Hambantota

Our second stop in Sri Lanka was in Hambantota, a smaller city on the country's southeast coast. None of the ship excursions looked all that interesting to us, so we arranged our own tour to Bundala National Park, which is about 30 minutes from the port. After disembarking we learned that we needed to take a shuttle bus to the port gate. Luckily this was only about 5 minutes, as opposed to the 20-minute ride in Colombo. Once at the gate we met our guide and hopped into the safari vehicle, which had six seats in the back with good views out the open sides. On the ride out to the park we were alongside a covered truck with about ten children riding in the back. One had a drum and they were all singing and waving to us. We also spotted a peacock and a land monitor along the road.

At the entrance to the park our guide hopped out to purchase our entrance tickets. When he came back he pointed out a crocodile lying under a tree near a lake. Good start! We spent the next three hours driving all over the park, marveling at the flora and fauna. Animal highlights were the monkeys – gray langurs and toque macaques – another crocodile, and several land monitors. We struck out on elephants, but were richly rewarded with scads of birds. Several peacocks, including a mama with two tiny chicks following her. And just tons of other birds: herons, egrets, storks, including beautiful painted storks; raptors like the Shikra, Gray-headed Sea-eagle, White-breasted Sea-eagle, and Brahminy Kite; colorful bee-eaters; cormorants and darters. The park runs along the sea and we took a break to stretch our legs on a bluff overlooking the coast. It was a beautiful spot.

It was a great outing and quite a contrast to the busy streets of Colombo. We pulled out of Hambantota a little before our scheduled 5:00 departure time and said goodbye to Sri Lanka. We really enjoyed it and would have loved more time in this beautiful country. Now it’s on to Thailand.Read more