Sri Lanka: Bentota and Galle

Our third and final stop in Sri Lanka was in Bentota, on the southwestern coast. We stayed in a hotel right on the beach (Eden resort and spa) and enjoyed a nice beach walk our first afternoon, followed by some fruity cocktails at our hotel bar.



The next day, we visited a turtle farm. There are several turtle farms in this area. The one we went to was staffed by volunteers from all over the world. Locals phone them when they find turtle eggs on the beach and they are brought to the farm so that they can hatch in peace. There is a higher hatch rate in the safety of the farm than on the open beach. A few days after hatching, the turtles are released into the ocean. A few turtles are kept around until they're 3-4 years old for education purposes for tourists like us. The woman who gave us the tour of the farm said it's especially important to teach the Chinese about turtles because they eat turtle soup. :(



These little guys are only a day old:



After visiting the turtles, we went on a boat safari in a river delta. We were taken to several islands in the delta for various activities and demonstrations. On one island we learned how cinnamon is made from the cinnamon tree. This was interesting because I had no idea that the cinnamon we use is the second layer of bark from a tree and the rest of the tree is used for firewood.

We also stopped to hold a baby crocodile and have a "fish foot massage" where tons of fish ate the dead skin off of our feet. It didn't hurt, but tickled.



The containers holding all the "foot massage" fish:





This is where they catch prawns:



We then continued down the road toward Galle. Galle is neat because it was ruled by the Portuguese in the 16th century followed by the Dutch in the 17th-18th centuries. The Galle fort is a world heritage site and is the largest remaining fortress in Asia built by European occupiers. We didn't spend a lot of time here - it was hot and traffic was bad. We walked along the walls surrounding the city a bit and wandered around in the pedestrian area and did a little shopping. Below is a picture of one of the streets in the city and a few pictures of the old walls.



Galle, along with most of the southern coast of Sri Lanka, was devastated by the December 26th, 2004 tsunami. All along the road to Galle, which runs right along the coast, we saw shells of houses that were never rebuilt or fully torn down after the tsunami hit. Below are pictures of a memorial we stopped at.



Some pictures of the coast. The water and beaches were gorgeous but nobody was in sight!

Sri Lanka: Kandy area

After visiting the cave temples, we drove towards Kandy. On the way, we stopped at a spice plantation for a demonstration. They grew all sorts of nuts and spices there - saffron, cloves, sandalwood, cinnamon, aloe, almonds, rubber, coffee, cocoa... I ended up having many different things rubbed into my skin. First, your "salesperson" picks out all of your faults. Then, he takes you around to all the plants that can be used to help fix your faults. So I got sandalwood rubbed into my skin to make me look younger. I also had almond creme rubbed into my face for the same reason (pictures below). The man said it would make me look like a baby, or at least under 25, but it didn't. I asked him how he knew I was older than 25. :( Apparently I look old. The man also showed me saffron creme for the bags under my eyes and a slimming tonic that as far as I could tell contained only lemon juice and honey to help me slim down and a hair removal creme (made from turmeric, and it smelled just like Nair). Oh and tons of aloe was also rubbed into my skin to help it recover from sun exposure. By the time we left there, I was pretty depressed. We could have bought any of the above items but all we went home with was spicy curry powder and some sort of fix-all tonic for Martin to rub on his bad achilles (he hasn't tried it yet).

On the bright side, we got free massages and hot chocolate here.



This is me being super excited about the rubber tree:



When we arrived in Kandy, we went straight to lunch. Just another buffet, but this one with a view of Kandy:



After lunch we went to the "Tooth Temple", which is the temple that houses one of the Buddha's back left teeth. The picture below shows the room underneath where the tooth is held. You never actually get to see the tooth, as far as I can tell. But you can go to this temple and pray in the vicinity of the tooth. At 7pm every day, they remove the shrine that holds the tooth so you can see the shrine itself but I don't think they open the shrine up.



Flower offerings in the temple.



After visiting the temple, I requested some pool time at our hotel so our guide dropped us off and gave us the rest of the day off so I could do this:



Our hotel was called the Mahaweli Reach, and it was very nice. We actually ran into another couple from our small town in Germany at this hotel. Small world.

The next morning, we drove into the highlands to tour a tea plantation and do some tea tasting. The mountains near Kandy are up to 2,500 meters high and the air is nice and cool and dry there. It was such a nice relief from the heat and humidity! On the way to the tea plantation, we stopped at a roadside stand and tried orange coconuts, red bananas, and little yellow bananas that tasted like apples. There are five different types of bananas in Sri Lanka and I enjoyed them all.



Some of the gorgeous scenery and tea plantation views in the highlands:



Some tea leaf pickers. They only pick and use the top 3 leaves of the plant and the plants need to be picked once a week. These ladies are busy!



A picture from inside the tea factory. The most widely-known tea that is made here is known as Ceylon tea - you've probably heard of ceylon orange pekoe tea (I used to drink it in the US). This is where it comes from. We learned that only the topmost leaf of the plant, still in a budding sort of stage, is used to make white tea. The two lower leaves, still bright green and young, are used for green tea, and slightly older leaves are used for black tea.



A few pictures from our tea tasting. We of course bought some tea afterwards.



After another buffet lunch, we headed back to Kandy to explore the botanical gardens. They were really nice botanical gardens - one of the nicer ones we've seen and we've been to quite a few.



A large number of trees in the gardens were filled with fruit bats. Not sure where several thousand bats all manage to find enough fruit for all of them to eat.



That evening, we attended a traditional Sri Lankan dance performace. I only took one picture, shown below. Lots of beautiful costumes and impressive drumming by 8 people at a time and, at the end, walking over hot coals and playing with fire.



The next morning we went to the elephant orphanage. When baby elephants lose their parents, this is where they go. For some reason, once an elephant comes to this orphanage, it never gets released back into the wild. So they spend their whole lives here, and when they have babies their babies spend their whole lives here as well. They are fed all they can eat, have room to wander around, and are led to the river twice a day, for two hours each time, to bathe and frolic. So it's not a bad life for them.



Three times a day, they feed the baby elephants milk from bottles. If you pay extra, you can hold one of the bottles that the elephants drink from. We chose not to do this. There's such a huge crowd watching and the elephants just walk from one bottle to another in the feeding area.



Martin got his picture taken with an elephant. Unfortunately he's afraid of them so he didn't get too close ... this is the best shot we got, even though the trainer is in it. I declined to have my picture taken because the elephant had chains on and it bothered me.



One of the stores down the street from the orphanage:



We watched the elephants get led out of the orphanage, across a busy street, down a side street, and into the river. They absolutely take over the streets, about 40 elephants at once.



Bath time! The sick and old elephants lie down in the water and the trainers scrub them which is really nice.



We bought some bananas and fed this elephant. Martin panicked and threw his whole bunch into the elephant's mouth at once but I put one in at a time. The elephant licked me and its tongue was super slimy and squishy and that's what's happening in the picture where I'm running away. I came back for more photos after I recovered but Martin still wouldn't get very close!



And that's it for our Kandy-area adventures. Next up, we hit the southwestern coast...