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Travel Day: Habarana to Negumbo, Sri Lanka

thampton

Early this morning we were woken up by people talking and walking around with flashlights in the dark. It was about 4am so we figured they we tourist getting up to do some sunrise hike.

When we went to breakfast in the morning the owner told us they had an elephant come into the yard and it was eating the banana trees! We could see the damage to the trees. So incredible, we have moose and bears come into our years at home. But that seems like nothing compared to an elephant!

This was our total bill for the room, two dinners, and two breakfasts, $37!

We had haired a driver to take us back to the coast town of Negumbo. Turns out it was the same driver that got us from the airport. He drove 3 hours to pick us up at 8am, then he’ll drive us 4 hours to the place we’re staying then drive another hour home. Crazy!

On the way to Negumbo we had two stops. Sigiriya Rock, and Dambulla temple. Sigiriya Rock is an ancient fortress that you climb to the top off.

View of the rock from a nearby village.
The grounds around it were surrounded in lots of ancient ruins to explore.
Checking out the ancient toilet 😄
The rock to the left has steps cut in it. These were all over and incredible to imagine how they were made.
Starting the climb up the rock.
It looks more rickety than it actually was. 😉

View from the top! It starting sprinkling right before our final climb. They blew some whistles but no way we weren’t going to get to the top. No one else seemed to stop either.

Tourist posing!
The views from the top fortress was beautiful.
Wet metals steps- totally safe!
One random guide hopped in our photo. People have been so friendly here!

From here we drove over to the Dambulla Cave Temple. By this time it was POURING down rain! We decided to go for it anyway. When else were we going to be in Sri Lanka? I’m just so glad I changed out of my shoes into sandals.

Just a wee bit of water…
He had to cover his knees 🙂
There were different cave areas where they had placed all these various carved Buddha statutes. Buddha is either standing up, cross-legged meditating, or laying down.
They even painted the overhanging ceiling of this cave.
The detail was beautiful.
It wasn’t pouring any more so we could explore outside and the giant golden Buddha a bit better.
Apparently the wasps are a big issue. If you look closely you can see they’ve made nests on Buddha’s chin.

After we left the temple it was a long day of driving to get to the coast city of Negumbo. This city was close to the airport so we figured it was a good last night location. But the drive did take about 5 hours.

We’ve seen a lot of Sri Lanka on this trip. Covered a lot of country, but I don’t know if we could have done this much with the kids. The long car rides are definitely hard.

You can see the pipes off to the left where they’re attempting to improve the drainage.
Happy to be at the beach! But I can’t say I’d want to bring my kids here. It wasn’t the cleanest.
One more beautiful anniversary welcome at our hotel.

We walked the one street that evening and bought ourselves another wooden elephant. This one was too big for a suitcase though, about 15 pounds. And we fell in love with a GIANT one that is about 4 feet tall. We shall see if shipping it home ever works out. We left with an email address and some hope.

Our flight leaves bright and early in the morning so we had some dinner and went back to the hotel to pack. Ready for our final country and to start making our way home! Sss

Published by thampton

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