Another Sri Lankan adventure. March 14, 2009

An elephant on its way to work

Summer holidays are relatively short here at our school in Colombo, and for good reason; the amount of time we have off throughout the school year is ample.  More than just a few times this semester we have long weekends – and this past weekend we had 4 days at our disposal.

We left Colombo on Friday immediately after school with our target destination as the Sinharaja Forest Reserve in southern Sri Lanka.  This lowland tropical rainforest reserve is a special natural place in the world – one of the largest remaining untouched bits of forest on the island.  By the time we had finished dinner in Ratnapura and got moving again, it was quite late, so we spent the night there.  On Saturday morning we awoke early and were on the road by 8:00.  Madeline was a bit confused – she knew all week that we were going to the beach and the mountains, but here we were far from the beach.  All that stuck in her mind was the beach and she was hell-bent determined to get there!  She gets very, very excited about going to the beach but also appreciates the mountains.

Ratnapura is in a very beautiful area – the pastoral scenery of  rice paddies and hills is underrated – but the city itself is not much to look at.  And the drive from Ratnapura to Sinharaja is quite scenic, so it was better to have done it during daylight hours.  2.5 hours after leaving Ratnapura we arrived at the ranger station tucked deep into the gorge of the Kuda Ganga just outside of Wellagama.  The road from Ratnapura is well-marked and in good condition.  The highlight of the drive for Madeline was seeing an elephant walking down the road – here in Sri Lanka, elephants serve as work animals, and this one looked like it was getting ready for a long day’s work.  The beast was about three times bigger than our rental car!  At the sleepy, moldy forest station, we purchased our tickets for the reserve and a guide for the day, altogether 656 Rs.  It’s a pretty good deal to have resident status while traveling in Sri Lanka!  Our Sinharaja destination was a place called Martin’s, a very basic but comfortable place to stay a 5 minute walk from the edge of the reserve itself.  It’s the only place this close to the reserve, so it’s sought out by naturalists and people not afraid to ‘rough it’.  Definitely not a 5-star resort.  Martin himself is a legend, having lived up here for probably his whole life.  He is an expert on the forest and what it has to offer as a World Heritage Site.  His boy in a jeep picked us up from the forestry station and drove us up the valley wall for the final few kilometers to the guest house.

View from the summit of Mulawella Peak (790 m)

Soon after unpacking our bags and settling in, we were out in the forest for our first nature walk with our guide Ratna.  Madeline loves sitting in her kids’ packpack on dad’s back (though she’s getting pretty heavy for dad at times!).  This kid really enjoys nature and seems to have a real appreciation of it.  We had only planned for a few hours in the forest, and were hardly prepared for the 4 hour trek we undertook!  We ended up climbing Mulawella Peak (790 meters) and it was superb… the summit is quite exposed and the views tremendous, though today it was a bit hazy.  If it’s clear, one can see all over southern Sri Lanka, probably as far as the ocean.  We had a gigantic late Sri Lankan lunch waiting for us upon our return, which we enjoyed very much as we were very hungry (Maddie included!).

What a pleasure to be so far out in an utterly untouched, natural environment.  Sinharaja is indeed a special place; virgin, pristine forests abundant with wildlife blanketing endless hills into the distance, teeming with wildlife.  Sri Lanka is a beautiful, heavily vegetated country, but until you get to a place like this, you don’t realize how much of the country’s original forest cover is gone forever.  Mango and banana trees, though charming to look at, do not compare to the real trees of Sri Lanka.  This place is truly a naturalist’s paradise.  We saw too many birds and butterflies to count and lots of monkeys.

The center of attention.....

After lunch we went down to the creek and played/bathed in the cool pools under a thick forest canopy.  By this time skies were dark and stormy with thunder rumbling through the forest.  Maddie enjoyed getting ‘kissed’ by the little fish.  That evening she got friendly with Martin’s entourage of children (grandkids) and we had another excellent Sri Lankan meal.  A good nights’s sleep in the cool forest surrounded by the sounds of nature – and Madeline slept all night in her own bed!

Our itinerary did not allow us to spend more than one night at Martin’s, and the next morning we had to leave this natural paradise.  But not before another nature walk, which turned out to be quite a different experience than the previous day.  Early morning in the cloud forest has a different feel than the afternoons, in terms of lighting and the number and kinds of animals one sees.  We saw more monkeys, different kinds of birds from yesterday, a giant monitor lizard, snakes, a wild rooster, big spiders, and a curious creature that was a cross between a raccoon and a bear.   Madeline was once again a near-perfect

wilderness companion – content to sit in her backpack on dad’s back, spying monkeys and birds with wonder.  She even appreciated the need to be hushed in the forest and spent long stretches singing quietly to herself.  She walked a fair amount, but her idea of ‘walking’ means sort of puttering around, picking up leaves and sticks.  That’s all fine and cute but not when we are trying to get somewhere on the trail!

By 10:30 we were on the road again on a very long day of driving.  We went all the way to Mirissa on the southern tip of the country, and the way we went there was unique.  We took a shortcut from Wellagama to Rakwana over an appallingly bad road, though stunning mountain scenery, and only took 2 wrong turns which overall cost us about 1.5 hours of time, arriving in Mirissa around 5:30 in the evening.  The A17 road between Rakwana and Deliwaya has got to be one of the most scenic in Sri Lanka, if time-consuming… but well worth the effort.

Heaven on the beach in Mirissa

Mirissa is a place we had been before, during our surfing weekend in February.  It is special because it feels remote and tucked away, with a real private feel to it, and not heavily visited.  We stayed at an all-inclusive that did not really feel like one – perfect for Madeline.  We had our own bungalow, meters from the beach, with a swimming pool and good buffet meals.  What makes this place so pleasant is that it is small and one can eat outside just next to the sand.

Island-climbing

So, for the first time this holiday, Monday was a day to do nothing much except relax and enjoy the beach.  We spent time in the pool and the beach, went for a walk, picked flowers, took a nap, and generally just enjoyed ourselves.  In the evening, tremendous thunderstorms to the east gave us quite a show and we sat for a long time after dinner on the beach watching the lightning.  Tuesday morning was a repeat – we walked to the west to the top of the hill and discovered some really neat places to stay on future trips here.

Around lunchtime we were on the road back to Colombo.  The highlight of the return trip was a stop at a turtle hatchery near Ambalangoda.  This area was hard hit by the 2004 tsunami, and the hatchery is run by a man named Nimal who lost his entire family in the disaster.  Afterwards he devoted his life to preserving these amazing creatures and operated purely on a donation basis.  Madeline loved touring the little hatchery!  She got to touch turtles of all shapes and sizes, and we even let a baby turtle loose in the surf!  A unique experience.  By 5:30 we were back home in Colombo and Maddie was once again contentedly busy in her playroom.  Another successful Sri Lankan adventure!

March is here and May’s not far away. March 5, 2009

It’s hard to believe that the month of March is upon us.  This month, Madeline will be exactly 2 1/2 years old!

A big victory lately for mom and dad has been the fact that Maddie is finally sleeping through the night in her own bed.  We made the fatal mistake over the winter holiday during our trip back to the USA of having her sleep each night in our bed.  We didn’t think that much of it then, but boy, have we paid for that.  Ever since, she has fought with us each and every night – doesn’t want to go to bed, kicking and crying in come cases for 2-3 hours each night.  Then, when she does finally get to sleep in her own bed, she’ll wake up between 11 and 2 am insisting on coming into our bed.  You can imagine the frustration for us!  This past week, however, she has finally settled down into her own routine in her own bed.

By most counts, we should be right in the middle of the ‘terrible twos’.  True, Madeline does have her moments, but I think that she is a relatively well-behaved kid who doesn’t really fuss that much and one who doesn’t spend a lot of time being difficult.  She knows exactly what she wants and how to get it – a very strong personality, for sure, but she isn’t difficult for the sake of being difficult.  I wonder if all parents say that about their own children?  She is definitely around other kids her age that are going through the classic trials and tribulations of the terrible twos, but doesn’t seem especially affected by them. When she’s around a difficult child, she tends to simply stop and stare at them.

 A few weeks ago she suddenly took a strong liking to building things.  She’d take just about anything ’stackable’ and build towers and structures out of them.  So we bought her a big set of lego-like building blocks, which she likes.  Then dad got some finished lumber and made his own blocks for her out of solid wood, which she LOVES.  So, between the two sets, she can stay quite busy.  We’ve ‘discovered’ our upper balcony in our house, which is a great place to spend time in the late afternoon and evenings.  Good view and breezy, which keeps away most of the mosquitos.  That’s her block-central site.

Madeline continues to love the Little House.  Instead of talking soley about Amy, she mentions other kids when we ask her ‘who did you see at school today?’  She mentions Nadia, Annika and Aunt Elizabeth now, in addition to Auntie Becky and of course Amy. She is still going 3 times a week only, but before the end of our school year we plan to send her more than that, possibly up to 5 times by then.  I think it’s good for her to have ‘down days’ a few times a week here at the house and not be constantly going out each and every day.

 She’s also made some big progress in the swimming pool lately.  I don’t know if most kids take naturally to water (I don’t think they do), but Madeline is excellent in the pool.  She now jumps far in from the side with her floaties on, and is completely comfortable floating and flapping around by herself.  Yesterday she even kicked and used her arms to move herself around!  The most important thing is how much she simply enjoys being in the water and playing in the pool, and how comfortable she is (though not too comfortable).  It’s definitely one of her favorite things, especially now that the weather has gotten very hot and humid again.  Supposedly the  second monsoon season is ‘just around the corner’, depending on who you ask.  Historially, it doesn’t arrive until the middle of April, but the other night we had a torrential downpour which felt very monsoon-like.  Mom is getting pretty big and uncomfortable in her pregnancy now, and for her, being in the pool is a necessity.  So that’s great for the two of them.

Speaking of, little Paco is doing just fine these days.  Getting bigger and bigger, and incredibly active!  There are time where I simply can’t believe that a baby could be so active inside the womb.  Mom claims it tickles and ‘feels funny’ but I can’t imagine experiencing that without getting sick to my stomach.  We had a doctor’s appointment this past Saturday and all is well and on schedule for a mid-May delivery.  Some friends down the street who work at our school just had a little boy, and being around him has been a good wake-up call for those of us who haven’t fully processed just what it means to have 2 kids around.  Yikes!

We have a 4-day weekend this weekend and are looking forward to getting out of Colombo.  We plan to head south and east, perhaps spending a few days in the Sinharaja Forest Reserve on our way to the beach at Mirissa.  We’ll see how it all shakes out – we have a car now so we’re mobile.  Sri Lanka is the kind of country where you can simply head out exploring without a plan, and show up just about anywhere and find a good place to stay.  This is because the tourism industry here is hardly alive at this point - bad for the country, but good for those of us who live here.