There is so much to catch up on – an amazing couple of days!
On Wednesday we started the day with the longest breakfast buffet I have ever seen. I do like a good buffet breakfast!
We met at 9am and had a drive around Nuwara Eliya. Its is known as ‘little England’ and you can definitely see why, with lots of Tudor style buildings, flower gardens, lakes, and even a racecourse. We had a wander around the town, then bought some takeaway lunch of vegetable curry roti from the bakery and hopped on the bus to go to the railway station.
We boarded the train with about a thousand other people, mostly locals, but also a range of tourists. The train was full and, in fact, our tour company is taking this off the itinerary for future trips as it is so hard to get tickets. It seems Instagram has a lot to answer for this 🙂 Our carriage had the 19 of us, plus about 20 young Chinese tourists who were very keen on taking photos leaning out of the train going over high bridges with the Sri Lankan mountains in the background. Here is my version: 
And one from Instagram: 
The trip to Ella took about 3 hours and the scenery was absolutely amazing.
We arrived in Ella mid afternoon. Ella reminds me of Kuta in Bali. Lots of young tourists, plenty of bars, shops touting for business. We walked through the hillside town to the bus then drove down the hills to Yala National Park. On the trip down the steep mountain we stopped at a waterfall. 
We also stopped at a roadside restaurant to use the toilets. Victoria and one other lady stayed on the bus. The driver ‘chocked’ the tyres on the steep hill, but as I was walking back to the bus I noticed it was moving and was terrified to see the driver running along beside it and jumping on. OMG that could have been very bad… but the driver quickly jumped on the brakes before it got away. I don’t think Victoria will forget that any time soon.
After visiting the waterfall we reached flatter ground and were soon inside the National Park. I was VERY excited when we came across an elephant on the road. The elephants have learnt to ‘stop’ buses to get food.
[wpvideo fNNvf8P4 ]
We arrived at the campsite just on dark. Dinner was a BBQ – I chose the vegetarian option which was a delicious spicy spring roll, vegetables and rice. Meat seemed a bit too risky out here.
We were woken at 4.30am to get ready for our safari. There were four Mahindra four wheel drive jeeps for us. Will, Emma, Victoria and I sat in the back and Dave jumped in the front so he could talk to the driver. We drove through the park for a couple of hours, stopping on a beach on the east coast about halfway through the trip for a packed picnic breakfast, which was unexpectedly good. We saw many birds, elephants, buffalo, Crocodiles ? mongoose, monkeys, lyre birds in full bloom, hares, eagles and more!
Pics below: The beach at the mid-way point, and our packed breakfast. There were 57 tourists killed here in the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004.
After the safari we went back to our ‘tents’, had showers and packed up. We then drove to a resort just north of Galle. A five-hour trip, so time for naps, book reading and observing the Sri Lankan way of life from the bus window. We got stopped for ‘crossing double lines’ by the police along the way. A $10 bribe from the driver for each officer and we were quickly on our way.
This is the view as we approached the resort where we are staying, it was just on dusk and very pretty. 
[wpvideo Z7iSL9kD ]