Our alarms went off at 5 am. We chucked on clothes and headed to reception to exchange $120 for rupees so we could pay for our morning safari. We also picked up a couple of packed breakfasts that we'd ordered last night. Stanley and our driver/guide (same guy as yesterday) were on time, so we set off a bit before many of the other jeeps, which can only be a good thing.
Bundala was a good hour and a quarter away from the hotel down some extremely bumpy roads, but we saw plenty of good birds along the way.
As a result of organising our trip at relatively short notice, we ended up having to drive past the main park entrance to the ticket office. Stanley bought our tickets while we checked out the bathroom facilities (horrendous). Minutes later we were in Bundala National Park, a protected Ramsar site famous for its birds, and justly so! We saw tons and tons of them. And even though we were expecting to see fewer mammals here, we still saw several mongooses going about their business.
The highlight of the Bundala safari had to be stumbling upon a peacock displaying to a peahen in the middle of one of the dirt tracks. He was absolutely lost in the moment, so I was able to get some beautiful photos and even a video of him in full swing. It's a sight that will stay with me forever. It's rare in life to see anything so beautiful. The peahen was less impressed. She wandered off halfway through, leaving him to finish the show alone!
On the way back, we stopped off at an ATM to grab some more cash. We were back at Chaaya Wild by 11.00 am, after another bumpy ride. While the room boy was cleaning our room we sat out on the balcony, writing and listening to Elbow' latest album.
On the way to spend some time by the pool, Amber managed to befriend a couple of stray dogs. There are a few that hang out at the hotel because they know that with enough persistence the guests will feed them scraps. If the guests aren't so forthcoming, they're more than happy to steal food. I played a fun game with one of them: him pretending not to eye up my cheese sandwich and me moving the offending item to the opposite side of my sun-lounger each time he moved closer to it. In the end I got bored and left the sandwich on the floor. My playmate wasted no time in crawling under the sun-lounger to steal it and eat it greedily about two feet from me. It was a horrible sandwich anyway. Sri Lankan bread is the pits, so I was happy for him to have it.
Lying on my sun-lounger I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. One of the land monitors, which are rife in the hotel grounds, had wandered over to the swimming pool. I thought he might take a dip, but he (like the dog) was only scavenging for food.
We had a couple of bowls of French fries in Pug Marks for lunch. When we sat down, there was a horrific National Geographic documentary on the plasma screen about the use of snakes in Chinese medicine, showing people butchering live snakes and drinking their bile, blood and beating hearts. The footage made me feel very angry and very sad all at once - Chinese medicine is the root of all evil when it comes to wildlife conservation. Just plain dumb. You'd think that a country so hungry for progress in the fields of science and technology would have worked out by now that eating and drinking tiger, bear, seahorse, shark and snake body parts isn't going to make you a better, faster, stronger person. Don't even get me started on how China is the biggest consumer for illegal elephant ivory...
After a brief swim in the pool, we dried off in the sun, returned to the beach chalet to have a lie down (it's exhausting, all this relaxation!) and watched a few more episodes of 'Californication'. Then we stuck some clothes on so we could go exploring with the camera. Plenty of animals, but nothing new to add to the list. We walked back to the hub of the hotel and headed up to the observation deck. One of the guys up there told us that there had been a leopard on one of the large boulders jutting above the scrub forest last night, in full site of the observation deck. It had apparently stayed there for an hour and a half. It left around the time we were returning from our Yala safari. Typical. You spend half a day driving around a national park famous for having the highest density of leopards in the world - to no avail - and then one rocks up at your hotel when you're not there! Oh well, at least it was nice and relaxing up there on the observation deck enjoying a nice cold Lion lager.
We left the observation deck just before it got dark.
Nothing left to do but stuff ourselves at the buffet. It's a hard life!
Birds of Bundala:
- pheasant-tailed jacana
- purple swamp-hen
- common moorhen
- intermediate egret
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