Sri Lanka

Spring break was a time of rest and relaxation. Well, mostly. When we arrived at our hotel around 6:30 in the morning we were told our rooms wouldn't be ready until 1. Since our hotel was right on the beach, we did what any sane traveler would do: we got out our suits and went to lay on the beach all morning!


It was really quite awful :)- We mostly spent the day laying around and went to bed early. We hadn't slept in over a day and a half!



The next day involved some exploring of the beach and some drinking. Of course, we laid around by the ocean and played in it as well!

These were taken at a little bar on the beach. I had a few Coronas here :)- They also had the best Mojitos. I may have had a few of those also...



People wander the beach selling dresses, cover-ups, shirts, and large comforter-size blankets. You can wheel and deal with them. We got cover-ups. They were surprisingly hot - they looked like they would be cool, but when you're dealing with high temperatures and humidity nothing is really very cool...


You could also buy fresh pineapple, coconuts or mangoes from the men walking the beach. The pineapples and mangoes were phenomenal!




Just so you don't think I just laid on the beach and drank the whole time, here are some adventure pictures:

Our first ride in a tuk-tuk:


Some of them are really blinged out, stereo systems, decals, the whole nine yards. This one was most definitely not!




The reason for this ride was because we wanted to go to the Turtle Hatchery and into Galle.


This guy was very pretty:


Baby turtles born that day!


They're blurry because my camera (and the operator) are not the greatest. You get the idea though! They were super cute.

On our way into the historic fort area of Galle.


These are from inside the history museum at the fort in Galle. Basically, it was a huge collection of stuff from the island. The funny thing is that nothing was really labeled!


This guy spends his days polishing stones at the museum. Sri Lanka is famous for blue sapphires, cat's eyes and alexandrite.


Walking around in the fort:





Rina made a new friend while walking along the fort wall:



We walked around the market district of Galle. Let me just say it was quite the experience! There were hordes of people everywhere, and if you add in the cars, buses, tuk-tuks and motorbikes it was just chaos! I'm honestly amazed we didn't get run over.


See, here comes the bus!


And yes, I really was this close to the bus:


On our last night at the hotel together, we took a boat out onto the choppy water to watch the sunset:



Our drivers:


The next day Maddy and I left the hotel at 2. We were heading to Adam's Peak to climb the damn thing. Oh yes, I am still cursing that climb. It's been 2 days and my calves are still killing me!

The thing about climbing the peak is that you do it in the middle of the night. Yes, we got our sorry asses up at 2 am and were out the door before 2:30. It took us about 3 hours to reach the top. I don't have any decent pictures of the way up, but these are from the sunrise at the top and the way down. At the top is a Buddhist temple. It's a pilgrimage for Buddhists. There were many, many Sri Lankans going up and down the peak while we were there. Many of them were wearing flip-flops, and the rest were barefoot. I have no idea how they did that!







This is a small sampling of the stairs. Let me tell you, there were A LOT of stairs. Some were short, some were tall, some were broken...climbing up them in the dark was quite the adventure!




Here you can see the top of Adam's Peak. Please keep in mind that this isn't even at the bottom of the climb!!! By the time we did get all the way to the bottom you couldn't see the peak anymore because of the clouds!



After climbing up and down Adam's Peak, we went back to our hotel for a quick shower, then set out to Kandy.


The Temple of the Tooth in Kandy. It's a very famous Buddhist Temple. Siddhartha's tooth relic is housed here. Once every five years it's put on display and people come from all over the world to see it. (Siddhartha was the man who started Buddhism). The red roof holds the library. I was sad we couldn't go in, but it's only open 3 times a day, and we were smack in the middle of when it was closed. Ce la vie!



The stone of prosperity. I figured pausing on it couldn't hurt :)





After we left the Temple, we went to the Elephant Sanctuary.

We got to ride Reina. She's 22.






We got to feed Reina after our ride. She's so adorable! She's also a little piggy. I can't remember what the worker said, but they literally eat tons of food in a week.




I had just told her to chew her food and she stole the banana right out of my hand. You can see that she's quite pleased with herself about that!


Bath Time:




Random Photos:
The view from Rick and Andy's room:


Sunset from our room at the hotel:


A flower in a tree at the hotel:


Monkeys! Yes, they really were in the trees behind our hotel :)