Everything about Arugam Bay was lovely. We stayed in a Cabana (bamboo hut) for a few days, enjoyed swimming in the sea, walks along a near empty beach and I even gave surfing another go after our first lesson nearly a year ago in Bali!
After our days of relaxation and tiring myself out surfing we moved onto Ella in the hill country of Sri Lanka. Ella is a small crossroads of a town but very popular with tourists as it has an excellent combination of a cooler climate, tea plantations, good walks, and the locals grow lots of fresh fruit and veg which go into delicious curries. Whilst in Ella we did a great walk along train tracks, through vegetable fields and up into forest to get to Ella Rock, one of the tallest points in the area where we had an uninterrupted view of the surrounding hills.
Uda Walawe national park was out next stop to see wild elephants and it certainly did not disappoint! The park has just over 400 elephants and we think we saw about 40-50 of them mostly in small herds of 5 or 6. Little baby elephants staying close by their mothers greeted us when we entered the park and we knew it was going to be a good day. Everywhere we went in the jeep elephants weren’t far away, it was so nice to be on a safari where we saw a lot of animals and we could watch the elephants for a long time without them disappearing instantly. We also saw 2 rarely sighted leopard cats (normal cat size but leopards!) as well as monkeys, deer, eagles and lizards. We nearly had too much of a close encounter with one lone male elephant who we were watching graze meters away from us when suddenly he decided he didn’t like us being there and made a move to charge, luckily a loud noise from our guide soon put him off! 
The south coast was definitely the busiest we’d seen Sri Lanka but the beaches were still nice and it was easy to find empty spots of sand away from the resorts. Mirissa was a laid back beach town fringed with coconut trees, not much happens there except for whale watching in season (too choppy for us to go) but we had some good food and enjoyed watching the sea at night with a beer on the beach.
In Unawatuna from our balcony at some point in the day we could normally see monkeys playing in the trees. We did a cooking school as we’ve been enjoying the local specialty of rice and curry so much throughout Sri Lanka. We prepared a feast of dishes; fish curry, pumpkin curry, green bean curry, Dhal (curried lentils) with crispy onions and devilled potatoes and were really lucky that it was just the two of us booked on so we had our own personal chef guiding us! What we really loved about the cooking school was that we did everything, chopped every vegetable, grinded coconut flesh from the coconut and made the coconut cream and milk by hand. It tasted amazing!
For the rest of our time in Unawatuna we had a swim most days, the best Sri Lankan curry of the trip at ‘One Love’ and we took a trip into Galle 4km away and wandered about the Dutch Fort admiring some of the colonial architecture in the old town. Now we’re back in Negombo for the night so we can catch our flight to India tomorrow!
Sri Lanka has definitely been one of the highlights of the trip so far and a really pleasant surprise. With so much packed into a tiny island it’s one of the places we can see ourselves going back to in the future.
Love Chris & Kat xxx
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