Today we have a driver to take us the 5 hours from Colombo to Ella. But he doesn’t come till 9 so we had a bit of time to go explore.
I slept great, and woke at 7. Ty slept like junk and woke at 4:30. So he was ready for breakfast. We ate in the executive lounge and there was no one else there!
Breakfast was amazing! Then we had an hour till our driver arrived so we decided to walk to a nearby mosque that was supposed to be very beautiful. On our walk there a local guy named Siri starts chatting us up. He works at our hotel, and is on his way to the oldest Buddhist temple in Colombo. It’s some holy day and he invites us along to check it out.
The temple was beautiful and full of so many details.
We also got to see Buddha’s hair, and received a blessing from a monk. Wish we had more time, there were so many artifacts.
But we had about ten minutes till our driver arrived at the hotel so we grabbed our tuk tuk and did a quick pit stop at the mosque. Our original destination.
Then he took us back to our hotel. The tuk tuk driver price went from 2k rupees to 6k. And being new to the country we hadn’t gotten the conversion down quite yet. Then our ‘friend’ Siri shook us down for a tip for his time. There went another 5k. So we basically paid over $50 for a 45 minute unrequested tour. 🤷🏻♀️
Not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things but lesson learned. Hopefully…
Our driver was waiting for us so we checked out quickly and hit the road to Ella. A quick 5 hour drive through narrow, extremely winding roads. 🤢 Oh and the last hour or so was in a major downpour.
It wasn’t our favorite but we survived it and were thankful we didn’t have the kids with us for that ride.
We walked into town a few minutes on a dark road in the rain to get dinner. It was so cheap and so good! My entire meal was less than $5.
We explored the town a bit. Finally seeing some other tourists. Then walked back to our rooms to watch a movie and try and stay up long enough to FaceTime the kids. Fingers crossed we get a break from the rain tomorrow!
