Poor man's safari

What would a trip to Sri Lanka be without shooting a few elephants? I am talking photos, in one of the best places to see pachyderms in the wild in Sri Lanka: Uda Walawe national park. This park is an enormous nature reserve surrounding one of the large resevoirs in southern Sri Lanka and is home to more than 450 elephants.

Our trip from Galle to the national park went pretty smoothly - we have been taking local buses to get around and for the most part it has been pretty good. Although lacking in the comfort department, these buses make up for it in personality. All of the buses have always had blasting Sri Lankan music coming from what looks to be someones old home stereo speakers bungy tied to the overhead luggage racks. For mood lighting, there is always some form of hindu or buddhist deity surrounded in flashing LED lights mounted at the front of the bus. Air conditioning comes in the form of open windows that you can dangle limbs out of when it gets too hot - and of course, there is always the doors which stay permanently open (makes it easy to get on and off - the bus doesn't really even need to stop - you just jump out as it slows down). With little space (no room for luggage on the bus) it always makes for an entertaining ride trying to stack our bags on the impromptu luggage rack that also doubles as the dashboard at the front of the bus... Our only complaint is that our fat western bodies don't actually fit into Sri Lankan bus seats. The standard long distance bus has FIVE seats in every row. I am not a big guy, but when I sit down, I overflow at least about 6 inches into the neighbouring seat - when Marie and I sit side-by-side, you can do the math: one butt cheak is floating in mid-air out in the aisle. It is good value though, with a two hour bus ride costing around a dollar (or sometimes less).

We stayed in a small guesthouse outside of the park called Mansala which was amazing. The family who ran the place was super friendly, they prepared amazing homemade dinners of Sri Lankan food for reasonable prices and they were always available to help. We booked a safari into the park with our guesthouse for about $40/person - compared to safaris in Africa this seemed like a great deal! We have heard some people calling it the "poor man's safari".

The next morning at 5:30am a beat-up old LandRover (circa 1960) showed up to take us into the park. Although a bit worse for wear, it looked like it would do the job - although I was a bit concerned that the tires were bald and we were supposedly going off-road...

It had actually torrentially rained the night before and unfortunately for us, this made finding elephants pretty hard. With all the water everywhere, the elephants didn't need to hang around the shores of the resevoir where they are normally found. This meant that we spent the greater part of the morning searching far and wide through the savanna-like landscape with no luck. We did, however, see a lot of birds, wild buffalo and crocodilles. Not sure if this was just this park, but there were a huge number of peacocks - they were everywhere in this place. In the trees, on the roads - everywhere.

Midway through the morning my concerns about the vehicle turned out to be justified - we got stuck in a large pool of mud. After a bit of pushing, some creative work with a jack and a lot of determination, flying mud and smoking tires we got out of the mud pit - note to driver: having bald tires is not a good idea when off-roading.

Just as we were about to give up for the day we finally found a roaming family of several mothers with babies! We even litterally ran into a few right by the side of one of the road taking a mud bath in a large pool of water.

Definately worth the trip.

Click here for more photos!

 

Hong Kong and our new rice roll

We were in Hong Kong in 2008 on a layover to Nepal and enjoyed our couple of days here so much that we scheduled 6 days here this time around! The other reason for coming to Hong Kong was to get our Visas to travel to China. The process was supposed to be easy from here but it turned out to be a bit painful. It took us just over a day of running around to different visa offices where we were first quoted $1000CDN and then ended the day with a quote of $200CDN, which is obviously the price we went with. After that whole process we were free to finally enjoy Hong Kong!

The first thing we did when we got to Hong Kong was go for dim sum. The restaurant Tim Ho Wan (which has one Michelin star!) was recommended to us and it was amazing! Luckily we had english translations and pictures on the menu

We did a lot of eating throughout the week! We definitely gained a little weight around our mid sections which we now refer to as our "rice roll". There are just so many restaurants and food stalls that it's hard to just walk by without trying!

Beef and broccoli, Singapore style noodles, rice:

Gai lan, shrimp dumplings, noodles in a satay sauce:

Razor clams, clams, eggplant, morning glory, fried chicken:

BBQ meats - pork, goose, duck, chicken:

Coconut milk with red beans:

"HK breakfast" - macaroni and ham soup, toast with eggs and black tea with evaporated milk:

Bubble waffle:

If there's anything that rivals the amount of restaurants are the amount of stores. There are such a variety of places to shop, from streets markets like the Ladies market where you can buy clothes, wallets, purses, watches or cell phone covers to western style malls, with all the common brands you would see in North America.

There are just so many options and stores that you actually have to look up as you walk by buildings because there are places on floors above, sometimes up to level 10!

You can imagine after spending so much time in much less populated New Zealand we were craving to be in a quieter and less visually overwhelming place.

We found that Hong Kong was actually quite green and has many parks easily accessible from the city. One of these are the botanical gardens and the zoo.

One of the coolest exhibits is an aviary where they have over 600 local birds!

And then there are the mammal exhibits with the over weight orangutans, which I just found very sad...

As you can imagine, space in Hong Kong is at a premium. We experienced this at our hotel room in Mongkok where we stayed for our first 3 nights. It was very narrow and our washroom was a combined toilet and shower room.

When we were searching for places to stay, we couldn't understand why they were advertising windows and seperate showers. Now we know.

After posting the above picture on Facebook, we got a message from New Zealand friends who used to live in Vancouver, Brendon and Kirsty. They now live in Hong Kong! They were so kind and invited us to stay with them for the remainder of our stay. Lucky for us Kirsty is in between jobs right now so she was free to be our personal tour guide! We met some of her other ex-pat friends and went on a hike up to Mt. Victoria peak. Although it was a bit hazy, we still had some pretty good views of the city.

Kirsty also showed us the other side of the mountains to the south of downtown. We took a hair raising double decker bus ride up and over the mountains to Stanley, a quieter beach city.

Thank you Brendon and Kirsty for being such great hosts!

We are now off to China for 6 weeks where we will not have access to blogspot. See you in 6 weeks!

Click here to see more photos.

 

Rakiura Track: An NZ Great Walk

There are nine Great Walk's in New Zealand and are all run and operated by the Department of Conservation (DOC). They tend to be more expensive but the trails are very well maintained, the huts are exeptional and the number of hikers are limited. We decided to do the Rakiura Track because of its location. This track is on Stewart Island which is a one hour ferry ride south from the NZ south island (to NZ's "third" island). It sees less traffic which is what attracted us and there is a higher chance of seeing Kiwi birds in the wild (the sub-species here are active during the day and night here whereas on the north and south islands they are only active at night).

The track starts 5 km north of the town of Oban and takes three days/two nights for a total of 32 km. The route runs along some beaches (at low tide).

and through the Podocarp forest (what is a Podocarp forest? click here).

We did not see any Kiwi's but I did hear their calls our first night which sounds like "Kee-wee". We did see a lot of other birds though: Bellbirds, Tuis (I think their calls sound like R2-D2 from Starwars - click here for a video), Fantails, Kaka (parrot), Seagulls and Wood pigeons. We did see a few Albatross hanging out at the ferry terminal too. They are the worlds biggest sea birds with a wingspan up to 3.3m long!

Kaka

Albatross

The night sky from here is also very impressive. The stars are so bright and we heard that on a clear night you can see the aurora australis (the southern lights). I waited until about 10:30pm with no luck but Tom went out at 11pm and thinks he saw it; They're pretty faint... We did see phosphorescents in the ocean though, which is always fun to throw pebbles in and watch the green glow of the ripples.

On the second night (at North Arm hut) while on an evening expedition to try to find Kiwi, we bumped into a Possum on the track! Because we had our headlamps turned off, I guess he didn't realize what we were so he actually started walking towards us! Even when we turned our lamps on he didn't really hesitate. It was only when we took a firm step forward did he run into the woods. Tom went out later that night on his own for a bit more kiwi exploring and again found about six other possums! No wonder DOC have traps everywhere; they are serious pests.

When we got back we had some great fish (blue cod & elephant fish) and chips.

Overall the trip to Stewart Island was worth it. It has a very different feel and a lot less tourists. The track was well maintained and not more than 150m of elevation gain at a time. Since they were easy hiking days we ended up at the huts in time for lunch and spent the rest of the days reading, exploring and relaxing.

Click here for more photos!