A leisurely breakfast this morning as our driver wasn’t coming until 11.30 to take us to Udawalawe. So we sat on our balcony (we moved to one balcony so they could clean a room). Plowed our way through yet another huge Sri Lankan breakfast, then paid our bill and went to meet the driver they had arranged.
My god if he was over 15 (and I assume he was), he didn’t look it. Rose naively asked where the latch for the seatbelt was…uhhhh no seatbelt, but then again we’re used to this. Today is the Festival of the Full Moon so a holiday here…no alcohol and no meat allowed, all shops closed other than a few selling street food stuff and the roads were PACKED!! In every town people were lined up in long queues to donate money and receive food so there was chaos in every single town we passed through. Drivers playing chicken with each other all the way there and people stopped everywhere to picnic, particularly when we got near the national park. Our driver wasn’t bad but it is always a relief when you get to your destination. We paid our $65 and off we went.
We are staying in the town at a place called Bright Sun Safari. There are 2 safari huts (in the town mind you) and we have one each. Another over-attentive host who stands on guard over us and is always rubbing my arm (there’s something about Sri Lankans and older people). We went into town to buy a bit of food and found some rather dodgy looking roti filled with curried vegetables which actually tasted delicious but fingers crossed!!!
We had our little bottle of gin bought yesterday but of course couldn’t find Tonic and somehow Gin and Lemonade isn’t quite the same!! Nonetheless we sat outside on our verandahs and waited for the accommodation to produce dinner. Again a dinner with the host hovering over us…but a delicious meal nonetheless.
Tomorrow we are being picked up at 5.30am to go safari’ing. Its true that once you’ve been to the Serengeti everything else is likely to pale but we’ll see. Goodnight for now.