I never thought I would see a blue whale outside of the Smithsonian museum. In fact, I thought they were almost extinct. On January 23, 2012 I saw four pairs of them. Blue Whales were not even on my bucket list. When we started doing research on Sri Lanka we found out that about ten years ago, fisherman,and people living on a [...]
Have you ever seen an albino turtle? Betcha haven’t. We saw two today in totally different and amazing Sri Lanka. But before I treat you to that vision I’ll fill you in our total day. It was a long fun filled one, so this post will be a bit longer than my last few. In the morning we visited a [...]
On boxing Day in 2004, I think we all remember the incredible destruction caused by a tsunami all over SE Asia. Sri Lanka certainly did not escape the carnage. The country has come back from the destruction. When you remember they have also had a civil war in the last decade, it is very impressive to see the recovery. Not [...]
Everyone who travels around this coconut runs into hawkers. They try to sell you everything from bongs to plastic models of the Taj Mahal. Many just will not leave a person alone. They follow you down the street putting tubes of tiger balm or fake Rolex watches in your hand. They all know two words in English “good price”. Some [...]
Sri Lanka used to be called called Ceylon, which is synonymous with Tea. I have actually grown to like tea in the onset of my elder years so I was looking forward to our visit to Nuwara Eliya, which means “city of light”. This city still shows many signs of the colonial influence of England and Scotland. In fact we stayed at [...]
The real name for this is the Sacred Temple of the Tooth Relic. However our itinerary simply said Temple of Tooth, so I’m going with that. This a beautiful temple. The temple was attacked by the Tamil Tigers during the civil war, but the damage was minimal and has been repaired. The tooth is a tooth of Buddha. I was expecting [...]
The Royal Botanic garden, located in Paradeniya, just outside of Kandy is a magnificent garden and must see if you find yourself in this part of Sri Lanka. The history of this garden goes back to 1371 when a king with a name too long to type kept court here in Peradeniya. In 1780 it was officially made the royal garden. The kings [...]