Mr. Cliff and Friends Go to Sri Lanka, Part 1

When I came to India, there were three countries that I for sure wanted to visit while I was here. UAE, which you’ve read about my adventures in with Chris and Casey, Nepal, where I visited when Emily was here, and Sri Lanka. Well, since Chris and Casey have abandoned me and gone back to the United States, and we didn’t have time to make the trip when Emily was here, I had to find some new travel partners if I was going to complete the trifecta. Enter Andrea and Alan. Andrea is more or less Chris’s replacement here at Target India, and Alan is the trophy husband that gets to tag along.



Andrea and Alan enjoying their coconut milk. Don't they look excited to be traveling with me?

They are relatively new expats to Bangalore, having arrived a little over a month ago about the time that Chris and Casey left. It was probably about the third time I had met them before I had already talked them into coming to Sri Lanka with me. It’s unclear whether or not they knew what they were getting themselves into by agreeing to travel with me, but once they told me they would go (whether they were being serious or not) I didn’t let them off the hook. Most of my other expat friends were traveling elsewhere the weekend we decided to go, so it was just us three on a lovely adventure together!

Since work was hectic and I didn’t really want to expend the time and energy to plan and book the trip myself, I used a travel agent for the first time. It was amazing. We got a referral from another expat who had used this company, and all we did was send an email saying “We want to go to Sri Lanka from May 16^th-20^th, and we would like a combination of historical sightseeing, safari/rainforest type stuff, and beaches.” That’s all we said, and they had an awesome trip planned and booked for us a day or two later. So easy. I also received a new nickname from our travel agent. Since I made the initial contact with her, she always addressed emails to me, and the greeting of the emails was, without fail, “Mr. Cliff and Friends”. It’s quite common to be called “Mr. First Name” in India, but our travel agent Mary used it every time. Andrea thought it was so hilarious that she will only refer to me as Mr. Cliff now.

Here is my day by day rundown of our trip, and I’ll try to keep it somewhat brief, although I’m pretty sure we all know that’s not going to happen.

Wednesday

I’ll just briefly touch on Wednesday since nothing of note happened. The flight from B’lore to Colombo, Sri Lanka was only about an hour and a half. The airport in Colombo was nicer than I was expecting, as I had visions of the Nepal airport in my head. It was interesting that they had a store with large appliances in the duty free section. Who doesn’t want to buy a washer and dryer when they get off the plane? We were met by our guide, Hermal, holding a sign that said "Welcome to Sri Lanka, Mr. Clifford Olander x 3". So Andrea and Alan had been downgraded from “and friends” to x3. It was a short drive to Negombo, which was the fishing village/resort town where we were staying for the night. We took a short walk on the beach under the stars, and I'm sure it would have been very romantic for the other two if I hadn't been along to kill the mood.

 

View from our hotel balcony on Thursday morning. Very nice! (In Borat voice. That's still cool, right?)



I’ll also point out a small fun fact about Wednesday in southwest Asia. Many people pronounce it phonetically, as in “Wed-nes-day”, where we pronounce it “Wins-day”. That one still cracks me up every time I hear it.

Thursday

We woke up to a beautiful view from our hotel room on Thursday. This was the first time I had been this close to an ocean since I lived in Hawaii, and I forgot how much I missed it. One smell of the salty ocean air brought a lot of memories flooding back. Breakfast at the hotel came with amazing views, but my favorite part was the guard standing between the open air restaurant and the beach/ocean whose job it was to keep birds away. His weapon? Slingshot, duh. It was awesome. I suppose there are worse jobs than standing on the beach shooting birds with a slingshot. I’m not sure they needed to be dressed in full police-type gear though. I guess that way the birds knew he meant business.

Note his perfect slingshot technique. Right leg forward, knees slightly bent and in an athletic position. A true pro. Those birds don't stand a chance.

We had to hit the road early, since Hermal said it would take 6-7 hours to get to Sinharaja Rain Forest, where we would spend the next day hiking. It was a little confusing, because it was only about 140 km (89 miles) away, and it usually doesn’t take 7 hours to go 90 miles. We soon figured out why. The roads, while mostly in better condition than India, were just as crazy. There’s not much honking, which was nice, but you did get the feeling about every 5 minutes that you were going to die in a fiery head-on car crash. Hermal was fearless on the road with his passing. Blind uphill curve ahead? Sure, those are good passing conditions. It’s still amazing to me how there aren’t more car accidents here. But I guess if everyone knows what to expect, it works out for them. Still, even though I’ve gotten used to it a little bit, you can never completely get used to being inches from an unnecessary death a few times a day. We were either driving through villages the entire way, never going much over 40 mph, or we were on winding switchback roads, averaging 30 mph the whole way. We’d probably still be driving if Hermal wouldn’t have driven like a maniac.

Workers on a tea plantation.

 The scenery was beautiful though. The part of the country we were in was very tropical. Everything was green and lush. We constantly passed rubber tree plantations (I got to learn how rubber is made), rice paddies, and tea plantations in rolling hills. The stark beauty of the countryside made the drive go by very quickly. Once we got up into the mountains a little bit, the roads got progressively worse. Some of the roads were definitely made for only one car, as there were times when our van would be two inches from brushing the side of the mountain on one side and two inches from plummeting to our death off the side of the road on the other side. It didn’t make it much easier that we were in gigantic 10 passenger van that needed to maneuver several hair pin turns with a three point turn.

View from the grounds of the Rainforest Edge Lodge.

The final climb to the Rainforest Edge Lodge was the craziest. It probably shouldn’t be attempted in anything but a jeep or a tuk tuk, as even Hermal was pretty leery and nervous about making it in the van. I thought it was kind of fun from my days of traveling Engineer Pass in the Colorado Rockies, but it’s definitely something you’d see on IRT: Deadliest Roads on the History Channel. Luckily we didn’t meet anyone else on the final stretch of road, because it turns out we were the ONLY people staying at the “hotel” we were in. I put quotes around hotel, because it definitely wasn’t a hotel. It was more of a lodge, but not really a lodge either. There were a couple of different buildings that housed maybe 10 rooms, all with a definite “close to nature” theme, which was awesome. Nothing fancy, but very local and really cool. Our bathroom was open air, which I thought was awesome. 

Our Rainforest Edge lodge room. Notice my baby bear bed in the corner.



The hotel "restaurant".



View of the spring fed pool.

The grounds were beautiful and offered breathtaking views of the rainforest and mountains, as well as tea plantations right outside our window and gorgeous local flora and fauna. (I really just wanted to use the words flora and fauna, couldn’t help myself). The pool was awesome, and was fed by natural spring water. We enjoyed that for awhile before dinner.



View of the rainforest sunset from our patio. One of my favorite pictures I've taken since I've been here.



Same pictures, different times. I couldn't really decide which one I liked best, so I posted all three.

Since we were the only people at the place, we were treated with amazing service. Since there’s no way you’re making it back down the mountain by yourself to find anywhere else to eat, they know they are going to have to feed you. They asked us what time we’d like dinner, and if rice and curry was ok. Since they probably don’t make anything else there, it would have to do. When they brought out the food, I was shocked. Apparently the “rice and curry” meant two gigantic platters of delicious red and white rice, and no less than 8 huge dishes of different curries and salads. I’ll have to say, I’m not the biggest fan of curry, but this meal was delicious. Three plates full delicious. I was stuffed to the brim when I finally threw in the towel. Which is something I would soon regret. There was easily enough food for 8 people. We assumed the staff did that on purpose, as I’m sure their dinner consisted of whatever we didn’t eat.

Ginormous meal that will be making a reappearance (literally) in my next blog post.

We went to bed with full bellies and excited for the next day, when we would be hiking through the only rainforest on the planet that is designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.

I’ll continue with the rest of the trip on another post, which will include the end of a 6 year streak of mine.