We were invited in to our hosts' home for the most amazing breakfast spread, mainly local Sri Lankan food. Far too much for us to eat, but we were urged to take some away with us for lunch - such wonderful hospitality. Stuffed to the gills, we took our luggage down the steep slope to meet our jeep at the bottom and at 08.30am we were off for our journey to the hill station town of Ella. Eventually we started climbing up and up, around 100's of hairpin bend...

After the early morning climb to the top of Pidurangula rock, we then headed on to Kandy in our Jeep - we had decided to keep our lovely driver for another 2 days and it was great to be in a jeep rather than an airconditioned minivan. Although it was a bit tight with all our luggage too. We stopped at a spice garden on the way and Kim, Louis and Dan had a 10-minute massage to sample the ayurvedic oils obviously in the hope that we would spend lots of money bu...

Our driver arrived on time at 10.30am and this time we had a minivan as we were now 4 people and a lot more luggage. We were on our way to Sigiriya for 3 nights and our driver made the 4-hour journey very interesting. Pointing out different trades en-route and even stopping and taking us in to a toddy "shebeen" which was full of older men drinking palm sap which when left for a few hours becomes alcoholic - this was served in large plastic mugs from a hatch a...

Sad to leave our little idyllic haven, we hired another driver in the smallest car we had been in yet, together with luggage secured with a seat belt on the front seat. We set off back towards Colombo on the west coast to await the arrival of Kim and Louis the next morning. 5 hours later we arrived at Ging Oya Lodge which Heather had booked being 40 minutes from the airport so that Kim and Louis could relax for a couple of days and adjust to the time zone. ...

We had a driver to take us down to the east coast where Dan had booked us an anniversary treat for 4 nights at a beach resort called Jungle Lodge. The 4.5 hour drive took us out of the Jaffna peninsula through Elephant pass, the gateway to and from Jaffna, with particularly bloody battles waged in 1991, 2000 and 2009. Today it is the site of two major war memorials with monuments erected and depicting the story of the civil war. On a lighter note, we...