A brief visit to Sri lanka - 2

[lugg]

After leaving the botanical gardens in Kandy we were heading for hill country to visit the tea plantations. The roads climbed higher and higher with amazing switchbacks and stunning scenery. We were travelling to a village called Kandapola close to the small city of Nuwara Eliya. As we climbed towards 6000 ft the vegetation and climate changed , becoming cooler and less humid. We had jackets and warm clothing ready as we had been warned we might need them, however we were lucky the weather was like the perfect Summers day in England, about 23C , sunny skies . Even here there had been no rain for over a month so unfortunately the famous waterfalls we passed were just a trickle.

On the way we stopped at a working tea factory. Intrigued to find that some of the tea was destined specifically for Wales and Ireland, we were told that the highest quality silver and golden tips were mostly bought by Middle Eastern and Chinese companies.
The factory was called the Blue Field



Tea drying in the withering room


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After a refreshing cuppa and a few purchases we carried on to our hotel, a converted tea factory for the night. Our room was converted from the old withering room.


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Inside
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The views and grounds were stunning












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If you look closely you can just see a group of people at the intersection of the paths in the tea plantation

Here is a close up

[bjd]

Beautiful scenery -- I prefer this kind of climate to the tropical one.

[lugg]

Our next place for just one brief night was in a village close to Haputale , Lower Blackwood Beragala.The journey took us along Haputale pass , another stunningly beautiful mountain road until which reached our stop. This is a small “boutique” type hotel, only 9 rooms in an area with very little tourist accommodation or visitors. Walking through the local village people especially children came out to smile, wave. Not quite as high as Nuwara but still about 5000 ft so very pleasant weather

Probably one of the best beds I have ever slept in


Why ? …. Yes it was comfortable but this was the reason…






Late afternoon there was a storm and it rained very heavily with amazing lightening displays but it had cleared up in time for us to eat on the hotel balcony and later be entertained by fireflies.. the first I have ever seen.

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Bird sharing my shelter

Next day the final stage of our journey towards the south coast took us past Diyaluma falls. The rain the last night meant that we could finally see one of Sri Lanka’s falls with more than a trickle running down







Then we travelled along the boundary of Uda Walawe National Park where the wild elephants have learnt to come to the boundary fence ( electrified ) for tourists to feed them bananas




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I took this one from the car window as we were travelling – if you look closely you can see a herd of wild elephants close to the water’s edge on the left.

I zoomed in blindly and just managed to catch a couple of stragglers



Finally we reached the coast and stopped here at Mirissa for a late lunch

[mich64]

Hello Lugg, mesmerizing and exotic, wonderful photos. What a wonderful visit you must have had.
Cheers

[lugg]

Hello and thanks Mich

Last chapter now ;D
I love the beach … and more importantly the sea and what it is underneath. For this reason we chose to stay at Hikkaduwa, as there is a reef there and some marine life. Not the best reef in Sri Lanka – that is on the East coast but this was out of the question in March due to the monsoon only just reaching an end there. The other reason is for our choice was that Hikkaduwa is close to Galle and there just happened to be a cricket match on between England and Sri Lanka ! So my husband was planning on watching the cricket for at least one day and I was planning to spend time devoting myself to my snorkel and Kindle in equal measures. As we drove up to Hikkaduwa through Galle we passed by the Fort and the cricket ground and were surprised to see the nets right next to the road , and even more so as we spotted Kevin Pietersen practising. ( He actually went on the Thursday just in time to watch the English defeat )
All in all Hikkaduwa was a nice place to chill for a few days before flying home.


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A few from a beach BBQ
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And a few from under the water

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Master of disguise




Sri lanka is famous for its Blue Whale sightings and these bones are reminders of this, I understand they are from one that had washed up on the beach a few years ago, having died of natural causes.

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We were really lucky to see this huge green turtle and on the last morning we swam with herat the reef but did not have the camera with us






The end !

[Deleted]

Fantastic report, lugg! While I have transited through Colombo when going to the Maldives, my one and only scheduled trip to Sri Lanka was cancelled at the last minute due to technical glitches, and I have never made it back. I still have all of my maps and some of the Sri Lankan rupees from back then that somebody gave me.

The tea plantations around Kandy have always attracted me, and you final depiction of the sealife of the coast shows that it shares many of the same attractions as the Maldives.

[lugg]

Thank you Kerouac . Sri lanka is a really beautiful place and I hope have given a taster of the variation within , of course there is much more and some day I hope to go back.

The sea life is quite similar to the Maldives as you say, but really there is nowhere that I have ever been to that can really compete with the best islands in the Maldives in terms of marine plant/ animal life.
I was saddened really in Sri lanka at times, despite Hikkaduwa's reef being classified as " protected", in real terms it was not , no policing of the reef so that meant that some people both locals and tourists were standing on the reef, people with no buoyancy and huge flippers/fins were swimming too close to the reef and sadly one large coral which is surviving desite this and the Tsunami / bleaching , had graffitti carved into it. Having said that to keep two resident green turtles safe for decades means that somethings are working well.

[bixaorellana]

I love tea & this look at how it's picked and processed is a real treat. Some of that equipment must have been in use since the factory was built. Amazing that someone would think to turn one of those factories into a hotel & cleverly keep much of the original stuff. What are we looking at in the 3rd picture of that hotel interior, please?

The 2nd hotel looks like Eden! Had you really never seen fireflies before? Don't they have them in the UK? It must have been magical.

So glad you got to see a waterfall in full glory. And yaay ~~ more elephants! I love those two long views of the park, matched in beauty by the great beach pictures.

But the underwater shots ~~ !!! I adore them. Is the wiggly thing, 5th one down, an eel? And the master of disguise is an octopus, right? That last up-close-&-personal fishy put me around the bend with pleasure. How big was the turtle.

Absolutely love that you ended with the turtle's beady eyes fixed on a possible end for that fish making a prudent U-turn.

Thanks so much for this.

[lugg]

Hi Bixa - thank you again for your encouraging comments.

The third photo is a view of the central section of the hotel from ground floor to roof. The wooden balustrades are the different floors - 3 in total, each of which the bedrooms lead off.


Reading that back .....I realise my explanation is probably clear as mud , sorry]

Yes you are completely correct re eel ( Moray) and octopus ( Day ) I am not sure how big the turtle was at a guess nearly 5 foot long from head to tail, certainly she was the biggest turtle I have ever seen. Here is another pic that puts the size of her in some perspective.
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[lugg]

PS re Fireflies , yes magical ....no never seen them in the UK.

[tod2]

Wonderful photos to end your fascinating visit Lugg! The clarity of the sea water is incredible. Not even when I snorkeled on the Great Barrier Reef was the water so crystal clear.

[nycgirl]

More terrific photos! You had a nice hotel, I would love to wake up in the morning with that view.

You took beautiful shots of the National Park and of the marine life. The turtle sure is cute-- and huge! The camouflage of the octopus is neat. Was he big, too? Looks like it in the photo.

Thank you for sharing this.

[Deleted]

Having grown up in a region of "snapping turtles" which were incredibly fast, I will never put myself within reach of a turtle's head, even though the big ones look slow and placid.

[lugg]

Thanks Tod / NYCgirl. The octopus was quite big, I guess about mop bucket size. Tod - The water does look clear on the pics but it was very dependent on tide/ time of day. I would love to go to the Barriar Reef, do you have any photos? If so, and you have time, I would love to see them.

Kerouac- I too am cautious , not that this turtle was at all snappy but had, like all , poor eyesight and loved to try to eat anything green. Later I saw a turtle trying the taste of a snorkeler's green fins. ( note to self never wear green nail varnish in sea )