jetwing Yala, the resort where we had lunch, and where we boarded the six seat vehicles for our mini safari.
Down by the ocean at Jetwing Yala. This isn’t a zoo, it’s the real thing.
Getting ready to leave for the Yala National Park.
We saw several shelters like this on our way to the park.
A rare section of smooth dirt road just inside the park entrance.
This is more like what the road looked like most of the time.
Actually, we started seeing black faced monkeys even before we got to the park.
Lots of monkeys in the trees.
One more monkey photo.
We saw lots of elephants. This one was covering itself with mud for sun protection.
The deer were beautiful. Can you see the black stripe down its back?
No animals in this one. I just thought it was a pretty spot.
Lots of peacocks.
Lots of peahens too. Peahens are female peacocks.
Wish I could get closer with my iPhone. This is a lesser adjutant. They’re large and magnificent.
This pretty little thing is called a bee eater.
It was moving pretty fast, and not that close, so not a great photo, but that’s a mongoose.
One of my favorite photos. Water buffalo in the water.
Three guesses what they call that giant rock. 😀
Why did the elephant cross the road? Because there were several more on the other side. We were watching them when this one came strolling out right in front of our vehicle.
Hello there, Mr. Water Buffalo.
Water buffaloes were probably the animals we saw the most of.
We saw wild boars too.
We had a really good time. Yala National Park is fantastic.
On our way back to the ship our tour guide stopped the bus in front of a house where the owners were selling these out by the road. Can you tell what they are? This is what cashews look like when they come off the tree.