26/3/22
We arrived in Ella in three hours, which we were very happy with since the bus was meant to take six hours, and the train twelve! We chatted pretty much all the way, while staring out the window at big green landscapes – Sri Lanka is such a lushious country! We also saw monitor lizards, a flying peacock and had to slam on the brakes for a long black snake. Sadly, the sudden stop only saved two thirds of the snakes and the tail end was left writhing in the road, while the rest slithered into the greenery. We dropped Katrin at her hotel, and then went to the hostel. We checked in, and headed out.
We headed to Cafe Chill as someone at the hostel had said it was pretty nice. Inside we could have been in Bali! Everyone was western and there were juices and smoothie bowls everywhere! (I definitely wasn’t complaining!). We had an amazing Sri Lankan dish called Lumpreis, which is a few different curries including a spicy chicken one (similar to butter chicken), all wrapped in banana leaves. It was glorious and I had it alongside an equally good passion fruit ice tea – mm-mm!! Afterwards, we walked back to the hostel and Simon wanted tea, so he ordered a pot. Sadly it was Lipton and was VERY bad! We drank most of it before going on our next venture.
We headed to the Nine Arch Bridge, stopping at Simon’s hostel on the way – there was no space for him in mine. When I got there, Simon was talking to a Dutch girl, Ruby. I invited her to join us and we headed off through the village, past the tea plantations and into the jungle. It was only a short walk to the bridge and we arrived at 5pm. We decided to wait the thirty minutes until the bus went over the bridge and ordered another pot of tea (this time black with cinnamon and ginger) while we waited. Ruby is a social worker, which was nice – we were all in government jobs – a nurse, a firefighter and a social worker – I find this quite reassuring when there are so many jobs I don’t have any idea what they entail! At 17.30, there was still no sign of the train. We asked the cafe people and they said ‘train late’. We ordered another pot of spiced tea. At 18.30, there was a whistle and a few seconds later the train came thundering through the tunnel! We had to run from the cafe to make it!!
After the train, we began our walk back in the dark. Luckily, I had my head torch which proved pretty handy in the pitch black jungle! There was an Irish guy behind us, who name I’ve forgotten, but we all got chatting. He was on a fleeting visit to Sri Lanka trying to fit as much as possible into six days, after going to Dubai. We arranged to meet for dinner and headed into town the four of us.
After a delicious lunch at Cafe Chill, we thought we should try somewhere else. Bad idea. We went to somewhere called Spice. First there was live music which was fun but impossible to chat over. Then we ordered but the food took well over an hour to come. Then we the food did come, it came at random intervals. Also, each order was not as it said. The chicken fajitas arrived as chicken mayo, the curry arrived with no rice and the beef burger arrived as chicken and another thirty minutes later than the rest! Ooops. On the plus side, we ordered cocktails, which were nice and Katrin (from the taxi) joined us for awhile.
After food, Simon, Ruby and Katrin headed home while I stayed with the Irish guy to play pool. After one match, we were terrorised by kids!! There were three of them, age (I think) 5-10, and they moved all of the balls around and were wildly waving there cues around. There was even some sword fighting going on!! Amazingly, the Irish guy managed to round them up eventually and they formed a team against us. It was going well until their mums came to take them home. We had lost our opponents! Luckily, a French/Algerian couple and a guy from Singapore walked in and stepped up to the task of catching up from the little guys loss. It took us ages, and I was pretty bad, but eventually I managed to pot the black and won the game! I got a tuktuk back and left the others to drink.
27/3/22
Today we agreed to get up at the crack of dawn (technically before that!), to watch sunrise over Little Adam’s Peak. The Irish guy never appeared, so it was Simon, Ruby, me and Nico, a French guy who was in my dorm and was heading up anyway. We all walked together and made the top just as the red beam of light was peeping out over the mountain tops. It was pretty nice!!
Afterwards, we headed down and chilled in our separate hostels and waited for it to be breakfast time! The hostel breakfast was pretty good – I had desiccated coconut roti pancakes with a bad coffee, followed by fresh watermelon, pineapple and banana. After breakfast, we all reconvened and headed out together to see a huge waterfall, Diyaluma. Nico had rented a tuktuk and was travelling the whole of Sri Lanka in it and after our sunrise bonding, offered to take us all on an adventure!! We headed out, first to get fuel, and then down down down the mountains along wiggly roads towards the waterfall. We stopped at a beautiful viewpoint cafe for a milkshake before carrying on.
We past Rawana Falls and continued on. Ruby was also on a bikini hunt since she left hers at a previous hostel, so we stopped a few times to have a hunt. To no avail! Although, Simon was keen to buy Nico a tuktuk mascot to tie to the front, so he bought some terrifying plastic dolls which we attached to the tuktuk with bobbles! We set off again and arrived at the bottom of the waterfalls a short while later. The view was glorious – waterfall as far as the eye could see!! Nico then went off road with a full tuktuk to get us nearer the top. It was pretty unstable, but Nico’s trusty tuktuk didn’t fail us! We parked up, and began our hike.
We walked past a few houses, before starting our ascent. Some locals tried to sell us a guide but we declined. They warned us of wild elephants, but we figured that was just a line they used! It was pretty steep and it took some time to go up. Bizarrely, not a single one of us decided to wear trainers so we were in flip-flops, with Nico in slightly better sandals. After maybe 45 minutes hiking up in 35 degree heat, we heard water! We continued along and soon came across the pools at the waterfalls. It was glorious. We stripped off and headed in to the cool water. There were some Sri Lankan guys at the top of the falls playing drums, tourists sitting in the shallows and monkeys swinging between the trees. We chilled there awhile taking it all in before walking down the falls a little to some more pools.
When we got down, there were people jumping off the top, down around five meters into the plunge pool. We watched awhile, before Simon jumped in without ceremony after checking that it was safe with a local. After he went, we all went one by one! Although I’ve jumped off waterfalls before, standing on the edge looking down at the drop was pretty terrifying and it took me two attempts to compose myself and jump!! It was worth it, although to get out of the plunge pool, you had to hike your way up a vine which was a little taxing!! After a good few hours chilling in the falls, we headed back, prompted by heavy rain!
I always dread the back as it was steep and had lots of loose stones and I always hold everyone up, which I’m not a fan of. We started back and quickly Ruby and I fell behind, Ruby because her flip-flops were falling apart and me because I was testing every step to check I wasn’t going to slide down the mountain side!! I really wished that I’d worn trainers!! After awhile and unbeknownst to us, Nico and Simon had decided to take a ‘shortcut’, meaning we were just following some dried up river bed down the mountain with no path whatsoever. Initially, I was scared that a snake may bite us, but after maybe an hour of walking, we decided that we would not get killed by snakes as they had already had ple ty of opportunity!! Reassured slightly, we continued down. Ruby was not a happy bunny with her broken flip-flops but I was bemused at the ridiculousness of a very steep hike with no walking boots, not even any trainers! The boys were so far ahead we had no idea where we were going!! We eventually made it to a stream which a local had to come and guide us over, as he wanted us to go a different better way, but somehow felt responsible for us! He gave the boys fruit from his farm, which they tried to share with us, but we were not in the mood! After crossing the stream, I sat to scratch my foot. When I looked down, there was a leech between my toes. It was horrid!! The local guy came over straight away and tried to pull the damn thing off – it took him three attempts!! I thought of my other leech encounters in India (twice) and Thailand – eeeeeep! The local guy was very friendly and even showed us his house. The house was simple and reminded me of St Fagans – his wife was cooking with a huge saucepan over raw flames, a fire made from sticks.
We thanked him and left and began our tuktuk journey home in the rain. Us passangers were all hungry and exhausted so we all rested on top of each other. Since we hadissed lucnh, we had a snack stop for crisp and banana cream biscuits. Then we drove straight to Cafe Chill in Ella and arrived looking weather beaten! I ate another tasty assortment of curries and drank another passion fruit ice tea. Then we drove home and all bar Nico, we were pretty much out for the count!!
wanderingwelshie travels 