Day 110: Exploring Kandy

Sleep in day! We are loving the view out our back porch - it's a great way to wake up and a nice place to have breakfast.

We grabbed second breakfast again at the Garden Cafe and walked around the lake. We got tickets for a show later on in the afternoon and we wanted to check the venue out. A Tuk Tuk driver stopped us in the street and we made a deal with him to take us to a few places.

We'd heard that the botanical gardens was pretty interesting. It wasn't far from the downtown area, so we headed over there. As usual, the foreigner entry fee was pretty expensive - $30 for adults, $15 for kids. The place has a lot of historical significance and was established a long time ago. The grounds are stunning.

There was a huge variety of trees, orchids, flowers and other flora there. The orchid greenhouse alone had hundreds of different species. Normally I'm not an "orchid guy", but it was impressive. Abby couldn't get her head around, much less her arms, just how big some of the trees were - they almost resembled smaller cousins to the redwoods in Northern California.

Of course you can't go to many places in Sri Lanka without getting adopted by some random family. By the way, you'll notice they don't really smile in pictures - I think that is the only cure for the always smiling Sri Lankan people!

Another Abby pic...

There were some gigantic (maybe 50-60 meters tall) bamboo groves that were very nice.

I glanced up and saw where the fruit bats from last night nested - they were all over the place and they were huge! Their big, black sinewy wings were in stark contrast to the furry, light brown undersides. They were close to two feet tall when hanging upside down in the trees.

I saw a bunch of monkeys on the path ahead and told a Robin. She asked where they were as she was scanning the tops of the trees. I told her to look on the path, and she said "ummm, daddy!" - there was a big snake crossing our path about ten feet away from us. It was pretty long - between 2.5 and 3 meters (yes, I realize we interchange imperial and metric systems... We Canadians are so capable! (Europeans find it strange)).

There were a ton of monkeys, and a very high percentage of newborns and babies. Look closely at this pic and you'll see a baby that can't be more than a week or two old.

We ended up getting lunch at the cafe in the gardens - we stayed longer than we would have thought. It was a nice way to spend a few hours. We got back into our Tuk Tuk - man they never stop trying to convince you to go somewhere (friend's shops are popular) or trying to become your personal driver for the rest of your trip to Sri Lanka.

We got off on the wrong side of the lake on purpose - we wanted another walk before heading over to the cultural performance show. Quite often around the lake, we spotted monitor lizards like this guy hanging out in a tree.

There were still some goings on near the temple to wrap the Perahera festival up. Unfortunately, we saw a bunch of elephants coming home from their temple duties along some very busy streets. It reminded us of the graphic images Lek had shown us of elephants who had been hit by cars and trucks in Bangkok.

This large male was heavily chained and scarred. He is from Burma - that's a Burmese logging elephant brand on his back that was burned on to him.

The cultural show was nice. I liked the hand drummers who kept the show on track throughout - they really looked like they were enjoying themselves....I pictured them going home to their home recording studio after to work on the drum component for the next Crush Herman album (speaking of, when exactly is the next album coming out Crush?!).

The last performance of the show was the fire eater guy. He went through the stages of fire resistance.... Rolling a willow on fire all over his body, sticking it in his mouth and blowing fireballs.

Then he walked on some seriously hot coals. They say fire walkers go into a trance to be able to do this, but he was not in a trancelike state just minutes later when he passed around his own personal donation box.

Before finishing off our day with another awesome meal at Garden Cafe, we had to take just one more extended family photo. The girls were trying to guess how many people's Facebook pages they are on.... It's got to be a big number!