Tuna
Wednesday 07 August 2013
An early start today as we had a bit of driving to do. A quick breaky of hoppers again and we were off.
You didn’t quite know when you left town and the road is lined with houses and shops. Eventually we saw some bushes so assumed we had finally made it out of town, somewhere. The vegetation is quite like that in Mexico, where it grows to the edge of the road in a mass of vines and grass. Ignore it for too long and it will take over and the road will disappear.
Our destination this morning was Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage. This is where they bring orphaned or injured elephants. They are raised or healed, but are never returned into the wild. They find a new home as part of a temple or religious festivals. As always there are two camps with this, those that think it is good and those that don’t. I guess I’m in the former as the elephants seem to be happy and they have a lot of space to roam around it. Most elephants look happy though. There was one elephant that was a resident there that had stepped on a land mine quite a while ago. Its left front leg was a mess and the rest of the body had moved in directions to compensate for not being able to use that leg. Hence a rather odd shaped other front leg and bent body. Therefore this poor bloke continues to live, which in my mind is wrong. It has to be in pain, it can’t stand upright and so supports itself by leaning on a rail and using its trunk. I think the poor bloke should be allowed to be relieved of its pain and obvious horrible life. As it is illegal to kill an elephant, the only person that can make his happen is the president apparently.
There were two new baby elephants that arrived at the Orphanage about three weeks ago. We made it in time to see them being fed. Rather cute.
Then we got to see them all have a feed on some branches, apparently they need 100kg each per day. There were three little male elephants frolicking around, reminded me of kids chasing each other around the backyard.
By now it was coming up to bath time, so we toddled off across the road, stepping out of the way of a group of elephants returning from their bath.
After about 10 minutes all the elephants got down to the river, it was awesome. They separated three of the big males out and they were right underneath our view spot. One of them looked like he was having so much fun, just lying and rolling around in the water.
These next ones are movies so are around 2-8mb each and may not work as I've not tried this before.
Back in the car for 4 hour drive to Anuradhapura along windy, bumpy roads where the speed limit is 70km/hr but you rarely get over about 55km/hr. Our lovely driver was getting knackered, so we stopped a couple of times to get out and stretch (it woke me from my nap in the back seat).
We checked into our hotel which is set out of town, on a large bit of land and in amongst trees. It is very pretty. The hotel is all in old colonial style and we have a lovely room. It’s time for a quick dip in the pool and a lazy G&T.
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