Sri Lanka 2019

Home again, seems like the snow has disappeared and streets are dry but it's still cold. Let's see when is the next trip, most likely Ecuador in August. :)

The flight finally departed, two hours behind even the delayed departure time. Around 02:00 we arrived to Dubai and spent an additional hour or two waiting for the Flydubai provided hotel. Finally a guy from HolidayInn came to pick us up and we could have some sleep in the airport hotel. As the only positive event of the evening Flydubai had upgraded me to business class on the flight, so it was reasonably comfortable.

In the morning we forced ourself up, to breakfast and to the city to see Dubai a bit. We only had a couple of hours and made the unfortunate choice to travel to Dubai Marina, which is an hour metro drive away from the airport. In our quest to find a viewpoint to see the famous man-made palm island from the above we ended up traveling up and down the lifts of a Hilton hotel before we were forced to head back towards the airport. Not the most useful city sightseeing trip.. Hilton sightseeing.

Now the time has come for us to depart and find our flights home. Iryna departs from different terminal, so she started finding her way there and I searched for my own boarding gate. Unfortunately it looks like Flydubai only upgraded me on the flight from Colombo, not on this longer flight to Helsinki.

After writing the previous blog post we moved to lounge to have some breakfast and wait for the departure time to be announced. Eventually it was, but in a surprising way: The new attempt to depart would be at 19:00 in the evening, over 12 hours later than the original scheduled time. And during the day that was postponed even more, to 21:00.

Now in the evening we are back on the way to the airport for the second attempt, let's hope no more surprises show up. In fact Flydubai has handled this unfortunate event quite well. They had their own people at the airport giving information to people and they quickly arranged us bus transport to an five-star hotel which was provided for the day. Some swimming in the rooftop infinite pool and a proper buffet lunch made the day much brighter.

Naturally we both lost our connecting flights also and the next possibility to fly home from Dubai is tomorrow evening at earliest. Flydubai should be providing us a decent hotel room in Dubai also, which actually is a better alternative to the original schedule. Originally we would have arrived to Dubai very tired in the morning local time after an almost sleepless night, now we should be able to sleep a good night's sleep there, have a proper breakfast and go to explore the city. Let's see if everything goes that well.

Yesterday morning we had some last moments on the beach and departed by taxi to Colombo. We had booked an hotel near the airport so first we dropped our heavy bags there and then took a bus to downtown Colombo.

We had just a few hours to spend in the capital, so we walked around the city and then headed for dinner. Both of us felt some need for sushi, so the dinner buffet of the Shangri-La hotel was the choice as they had sushi among a lot of other cuisines available. Not sure if it was worth the 20eur price though, decent sushi and others but nothing was really excellent.

From the city we managed to select an extremely slow bus to the hotel, so we only arrived there at midnight and had to wake up again at four to go to the airport. Seems like we hurried for nothing, our flight to Dubai has been delayed for technical reasons and there's still no new departure time announced..

Yesterday was mostly spent at the hotel, as Iryna was working on one urgent project and we were just lazy in general. In the afternoon we went to explore the nearby city of Galle in quest to find a computer mouse for her. The mouse was found and the afternoon and evening were well spent exploring the surprisingly beautiful old city of Galle.

Once again the frequent power cuts caused some extra trouble, as we arrived to Galle very hungry but no restaurant was working due to lack of electricity. In some hours the electricity was restored however and we could finally get our long awaited shrimp pizzas. :)

Galle is a popular tourist city, and as such has very well established tuktuk mafia controlling all the best places in the city, demanding abnormally high prices from tourists for even short distance rides. The tuktuk drivers are also extremely pushy in offering their services and it might well take ten more or less kind "No thanks" phrases for them to understand that their services are not needed right now. We didn't really feel like playing their game, so we searched for and found (after long search) the local bus back home to Unawatuna. The local buses are fun, all decorated with neon lights and loud music playing.

The poor ticket selling boy of that bus received some unnecessary roughing from me and was looking a bit confused and scared for the entire trip. I accidentally mistook him to one of those pushy tuktuk guys and responded to questions accordingly when he probably just tried to sell us the bus ticket. "Sir where you go?" "No thanks" "But.. where.." "NO I SAID". "But.." "NO" "okay...". Well, we managed to pay the ticket to the driver and I had to say very kind "Sorry and thank you" to the still confused looking boy when exiting the bus. :)

Today morning we went diving with a local dive company. Not much to say about those two dives, it's basically the end of diving season here on the south coast and the visibility was horrible in addition to very strong waves and currents. Was fun still, but much we didn't see.

In the afternoon we visited an sea turtle sanctuary and hatchery in the neighboring village, just walked the beach a bit and had dinner. At the sanctuary they collect turtle eggs to save them from poachers and release the baby turtles to the sea when they have hatched. Also they work as an hospital for injured turtles.

Climbing to the top of Sigiriya was not enough mountain trekking for this trip, so we continued with a bit more. This time the destination was Little Adams Peak, a small 500m peak near Ella. The climb actually felt a bit harder than Sigiriya, due to being at higher elevation and also because we did the climb later during the day when the air was more hot. After the climb started our journey towards the southern coast and the town of Unawatuna.

We arrived just before the sunset, having enough time for a quick swim before the darkness came. The sea here is somehow not so appealing as in Trincomalee, at least not today. The beach has a lot of big rocks and corals and the currents are strong, so it takes plenty of effort to swim and avoid hitting the rocks while waves are bouncing you around. It might just be the weather today, let's see if the sea is more calm tomorrow.

After sunset it was time for some more excellent barbecued seafood and a short walk around the town. Seems like here the electricity is just as unstable as everywhere in Sri Lanka, with frequent power outages. Well, it's fun shopping with a flashlight.

On the way to we stopped by a tea factory, had a quick tour of the factory and purchased some souvenirs from their factory shop. This is the tea growing area of the country, so all the hills were covered by tea plantations.

We made it to Nanu Oya just in time to catch the train and started the three hours train journey towards Ella. On the way it became apparent that taking decent photos on the train would be relatively difficult, as the train was crowded and most of the passengers were also tourists interested in window and door positions for photos. This particular train route is very popular among tourists heading to Ella, otherwise the train runs pretty much empty.

I got one of those bright moments and realized that everyone would be jumping out of the train at Ella, and the next station is just a few kilometers further. Furthermore, there would be one of the most iconic tourist attractions of Sri Lanka, the Nine Arch Bridge right after Ella and the now almost empty train would cross the bridge. Quick message to our driver to pick us up at the next station and as the result we had some very nice pictures and saw the bridge also from the train. :)

Our driver took us from the station to our accommodation, which this time is a villa in the jungle very close to the Nine Arch Bridge, which we can actually see from our terrace and where we took an evening walk through the forest for some more photos. On the way we passed through Ella downtown, which didn't really look particularly appealing to me. It's mostly made for tourists and full of tourist services, noise and mess, while here a couple of kilometers further the only sounds we can hear are the jungle. Also the owner of the place seems to be an excellent cook.

We had not much special plans for Kandy, so we just spent the afternoon and evening walking around the city. The main tourist attraction there is Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, which houses a tooth of Buddha. Visiting that temple must have been one of the most stupid 10 euro investments ever. :)

They had very strict dressing code, which my shorts did not pass and I ended up buying a sheet dress from a guy selling those to unfortunate tourists outside the gates. The cost was just two euros though. Add the 7.5 eur tickets to the extremely crowded temple, and we had just paid 10eur to not actually see a supposed tooth of somebody wearing a dress. :)

The teeth itself is in a casket which is only displayed twice a day and which you can see from a couple of meters away for a second, in the crowd of queuing local people leaving gifts to it. Well.. It was an interesting thing to see in general.

The city itself reminds me a lot of India. It's a horrible mess of traffic and people, with very polluted air due to location in a valley. The lake in the middle of the city is pretty beautiful though, and so are some of the colonial-era buildings. It wasn't exactly an interesting place to spend longer than a day on a vacation anyway, so now we just departed Kandy towards Ella.

We will be driving to a city in between Kandy and Ella and continue the rest of the way by train, as this railway has been called one of the most beautiful ones in the world. We also just decided that from Ella we will continue directly to the southern coast to spend the rest of the days on coast and skip an intended safari visit to one of the national parks. Sea just sounds better.

Not much else was done yesterday, just some work at the hotel and a seafood dinner.

Today was a very early morning with departure at six. Our driver picked us up from the hotel and drove to Sigiriya, where we climbed all the 1200 steps to an ancient temple on top of a high lava rock. While Trincomalee was totally empty of other tourists Sigiriya was quite the opposite, with huge herds of Chinese and Indian tourists making the place a busy mess. The temple itself was not that much to see, just some half a meter high ruins on the top of the rock.

In addition to the Chinese the site was also full of makaki monkeys, one of which stole Iryna's juice mug from her hand. The small bastard was looking pretty happy enjoying the juice, the victim not so much.

After Sigiriya our journey continues now to the inland city of Kandy for a night and then to some places worth visiting in the middle of the country, like waterfalls and tea plantations.

Two more dives done, still no turtles. :)