24/4/2011

On the move again, so packed up and then chilled in the hammock in the beautiful sun. Typical that the weather picked up when we were about to leave! Had another great breakfast and then met our guide/driver for the next 8-9 days, called Roshan and Anura.

We had a minibus for me, Jack, Tracy, Wilf, the guide and driver which included 11 seats for us and air con! The guide kindly bought us a king coconut each for us to drink at a roadside fruit and veg stall, where I got this incredible whiff of bubblegum. I kept asking and no one knew but after sniffing the fruits on display, I discovered that it was the 'woodapple'. I'd never heard of it but it's a genuine fruit and so I bought a few purely based on their scent.

Turned out to be a good find as it tasted a bit like bubblegum and despite looking like a hairy, small coconut, and inside the fruit being a stringy, turd-looking food, it was nice! Really sweet but sour!

We stopped off for a 700-rupee buffet (about four quid) where we demolished daal, chicken, rice, coconut salds, 'lady's fingers' followed by ice cream and jelly and some fresh fruit (papaya, watermelon, banana and pineapple). However, cheekily (as it was a fairly posh restaurant), they slammed on a sneaky service charge without telling us and brought us out puddings and not telling us that they cost more! And what we immediately noticed was that our driver and guide got all their stuff free for bringing the tourists in!

Over the road from where we had food was an elephant transit centre where they look after dozens of Asian elephants because of how destructive they can be in the wild. Most of them get killed because they're such a pain in the ass for the locals, trampling all over their land and even killing some people. I wasn't so keen on the place but for three quid you got to see them feed the young elephants with bottles and heard them actually groan when wanting more food. The groan was piercing and pretty scary - they use the noise for the film Alien (only I as a geek would know that) and mix it with that of a peacock! The one trainer was a bit savage with a whip, thrashing the elephants' asses if they tried to be greedy and come back for more! You have to see how elephants strip a tree branch - smart, yet they have it to an art and finish it in literally seconds! Oh, racism against tourists, 20 rupees for a local and 500 for a tourist, 11 pence or three quid - farcical! At the centre I was more fascinated by these red ants scuttling up and down the tree dissecting black ants and carrying caterpillars! Some big ones were playing tug-of-war with a black one - savage! We left the centre and eventually arrived in Tissamaharama overlooking a beautiful lake at sunset and all the water birds descending into the skies. We had a short walk around the area and came across a dead bat hanging upside down from a telephone wire and a big billboard showing Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara advertising coca-cola! We bartered with locals over a price for a safari, succumbing to a guy called Nelson. The later evening involved going on a dark, adventurous trek in search of a cheap restaurant amongst paddyfields, a mosque, and then a small street. Here Roots restaurant did the trick, chicken stir-fry for peanuts! Rain began to sprinkle, so tried bartering with a young tuctuc driver who tried rinsing us so I told him to do one and we walked back. Luckily, we didn't get too wet.