Given that we had a long drive south to Yala, we thought we'd better make the most of the trails around the bungalow and stretch our legs before breakfast. We saw several parakeets and hanging parrots, but not much else. Nice to stretch our legs and take one last look at the view before leaving.
We breakfasted, bid farewell to Johnny and then, as scheduled, left the wonderful Ceylon Tea Trails to drive to Yala.
Oh...dear...God.
The roads from Hatton to Yala appear to have been designed as some kind of stomach-churning roller coaster of doom. Apparently the main highway is closed right now, so we had no choice but to take the winding route. To make matters worse, it seems that Stanley has decided to punish us for making him wait until 11am to pick us up, by driving like a total maniac! As a result, not only did we have to cope with the road having more hairpins than Marge Simpson's hair, we also had to put up with Stanley accelerating into all the bends and slamming on the brakes every five minutes to avoid hitting a car/goat/bus/person/motorbike/dog. On the plus side, the drive only took FOUR HOURS!!! Bleeurgh.
We did thankfully get two stops: One for a (sadly very cold) curry buffet lunch by a river; and one to look at a stunningly beautiful waterfall. Without those stops, I am pretty sure either myself or Amber would have redecorated the inside of Stanley's Nissan.
Anyway, by some miracle we finally arrived at the Chaaya Wild hotel without either of us throwing up (or worse) and things started to improve. On the bumpy road to the hotel entrance we saw a jackal, a peacock, a crocodile, a mongoose, several water buffalo and a hoopoe! Not bad for five minutes in the Yala National Park!
The layout of the hotel is awesome. Wooden chalets dotted through scrub jungle connected by pathways which all radiate outwards from a central hub containing the reception, bar, restaurant, swimming pool and observation deck. As you drive the final stretch to the main entrance, you pass an artificial lake complete with painted storks, egrets, herons and even a crocodile. Nice.
As part of our Kuoni honeymoon package, we were expecting to be upgraded from a jungle chalet to a beach chalet. However, although the guys at reception congratulated us on our marriage and winked conspiratorially at us, there was no sign of our free upgrade and we were installed in a jungle chalet all the same. Very little to complain about though. The chalet was lovely: rustic wooden charm with luxury bathroom facilities. A little slice of bush-chic, as the Lonely Planet puts it.
Interestingly, the hotel has a policy that guests should remain in there rooms after dark, and only walk at night accompanied by a staff member with a torch. In theory this is to protect us from being gored by a wild big, trampled by a wild elephant or bitten by a wild snake. In practice, the staff here are so tiny that I can't imagine they would be of much help in any of the aforementioned scenarios! Keen to get my bearings, I left Amber to recover from the drive and headed out as the sun set, to hunt for geckos. As it got darker I became convinced that all the talk of savage wild pigs was probably a bit of an exaggeration, but then it dawned on me that no one else was around, that I didn't have a torch...and that there was a wild boar on the path in front of me.
I beat a hasty retreat back to the chalet. This was made somewhat difficult by the fact that none of the sign posts for the room numbers make any kind of logical sense.
Back in the room Amber and I caught up on series four of 'Californication' on the iPad and then got ready for dinner (we are on half-board here). We decided it made sense to be escorted to dinner, but actually the paths are all lit up at night, so I reckon unless you were very unlucky you would be fine to walk between your room and the main hotel hub at night. On the way to dinner we passed a sounder of wild pigs, who didn't seem all that wild at all, hanging out round the back of the kitchens!
The food situation is comical. On the one hand you have decent Sri Lankan options and one or two reasonable western dishes; on the other you have miserable looking salads that no-one in their right mind would want to eat, a ropey pasta/stir fry counter and the most repulsive selection of desserts I have seen in a long time. I hate buffets like this. Surely it would be better to offer two or three western options that actually taste nice, the full Sri Lankan curry selection (because it is criminal not to eat local food on holiday) and just a couple of decent desserts. I'm sure hotels could save a lot of time and money in doing so. I have never met anyone whose favourite dessert was pink blancmange on a dry sponge base.
Tomorrow we are going on safari in Yala National Park proper. I can't wait!
Only a few animals to add today:
- mugger crocodile
- Kandian gecko
- streak-throated woodpecker (Ceylon Tea Trails)
- common hoopoe
- black-naped hare
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