In the evening we had a nice dinner at the hotel, that’s also where Anton told me about Lindsey and his driver, who took him down to Hikkadua, waiting for him all day in the town so they could take him back to the hotel afterwards. Anton made a deal with them to show us around the area for the next few days as we were having a short stay in Sri Lanka. Anton also told them that I was pregnant and I would love to see Kandy, which is an ancient town high in the mountains of Sri Lanka, and has beautiful Buddhist temples, old town areas and an elephant orphanage on the way there. Lindsey advised us against that trip due to my condition, and the fact that it is a whole day’s trip just to get there. I was pretty upset when I found out it would take us that long to get to Kandy, but we will have to go back to see Kandy on our next trip to Sri Lanka and arrange a nights stay in one of the hotels there. Lindsey already offered us that he would take us there next time around.

On the second day we had breakfast and Lindsey took us to a turtle hatchery, in Bentota, which was very nice and where we got invited the following evening to come back again to release some of the older turtles back to the sea. We found out that they have five different types of turtles in and around Sri Lanka, maybe Anton can name them all (okay!, Leatherback, Green, Hawksbill, Olive Ridley and Loggerehead). (if I named any wrong and you are sure, email me ! I may have misidentified one...) They had turtles of all sizes, from eggs to BIG ones. They even had some tortoises and freshwater/river turtles.

On our way out of the hatchery we saw a man collecting coconut toddy from the surrounding palm trees. He collects the milk from the coconut, which has been cut open in previous days and left there to ferment, it is supposedly a very strong drink that they brew out of this stuff. It was exciting watching him climb up those palm trees and to see him manoeuvre around in the palm tops, testing each coconut for readiness to harvest the toddy.

After our stop at the hatchery we went to a woodworking shop, where we had to buy a nice little stool with leather seat covering, which has an imprint of two beautiful elephants in the jungle, we also bought a statue of god Ghanesh, which is the god of wisdom and learning, so we could place it in our home, hoping for some wisdom to arrive finally in our household, which we will need, especially with a child around!

After the woodworking shop we stopped off at an Ayurvedic (An art of Natural Healing/Medicine)garden, where we were shown all kinds of herbs and their medical uses. Anton even got a neck and upper back massage. I had to be careful with those herbs, as I was pregnant. We got a fantastic mosquito repellent though, lemon balm, all natural and those beasts stay away from you. Lindsey also told us to keep the air conditioning going all night as that is what keeps the mosquito’s asleep, so they won’t eat us alive during the night, so we decided to rather freeze a bit than to get eaten and stand that buzzing sound all night long. Oh well, we are not used to mosquitoes very much anymore, as there aren’t normally many in a desert climate.

After the ayurvedic garden and a few rupees lighter, we went on to a moonstone cave, with a jewellery shop attached that was surrounded by highly valued cinnamon trees. Hey we did not spend any money here! They extract the moonstone still the same way as they used to about a century ago, poor guys, but it is a nice way to see how they work. We also saw some water monitor (6 foot water lizards), iguanas and many different types of beautiful birds including Kingfishers. Kingfisher is also the name of a popular Indian Draft that is not too bad! On our way back to the hotel we stopped at a mask factory and museum, where we were introduced to some of the native style and ghost/myth style masks and stories of Sri Lanka. We were also shown how the masks were made out of balsa wood as well as how they are used in different annual dance and play performances and street festivals. Afterwards we stopped by a batik yard, naturally with a shop attached, you can not call it anything else but a yard, as the girls were sitting outside in a court yard under a tin cover, making beautiful, very detailed and time consuming batiks with modern, traditional and regional imprints. I had to get a very pretty batik with a Kandy dancer on it. It is really beautiful and I am happy we got it before returning back home, as it is something from the local culture that will fit right into our home and represents a specific skill for the region. You know us by now, we love to collect Artisan things from wherever we go. Just before the bridge to our hotel we stopped at a pretty Hindu temple and took unfortunately only some external photos, as it was getting late. We ended day number two downstairs of the hotel in the Chinese restaurant, where we enjoyed a lovely dinner for two and made plans to visit Galle the next day. Before we headed back to our room we went onto the beach for a walk, which was lovely with all the night lights from the hotels, the lighthouse, and the hundreds of crabs coming onto the shore.

Our third day started, after a quick breakfast, at the oldest Buddhist temple and monastery in Bentota, where we got greeted by the head monk on the entrance stairs to the temple, naturally after we took our shoes off at the gates to the monastery. We were shown around the temple and the monastery where we made our little offering to the monks, as they can not earn any money any other way, this is the only way they can keep the monastery in a renovated condition (donations). Food offerings are brought to the monks daily by the villagers and the surrounding inhabitants. There are many photos of the interior on the "photo only" page. The light is poor but they keep it that way to preserve the paintings.

After our stop at the temple we went on to Galle a beautiful old Portuguese harbour town on the southern tip of Sri Lanka, with a quick stop over in Hikkadua for lunch, which was pretty good I must say. Galle is a very pretty town, with a very nice vista point at the tip of the old fort, which surrounds the old part of town with a very high wall, to protect it from the seas. On the tip were a few other tourists, who were surrounded by a bunch of local children, who were willing to jump off the cliff from the round view tower for a couple of dollars, to give the tourists a good photo shot. I think we actually saw only one or two of the older kids jump into the water, from where they made their way back up onto the rocks and up the grassy hill alongside of the tower. Afterwards we went for a stroll down the streets of Galle fort and I took some photographs of the partially falling apart, but beautiful old houses and estates, erected by the Dutch and the Portuguese, during their stay in Sri Lanka. Also paid a visit to a pretty little protestant church. Sri Lanka has all kinds of religions united on the southern part of the island, although not sure about the Jewish faith, and has churches, temples and mosques scattered everywhere.

Back at our hotel that evening we decided on the Indian cuisine for dinner and had a nice meal at the pool. On our fourth and last day in Sri Lanka, we decided to go on a river safari in the morning and to take it easy in the afternoon at the pool, since we had to get back that evening to the airport to fly back to Doha. So, after we packed and finished breakfast, Lindsey picked us up and took us down the river where we got into a boat with a local boy who was our guide for that morning and the driver of our guide Lindsey, who was incidentally his brother in law. As we took off on the river we saw large water Monitors, Kingfisher’s, Cormorants, Egrets, Monkey’s in the tree tops, and as you can see, not just in the tree tops, which did not make me too happy, but by the time we told the boy to stop by the girl it was already too late and I had the poor little creature already in my hands. After that not so exciting experience, we went on and saw little villages, huts, mills, and family homes hidden in the midst of the jungle, with little bridges connecting the different islands through all the mangroves. We also saw crab huts and traps and were shown how they catch the river crabs and the tasty tiger prawns. It is actually a very easy practice, they build those walls and traps made out of wooden reeds and hang them into the water, within the huts and above those traps the owners hang little lamps during the night, which attract the crabs and by morning they have a few crabs/prawns trapped in their nets.

After our stop in the mangroves we went on further to a small Buddhist island temple, where Anton made a couple photographs of a strange creature, which you can find only in Sri Lanka, it lives in the shrubs and undergrowth of the jungle and looks almost like a weasel, but with a snout and a tail like a rat but had hands like a monkey. I did not dare touch it even though the boy encouraged us to do so, as I was not too sure about how friendly it was towards all those bloody tourists it must have seen already that morning. Our next stop was a little fisherman’s “chapel” on the water, not too sure what term the Buddhists use for such a building. As we ended, our guide made a little flower necklace for Maggie. Back on dry land we went back to the hotel, said our goodbye’s to Lindsey and his brother in law and made our way back to our room to change and onto the pool. After a few hours of lazing around we took a shower had some lunch and went into the lobby to check out. We got picked up in a car around three o’clock and made our way back to the airport where we still had to wait a bit before boarding the plane. One thing is for sure after our short but beautiful trip to Sri Lanka, we definitely would like to go back. It was a beautiful experience and we can only advise everybody to take a trip over there, something that should not be missed!