Day 10 - 02/04/2019 - Hambantota, Sri Lanka

If viewing wild animals and birds are of interest to you, today would have been just for you. We arrived just before 8am and docked at a large pier usually used for shipping vehicles. In fact there were two large car transport ships docked and about 5,000 cars and buses parked neatly on the dock. One of the transport ships was being filled by an endless stream of cars being driven on to the ship, and interestingly they were left hand drive which is not used in much of Asia. That ship left around 5:30pm, and the second ship started unloading.

An interesting parenthesis about the port is that it was built with Chinese money, and then the port defaulted on the loan, so now the Chinese own it or have a very long term lease. There are no manufacturing facilities in Sri Lanka, so these cars must be in the process of being trans shipped.

We gathered in the Ocean Bar (26 of us), and when the 'ship has been cleared' message was broadcast, we made our way to the gangway on Deck 3 and then on to a shuttle bus to the Main gate where we met our guide, Angeli. We boarded another set of nice smaller shuttle buses which took us to the nearby Bundalay National Park where we transferred into Safari type vehicles (Mahindra 4 wheel drives with seats for six in the covered box behind the driver). The Mahindra's are built in India with a small 4 cylinder mechanically injected diesel. The Mahindras were very comfortable bouncing around on the park roads.

We motored through the park in 6 vehicles and saw lots of birds, monkeys, water buffalo, domestic cows, crocodiles, small monitor lizards, but no elephants. Afterwards we drove to the Peacock Resort for a lovely buffet Sri Lankan lunch for $15 per person.

After lunch, we took a short drive to the closed museum (it was a national holiday) & viewpoint and then to town for a stop at a supermarket before continuing our trip back to the ship. The driver wasn't the fastest in the world but that worked to our advantage when a free range donkey, a beautiful peacock, and last but not least, a young bull elephant appeared alongside the freeway. Viewing today was complete with the spotting of an elephant in the wild. This one posed for us before scampering off away from us. We learned later that on the afternoon park tour, 5-6 elephants were spotted.

Back at the ship around 3:30pm, we lounged in our stateroom and watched the Zodiacs and their drivers practice and play around in the harbor.

We ate a light dinner and then attended in the Wyjang theater a packed and excellent presentation on Asian Pirates in the 17th century by Terry Greenberg. This was followed by our umpteenth viewing of Frozen Planet In Concert. Afterwards, Ashok Ferrey fielded questions about Sri Lanka.  

With that, we adjourned to our stateroom to get ready for a day at sea. It'll be a full day of lectures and a gala night for dinner.