Full on day today. Started out by taking a trip to the local wildlife park, where we hired a couple of bikes and set off down the wibbly-wobbly path, initially seeing bugger all by way of wildlife, but lots of lovely nature – trees & creepers & that. Lots of birds, but we couldn’t actually see any. We did have a large black snake slither across our path, after which Virle kindly suggested that I go first because she ‘didn’t want to hold me back’. Unh-hunh.
Not a massive park – we’d pretty much done the circuit after an hour, and returned to the lake near the entrance, where we sat entranced as cormorants and kingfishers did their fishing right in front of our eyes, monitor lizards and turtles swam in the lake, and monkeys frolicked around us.
Came back into town, picked up our new gladrags from the nice man in the market (which proved to be absolutely everything we’d hoped for), grabbed some food at a local cafe, then headed back to our gaff for an hour or two of chill before heading out again to a Kandyan Dance performance, which we’d booked with some reservations, having previously rather struggled to appreciate local theatricals, but in the event proved terrific. Ok, the men’s contribution was more gymnastic than dancing as we know it Jim, but it was crazy energetic and full on, and we both enjoyed it much more than, TBH, we’d expected.
Re the somewhat odd photo below, I’ve been noticing that many of the tuk tuks bear brief ‘philosophical’ messages on the back – Life is short – enjoy it while you can – and the like. Thought this one was a tad downbeat, but unarguably striking.
The performance ended a bit too early for dinner, so we decided to go for a beer, discovering that there really weren’t too many places to go for a beer, and ended up settling for a place that was at least on the 6th floor, which meant a refuge from the madness of the streets. Turned out to be very pleasant, and we both got gently pissed, looking over old photos and reminiscing about travels of yesteryear.
Ended the day by heading back to the restaurant where we’d had the Carolina Reaper devilled chicken a couple of nights ago, only to find it was closed. So we went into a locals’ restaurant which was filled with locals, and had an absolutely scrumptious meal which cost next to nothing. I gave the cooks the international mwah-that-was-delicious gesture through the window as we left, getting radiant smiles in return.