Day 10 - Wednesday

Our final stop is in the fort city of Galle.  We spent most of the day travelling on the bus from Yala to Galle.  We travelled along the coast in the pouring rain, stopping only briefly at a beachside bar which would have been lovely if the weather had been good.

There was also a short photo stop for the stilt fisherman but even they were not so keen to be sitting out in the rain!

When we arrived in Galle we stopped in the Fort area and had lunch at the Ramparts Hotel (and on Facebook) before donning our wet weather gear and umbrellas for a short walk around the shops in the fort area.

Another visit here is required when the weather is better!

When we got to our hotel we said goodbye to our driver and bus boy who have been excellent on the tour.

Driving in Sri Lanka does seem to be interesting in parts!  We also took the opportunity to have a photo with our local guide, Kamal, as we're unlikely to see him in the last couple of days of our holiday.

As the afternoon turned to evening the wet weather disappeared, but we think it may well return!

Day 9 - Tuesday

This morning we got our alarm call at 5am and were out of the hotel at 5.30am.  We travelled in safari jeeps to the edge of the national park in Yala and then had to wait while the sun came up before going into the park itself.

Once inside we bobbed along bumpy tracks, seeing bee-eaters (with their blue-green colouring), small crocodiles and egrets.  We also saw a lot of water buffalo happily having their early morning soak in small water holes.

After a while we came to a safari traffic jam. Three elephants, including a baby, were blocking the road. Eventually we were able to get past, taking photos of them. Mum looked very protective of her baby as it suckled milk. We learnt from our guide that the baby elephants take milk until they are 7 years old.

However hard we tried the leopards evaded us. We had a stop on the beach at the edge of the national park and then headed back to the hotel.

This afternoon has been spent swimming, reading and eating burgers!  Tomorrow we head across the south of the country to our final stop at Galle.

Day 8 - Monday

We left the hill country and Nuwara Eliya behind and travelled down to the flat country again yesterday (Monday).  As we descended we came across Hindu temples, monkeys and waterfalls before we reached our lunch stop.

In the afternoon we visited the Elephant Transit Home at Udawalawe. It is a project which takes in abandoned or lost young elephants (under 7 years old) and let's them roam in the park and they feed them milk and foliage until they are old enough to be released back into the wild. It was an amazing experience to watch them having their dinner.  Some were so small they had to be bottle-fed by hand separately from the others.

We then left the elephants and travelled to the national park at Yala which is our base for the next two nights.

Tomorrow is an early start for a safari.

They say there's an awful lot of coffee in Brazil and there certainly seems to be quite a bit of tea in Sri Lanka as well

Day 7 - Sunday

Yesterday we left Kandy and travelled into the hill country.  Our first stop was at a hill town, Pussellawa, where we had a walk through seeing all of the shops and stalls.

We then went to visit the Glenloch tea plantation and factory where Sasi (our guide) showed us inside the factory and then out onto the plantations where some of our group tried their hands at picking tea (much more difficult than it looks!).

After a late lunch stop we arrived at our hotel mid-afternoon to distinctly English rain and chilly weather.  We nipped into Nuwara Eliya by Tuk-tuk but decided to head back to the hotel rather than tramp round town in the rain.

The wooden box contains different types of tea leaves

The wooden press presses the leaves once they've been dried