iSimangaliso Wetland Park, South Africa

Heather and I skipped the morning game drive at Stone Camp as we'd already seen everything we wanted to see in park (the baby black rhino yesterday was the last item on the list), plus I wanted to be rested for driving.

A family of nyalas wandered right by our lodge again and a couple younger males were playing around butting heads.

Breakfast was at 8am and we were loaded up in the safari vehicle by 9am for the drive to the park gate.

A little delay at the secure parking lot because the ranger forgot the key to the lot; he called on his cell and someone drove up on a motorcycle 10 minutes later and we were off.

Next stop was iSimangaliso Wetland Park in South Africa, a three hour drive. Half way through we crossed the border. Another attempt at bribes entering South Africa (the border official said we needed a permit to bring masks into the country) but I just played it dumb and eventually he gave up and waved us through.

The GPS was accurate this time (we've been going to a lot of address-less places reached by dirt roads, which Garmin had trouble with).

At the park gate I asked how to pronounce iSimangaliso, so now I could at least say where we where going. (It's phonetic but I wasn't putting the stress on the right syllable).

The drive into Makakatana was like driving into a cottage. The trees created a tunnel around the single-lane sand road. There was a slight decline to get to the lodge, and I was worried about eventually driving out uphill in sand. But that was for another day.

The staff was waiting to greet us at reception. There's only eight lodges at Makakatana and on the day we arrived the was only one other lodge occupied.

We sorted out the luggage by room, and I parked the car in the shaded carport. I still find reversing strange, as you have to look over your left shoulder.

We had a welcome drink and the manager went through our program for the next couple days. Game drive this evening; full day boat safari tomorrow; and an early morning game drive on our last day.

We had arrived with enough time to shower before the evening game drive. It was an outdoor shower, one of the best I've seen. (We didn't want to shower after the game drive in case of bugs at night). We took our soap and shampoo back into the lodge to keep away from vervet monkeys and bushbabies.

We met our ranger, Michael, and then headed out. Michael was one of our favourite rangers we've had. He was really knowledgeable, providing new facts and info that other rangers hadn't.

I had booked Makakatana for the wetlands safari, but they also have decent grasslands game too. Saw lots of giraffes, including seven eating from the same tree.

The sundowner was right by the lake, with a group of hippos about 30m away, and the sun at the perfect angle. At first the hippos had to establish their dominance by some fake charges. Once they started ignoring us, Michael set up a small table with snacks and we got out of the safari vehicle for our sundowner. It was our favourite sundowner location to date.

Michael used the hippo tracks as a guide to get back to the dirt roads. Back at Makakatana, we quickly washed up and then met at the boma for dinner. The setting was really nice - a central fire pit, hip lighting around the perimeter. We enjoyed our 4-course dinner and then crashed for the night. It was hard to believe our day had started at Stone Camp in Swaziland.

Mkhaya Game Reserve, Swaziland

I woke up around 5am as it was already bright outside. It wasn't too noisy sleeping *outdoors*, about the same as camping.

At 5:30am the camp staff came by with a tray of coffee, tea and freshly-baked muffins. It was especially tasty. We ate outside our cottage so we didn't leave crumbs for ants.

The morning safari started at 6am. We saw about 15-20 rhinos, all white. Then just before the end of the drive, we spotted a black rhino! Now that we know the difference, it's easy to spot the different nose, back and neck arch.

We returned to camp at 8am for breakfast. It was a full breakfast, fruit and yoghurt, and eggs and bacon made to order. The staff made toast over the coals from yesterday's campfire.

There wasn't much time to rest before our waking safari at 10:30am. The day was starting to get hot (I think it went up to 35C). It was a small group - me, Heather, Marissa, and a couple who also happened to be from Ontario.

We drove out with our guide, Africa, to a grasslands area which was our starting point. As usual the walking safari started off slowly, with explanations about various plants and insects. I'm pretty sure the guides also use this as a chance to evaluate the group. Outside of the safari vehicle, we're no longer the top of the food chain.

Anyways we gained enough trust of the guide to get into denser bush. We walked from wallow to wallow in search of rhinos, but weren't having much luck.

Towards the two hour mark, we headed to one last wallow. Suddenly Africa put up his hand, the signal to stop. In the distance I heard a low rumble. Then about 20 metres away I saw dust and shadows of Cape buffalo as a group of over twenty stampeded by us. Our guide said they had picked up our scent and got afraid, and so stampeded. Lucky for us they couldn't tell our direction.

We took a more circuitous route to get to the last wallow. Sure enough, there was a white rhino and her son! The white rhinos are calmer compared to the black rhino; and this particular rhino had been hand-raised and familiar with humans. If anything the danger was from the rhino getting curious and following us.

We observed the rhinos from about 20m away, until the mother noticed us and started wandering over to say hello. Our guide backed us up into the bush to get away; and then we hiked back to the safari vehicle.

Walking through waist-high grasses and through thick underbrush with animals all about was really cool, one of the highlights of the trip so far.

We arrived back at Stone Camp around 1pm. It didn't seem like we had been walking in the heat for 2.5 hours!

Had lunch and then showered. I also washed my shirt, it dried in about an hour.

At 4pm we went out for the evening game drive. Africa was our ranger again (we had a different ranger for the morning drive, who was tracking the black rhino but sped around a lot. We preferred Africa's driving). We saw another black rhino, this time a mother and baby.

After dinner there was another song and dance show by the staff. (I forgot to mention we did this last night too). It's traditional Zulu songs, a little bit touristy for me, although authentic.

We were exhausted after three safaris in the day and fell asleep quickly.

Mkhaya Game Reserve, Swaziland

Next on our itinerary was Stone Camp in Mkhaya Game Reserve. It's the best place to see rhinos in all of Africa.

Rangers pick you up from the park gates at either 10am or 4pm. We had booked 48 hours starting at 10am, so left Ezulwini Valley at 8am just to be safe (our hotel said it was a 90 minute drive).

We followed the GPS most of the way and then the directions from Stone Camp to get to entrance gate by 9:40am. Another car with tourists pulled up shortly after, so we figured we were in the right spot. It was slightly drizzling as we waited.

At 10:04am the ranger arrived in an open safari vehicle. We followed him to a secure parking place, and transferred our packs. We had been warned that we could only bring a small overnight bag, as there wasn't much room for luggage in the safari vehicle. Heather and I travel fairly light (about 15kg each) so we were okay with our regular packs.

The drive in is also a game drive, and we saw lots of giraffes, and some rhinos! The park is fenced off for breeding purposes, where the ranger would stop, open the gate, drive through, close the gate. It was like being on a TTC streetcar when the driver has to change the switching to turn.

It had stopped raining halfway through the two hour game drive, and was getting hot in the sun when we arrived in camp.

I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew there was no electricity (Heather and I arrived with our devices and cameras fully charged), but wasn't sure about plumbing.

The cottages turned out to be much better than I hoped! They are open-concept, with a only a two-foot stone wall between us and the wilderness. They had running potable water (hot and cold), showers, and comfortable beds with mosquito nets. Due to the drought there were hardly any bugs. It was almost better than Inyati!

We had another evening game drive at 4pm, so didn't have much time after lunch to relax and enjoy the place.

As advertised, we saw plenty of rhinos on the game drive, about 20-30 in different groupings. Today we saw only the more common white rhino. The name had nothing to do with the color of the rhino, but was a lost-in-translation thing from way back when.

Dinner was excellent around a fire. They even had cold beer! I had a Sibebe, the local Swazi beer. Heather had a chilled Sauv Blanc from South Africa. As Marissa said, this is our kind of camping.

Walked back to our cottages along paths lit with paraffin lights. Our cottage was similarly lit, looking very pretty. There were hardly any bugs which made getting into bed easier.

Ezulwini Valley, Swaziland

Heather and I were still on safari time and were up at 6am, so got ready and went for breakfast when it opened at 7am.

The manager, an eccentric old lady, came over to find out what our plans were for the day, and then gave us a Swaziland tourism magazine and suggested we take a day trip to nearby Malkern Valley, which had all sorts of arts and crafts shops, and a nice pub for lunch.

So we waited for Marissa and Nancy to wake up, and headed out. Having a car was coming in very handy!

First stop was Mlilwane Wildlife Sanctuary, so that Marissa could check out horseback riding for later in the afternoon. At Mlilwane it's possible to do a self-drive and self-walking safari, as there's no predators in the park. We were more interested in souvenirs so carried on.

Malkern was another 15 minutes down the MR103. There's occasional speed bumps at shared taxi stops and school crossings, otherwise the limit was mostly 80km.

We drove to Swazi Candles, which had the famous Swazi candle-making shop, as well as a number of other little craft shops. One-stop shopping :).

The candles were actually pretty cool. We bought some, as well as a bunch of other souvenirs. It was our only chance for souvenir shopping in Swaziland so we stocked up.

Had lunch at Malandela's, where they had large draft beers, that tasted like Coors Light according to Marissa. I thought it had a little more taste, and hardly any alcohol, but anyways they were pretty refreshing in the heat.

We later stopped in at Mantenga's Cultural Village, and then called it a day.

Had dinner at the same restaurant as yesterday as we weren't very motivated to find another place.

Ezulwini Valley, Swaziland

I skipped the morning game drive at Inyati because we had a five hour drive today and I didn't want to be tired.

We were on the road by 10:30, Marissa navigating with Garmin, Google maps offlined on my iPhone, and the directions that Marissa had printed off before the trip. We decided to take a shortcut through a nature reserve on the border. The South African side had great views as we climbed to the pass. We stopped at a little interpretive site roadside for pics.

Exiting South Africa was easy, although the border officials seemed surprised to see us. Entering Swaziland was also easy - no fees for Canadians, and just a $5 fee for the car. They didn't ask to see the document from Avis allowing us to take the car into Swaziland.

A few hundred metres down the road there was a police check, all they did was note our license plate number. We were only the 6th car through.

Then we found out why. The next 18km was a pretty rough gravel road. There were other little cars like Citroëns meeting us the other way so we figured it was possible in our little Toyota Corolla. It was slow going though, it took about 45 minutes to get to pavement. So much for our shortcut! It did have nice views though.

The rest of the drive in Swaziland was on good roads. They even have a short stretch of highway where the limit is 120km, it's the road between the main city and the Royal Residence.

It's a very hilly country. I was trying to use the engine to brake on downhills but the little engine couldn't handle the weight. Hopefully the brakes will last our trip!

We reached Mogi Boutique Hotel around 5pm, well before sunset. It's a nice location on the side of Ezulwini Valley. The views would be nice if it wasn't rainy :)

The Mogi doesn't have an onsite restaurant but they recommended a place just down the road. We were told it's dangerous to walk so we piled into the car and drove.

The restaurant had wifi so we all checked our email. (Lightning the previous night had knocked out the router at Mogi). The food was okay, a little touristy, but it was reasonably priced and had vegetarian options for Marissa.

Sabi Sand Game Reserve, South Africa

I forgot to mention that while in Zimbabwe I bought some trillion dollar bills. The million and billion bills were fairly cheap; the trillion dollar bills started at $5 and the 100 trillion was over $50.

The two full days at Inyati went like this:

5:00am wake up knock at door
5:30am tea / coffee/ snacks
6:00am game drive
9:30am breakfast / brunch
4:00pm high tea
4:30pm game drive
7:30pm wash up
8:00pm dinner
10:00pm sleep

The game drives lasted over three hours each, which was much longer than we were used to. We found it a bit long to be sitting around, and also with the heat we were guzzling water without a washroom break. Woe is us.

The highlights included a cheetah resting on a termite hill, many leopards (the main reason we were here), elephants grazing within inches of us, a pack of wild dogs catching and eating a baby impala.

It was amazing how fast the dogs ate the impala. The dogs were laying about in the shade when a group of impalas accidentally walked up on them. We were parked by the dogs observing them, as wild dogs are a rare sighting. One dog noticed the impalas and they gave chase. Our driver followed them for about 200m where they caught the baby impala. Then they all surrounded and pulled bites, just 10' from the vehicle. In less than five minutes the impala was gone, bones and all.

The 2nd day was stinking hot, over 40C. Thank goodness the lodges were air conditioned.

The food was okay, matched nicely with mostly South African wines. (They have a walk-in cellar from the dining room. This was not the GAP Adventures safari I did when I was in my 20s).

We met a nice family from Singapore, as well as a number of other couples. Most of them were well-traveled.

Inyati doesn't overcrowd the safari vehicles, the most we had was six, plus the driver, and the tracker. So there was lots of space to spread out camera bags and water bottles and sunscreen etc.

It was a great safari experience at Inyati, we saw leopards, and plenty other animals as a bonus.

Sabi Sands Game Reserve, South Africa

It took a couple days in transit to get from Victoria Falls and to Inyati Game Lodge, one of the lodges in the private game reserve of Sabi Sands.

First was getting out of Victoria Falls. The check-in at the airport was really slow, as they only had one counter open. We were able to take both the large masks as carry-on without any issue.

We actually got served a hot meal on the 90 minute flight to Johannesburg. I hadn't booked a vegetarian meal for Marissa cause I figured it would just be cheese sandwiches but oh well.

We had no problems getting through immigration. Picked up our bags and found our way to Avis to pick up our cars. Nancy had messed up her reservation and got a stick shift. They only had a van remaining for automatic, so we ended up squishing into our car. Heather and I had booked a compact because we wanted a non-descript car because of concerns over car theft and car jackings, more so in Johannesburg.

Anyways we had trouble with the GPS because it switched to a simulated mode inside the airport, and didn't switch back automatically once we exited the parking lot. So we spent about an hour circling the airport down some small streets before we figured it out.

We hit some construction about 75km from Nelspruit, with only a single lane shared. We waited about 20 minutes at a time for the light to change for our direction.

We reached Jorn's guesthouse in Nelspruit around 10pm. The night watch opened the gate to let us in, and then showed us to our rooms.

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At breakfast we could see the grounds at Jorn's. it was a pretty nice place, if we had had a morning flight it would have been cool to hang out at the bar.

Packed up our stuff into the car and then onto Inyati! It took a while to figure out how to use the Garmin, which seems decades behind Google maps. Marissa became our Garmin expert, and was comparing between the Garmin directions, Google maps which she had printed off at home, and Inyati's directions. We missed a turnoff after getting gas, but other than that things went smoothly. The roads were in great shape, and I was starting to figure out the various road markings and signs. Driving a stick on the right side was pretty easy (the pedals are the same), I didn't stall at all.

We reached our entrance to Sabi Sand Reserve right on schedule. The Garmin kept on trying to take us a different way, so we switched the voice to James because it was less annoying.

Paid the entrance fees for us and the car. The onto Inyati! It was about 10 minutes over dirt roads to reach the lodge. They were well organized, the person greeted us by name and our bags disappeared off to our rooms.

It was hot, about 33C. We had lunch at the main lodge, then went to our rooms to get ready for our first game drive that evening.

At 4pm we met up in the main lodge again for high tea. Met our guide (Omega) and tracker (Rodger). It was the four of us plus a French couple in our safari vehicle.

At 4:30pm we started off on the game drive. It was still a bit hot, we had layers of sunscreen and bug repellent. The two main animals on our checklist here were leopards and wild dogs (this was Marissa's addition to the list).

Almpst immediately we saw our first leopard(s)! It was a mother and son, trotting along. They stopped to drink at a small watering hole, and then the mother led the son to a baby impala she had killed earlier and hid in a tree.

We watched for almost 30 minutes as the son leopard ate the impala. We were very lucky to see this, even the guides were taking pictures.

We left in search of other game, also to give other safari vehicles a chance to view the leopards. The lodges coordinate to limit sightings to two vehicles, so that you don't end up with 10 vehicles looking at a lion like in Kruger.

We saw rhinos, giraffes, elephants, hippos, just to name the bigger ones. The wildlife is very plentiful here.

It was a long game drive, ending around 7:30pm. We were escorted by a guard to our chalets (the animals roam freely through the lodge grounds). At 8:15pm we were picked up to walk back to the main lodge for dinner.

Dinner was served to everyone at the same time, which I guess allows the guests to meet and talk over dinner. I had the kudu for my main, which wasn't as gamey as I had hoped.

We were in bed around 10pm, excited about the game drive, but not looking forward to the 5am wake-up call.

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FYI I've added pics to the Victoria Falls album and the South Africa album. Links are in the right nav bar

Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

Heather and I were up at 6am (we went to bed at 8:30pm, so that's actually a long time to sleep!) so went down to the main lodge for breakfast at 7am. Mornings have been the best time of the day so far, before the sun heats up the day.

Our taxi picked us up just before 9am to go to the curio markets. According to the Lonely Planet, it's one of better places for souvenirs.

Our driver gave us an extra cell phone so we could call him to pick us up when we were done. We thought it was a great idea, as the driver basically doubles his business. Although we did feel like we were a character on The Wire carrying a burner.

There were both shops with marked prices that accepted credit cards, and a curio market which was the opposite. We went through the priced stores first to get ballpark prices, and then checked out the stalls. It's low season and so we spent more time trying to fend off vendors than actually looking at the stuff for sale. We were more interested in the stuff in the real stores, so went back. Ended up buying a couple large-ish masks that we have to get through our flight tomorrow.

We couldn't figure out how to turn on the burner phone (we would make terrible drug dealers). We took another taxi back to the hotel and had them call our driver to explain. We needed another drive at 3pm so we could get return his phone then.

Had grilled cheese again cause we liked it so much. We lazed about until 3pm, and then headed out into heat.

Our driver dropped us off at the park entrance. (We made sure we knew how to use the burner this time). We started off at the Lookout Cafe, overlooking a bend in the gorge. We had Malawi shandies, a mix of bitters, ginger beer and lemonade. Very refreshing.

At 4pm we paid our $30 USD entrance fee and toured the Falls, this time from the Zimbabwe side. The pathway was in excellent shape and well marked. There's 16 lookout points spread across the width of the Falls. The mist blows towards the Zimbabwe side and the humidity and fauna was very different from our first day on the Zambia side. I had to wipe my camera lens every time I took off the cap - there was a constant fine mist. In high flow months you get soaked and can only use waterproof cameras. You probably couldn't see much either.

There's a 1.2km walk back to the entrance gate after the last lookout. It winds through the rainforest and was like a mini safari - we saw guinea fowls, bush backs, vervet monkeys, and a few others.

We had now visited the Falls for three days straight and hadn't got out-waterfalled. The Zim and Zam sides were very different views at low flow, and the swim in Devils Pool a different experience. I preferred the Zambia side because you can see right down the gorge. From the Zimbabwe side for the most part you don't get a view of the full drop. Heather liked them equally.

Compared to other waterfalls, Angel Falls is my favourite just because it's sooo tall (980m). (By comparison Victoria Falls is about 108m). I also liked Iguazu Falls better because you can get a fuller view. Maybe if I saw Victoria Falls at high flow I might re-rank but right now it's 3rd on my waterfall list.

We didn't do the helicopter ride because at low flow it would just look like an extension of the gorge. At high flow I would definitively go up in either a helicopter or ultralight.

Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

We woke up from a not very good sleep. The power cut out around 3am and so we had no a/c or fans. Ripe fruit dropped on our corrugated metal roof with a loud bang-thud-thud every so often.

The temperature was pleasant at 7am when me and Heather woke up to have breakfast. At 8:25am we were picked up by taxi to get to the Livingstone Lodge, the jumping off point for Devil's Pool. Paid $98 each (luckily the credit card POS had a connection so we didn't have to use up US cash). At 9am, right on schedule, a motor boat picked us up for a five minute ride through the Zambezi and small rapids to Livingstone Island. We then walked about five minutes, with close up views over into the gorge. (I think these were the tourists that were in my pics yesterday).

We then swam about 15m to the rocks from which you enter Devils Pool. It wasn't deep (probably could have touched the bottom the whole way) but the current was strong. There were a couple ropes for those who weren't strong swimmers.

We waited for our turn to enter Devils Pool. The guides allow only four people at a time so that they can watch over the group. Another guide had taken one camera per group as the official photographer, and was busy snapping away. They run a tight ship here!

We bum-stepped into Devils Pool and the current immediately took us across. The infinity-pool-like wall stops you from going over, but it can be unnerving for some. It's possible to look over the edge all the way down. I took some pics with my underwater camera.

The official photographer had us in all kinds of poses. He took his job very seriously, getting upset when our arms weren't in the perfect position.

After a few minutes our time was up, and we went back to Livingstone Island, where we were served a fancy breakfast including eggs benedict (!) all made fresh in a kitchen tent on the island. I wasn't aware that breakfast was included as we ate at the hotel prior to the excursion. I didn't think I was hungry but still managed to finish it. There was no time to sip and enjoy our coffee as the guides had us lined up for the motor boat back to the mainland.

Our taxi driver drove us back to the Green Tree Lodge and waited while we changed and finished packing.

Next up was the border crossing to Zimbabwe. Land crossings are generally more complicated especially if there's a no-man's land in between.

Exiting Zambia was straightforward. Got our passports stamped (no forms to fill out). In the meantime our driver had arranged with a no-man's land taxi driver for the 1km drive to the Zimbabwe entry. It's possible to walk but it was hot and the ride was just $5 between the four of us.

Entering Zimbabwe was a little more confusing as there were lots of people milling about. But it was also straightforward - paid $75 USD each and gave our passports at one window (again, no forms to fill out) and then a couple minutes later handed back to us through the next window. The visa is a full page sticker, very nice.

Once again in the meantime our driver had passed us off to our next taxi, this one on the Zimbabwe side, to take us to our hotel. We had to run our bags through an X-ray machine at the border, which I think was just procedural as I didn't see anyone monitoring what was inside (I'm sure their process just says to X-ray the bags).

Victoria Falls (the town on the Zimbabwe side is named after the Falls) is right beside the Falls, as opposed to Livingstone which is about 10km away, so it was a short taxi ride to Bayete Guest Lodge.

Bayete was much nicer than our last place in Livingstone. Tourist infrastructure is more developed in Zimbabwe and there was more choice between mid-range hotels.

It was just after noon and we already had had a full day. So we planned out excursions for tomorrow (Marissa's going horseback riding; Heather and I are shopping for curios) and then relaxed in the main lodge.

Had a few Zambezi's (the local beer) to celebrate going to Devils Pool. Went off-menu and ordered grill cheese with tomato for a snack - we weren't too hungry as we'd had two breakfasts already. Based on the great grilled cheese and nice atmosphere in the main lodge, decided to have dinner there as well.

So later on we got back to the main lodge and had a tasty dinner of grilled chicken and nice sides. They made Marissa a vegetarian meal of rice and lentils, also very tasty. Heather ordered a bottle of white, as they just wrote her room number and kept it in the fridge for the next day. Overall another full day at Victoria Falls!

Livingstone, Zambia

It was a busy day today. We were at OR Tambo at 9am to check in for our flight to Livingstone, on the Zambia side of Victoria Falls.

I had had a hard time keeping it straight when planning about which city was on which side, and what excursions were on each side. Canadians only get a single-entry on each side, ($50 USD for Zambia, $75 for Zimbabwe). The tour operators don't make it clear about which country they occur, as they just want to book everything for you. Anyways, we would find out if I booked it correctly over the next couple days :)

There was a long line up to check in, about. 45 minutes. It was quite a difference from two weeks ago when we flew through to Mozambique. December is the start of busy season, oh well.

The flight was 1:15h, plenty of time for a cheese sandwich and drinks to be served. It hit the spot.

Immigration took a while as the official had to fill out lots of paperwork for each person. We took 45m to get through, and there were at most 75 people on our flight.

Anyways our luggage was waiting st the carousel, as well as a taxi driver from the hotel. It was a bit confusing as it was a person with airport access who greeted us, and then handed us off to the taxi driver outside.

It was hot, about 35C. It was much more humid than Johannesburg. There had been a mix up with the reservation and so we were all in one family-sized chalet. I had originally booked the family chalet when it was just Marissa, as it was cheaper for her; but then when Nancy joined it was just as easy to have two chalets. The Green Tree Lodge either mixed it up or overbooked, it wasn't clear.

The manager was very good at going through our options for excursions. We had reserved Devils Pool in advance for tomorrow morning, which was good, because it's getting popular and you need to book at least a week in advance. Other people at our lodge had showed up expecting to book and couldn't get in :(

We arranged for a taxi to take us to the Falls at 4pm, when it would be (slightly) cooler. The sky darkened with storm clouds just as we left. We drove through heavy rains for the ten minute drive to the Falls, at which point the rain slowed to a light drizzle. The heat and humidity had broken, and it actually felt nice out!

Paid the $20 USD park entry fee and we were off to see Victoria Falls! It was still drizzling enough that I kept my camera on my pack. And then we were there! It's low flow at this time of year, and on the Zambia side there's not much water, but the plus side is that you can actually see the gorge. At high flow, all you see is a big mist.

There's different vantage points along the well maintained path. It's also possible to walk out on the dry river bed of the Zambezi, and peer over into the gorge. We didn't do this, although the tourists who did made great subjects in my pics.

It stopped drizzling after about 10 minutes. There were still dark clouds on the horizon which also worked well for pics, instead of a bright haze.

It was quite impressive to see the size of Victoria Falls, with some imagination for high flow season.

Bought a little knickknack for a souvenir from Zambia, as we were in the country for only 24 hours.

We decided to stop for dinner in town, at Olga's Italian restaurant. They have the best pizza in town. I think it's also the only pizza in town, so the claim of best is factual. We had a Mosi beer (the local name for the Falls is Mosi au Tonya, literally, smoke that thunders). Drove back to the lodge and called it a night.

Johannesburg, South Africa

We had breakfast in the kitchen just for a change of scenery. We ordered poached eggs for the main which were cooked perfectly but seemed to put the chef's talents to waste.

We had our chauffeur (that still sounds weird) drive us to CIRCA, a gallery about 1km away. It had an exhibit, The Dark City, which was really well done. It examined the lives of people living in a "bad building". The "bad buildings" were deemed so by city planners for demolition and replacement. This particular one had no electricity, no toilets, and only one water tap for 220 residents. Anyways it was an excellent exhibit.

Next onto a couple galleries with art that maybe we looked like we could buy, having rolled up in our 7-series, but was very expensive. It was interesting just to look at the art though.

We wandered through a couple more galleries, and then found a place that had authentic pieces from around Africa. Some we recognized like the large tent pegs from the Sahara, and crosses from Ethiopia. We particularly liked the Nigerian beds, made from a single piece of wood. We had seen one in our guest house, used as a coffee table, but didn't know what it was.

Our driver picked us up at 2pm as prearranged, and we were whisked back to the guest house for lunch. I tried the impala (?) carpaccio, which was good but not as gamey as I had hoped.

After lunch we were driven to our hotel near the airport, where we were meeting Marissa and Nancy, and then flying out the next morning to see Victoria Falls. Marissa and Nancy are joining us for the next two weeks for Victoria Falls and some safari.

Dinner was better than expected, roasted chicken and various vegetables. Marissa and Nancy didn't get in until 11pm, so I watched a couple bad movies that I wouldn't even watch on an airplane. We had a celebration beer when they arrived and then went to bed.

Johannesburg, South Africa

Our flight was at a decent time (11:25) (great planning if I might say so myself). We had plenty of time to have breakfast, pack up and catch a taxi to the airport.

I was a little concerned about the two sculptures, as they were made from gun parts and bullets. One had lots of bullets and seemed more durable so I packed that in my big pack which was checked baggage. The other was carry on, which even if they were useless as weapons, were still plenty of reason for officials to look for bribes.

So sure enough as we went through security they flagged my carry on. I was trying to explain what it was, and then Heather whipped out the official documentation that we had waited for the printer to be installed yesterday. The line up was starting to back up behind us and so the security guy just waved me on. Phew!

We then had to spend our remaining meticais. We had about $80 CAD equivalent. I was planning to use it to pay the outstanding balance at the hotel but they automatically deducted from our credit card on file. Bought some souvenirs to use it up.

It was less than an hour to Johannesburg, but we will got served a sandwich and drink! The customs official was very friendly, wishing us well on our trip. Our baggage was already touring around the conveyor. We were almost out of the airport when someone with a police vest pulled us over to look at our bags. He asked us some questions and then said he was going on lunch break and was wondering if we could help out. Heather said we didn't have any cash as we just arrived and needed to go to the ATM. So for the second time today we avoided a shakedown for bribes.

Our driver from 33 Melville was waiting outside arrivals. We walked to the parking garage and then got into a late model BMW 7-Series! I was quite surprised. We then listened to classical music on the 40 minute drive to the guest house (plus an interesting interview about supernovas).

Heather had found 33 Melville on agoda. The place is quite amazing for the price, they could easily charge double or triple. We had a host, butler, and chef on call at all time. I felt slightly like we had met the wrong driver at the airport and there was another Eric D'Souza going to a lesser place. We've paid more for a b&b in Owen Sound. But we were
In the right place. I'm not clear on how they make money; our theory is that the owners live in the other half of the house and by running a b&b they can then claim the expenses of the full staff.

Our room was bigger than a floor in our house. Everything was decorated with great taste - it was perfect for ideas. Anyways it was by far the best all-round service we've had, probably ever.

We had a mixed platter for lunch outside on the covered patio. Light jazz played over the speakers. Had a coffee, then debated dipping in the salt water pool but it looked like storm clouds so we didn't. I caught up on my blog and Heather read her book. Every so often the host popped by to see if we were okay.

We had ordered the special for dinner, chicken with harissa. We were seated at a long table, and then they brought out our dinner. The chef matched it with a local Sauvignon Blanc. The whole thing was still surreal to me.

Maputo, Mozambique

We had a late start to the day, having had too much fun the night before. We did miss out on most of the heat so it wasn't too bad.

Took a taxi to the baixa area (lower escarpment part), where most of the classic Maputo buildings are found. Started at the train station, which makes lists of top railway stations in the world. Then zigzagged our way to Praça da Independéncia. Stopped in at the Info building near the plaza, and were met by a gregarious woman. We had beeen referred by both the good book (Lonely Planet) and our hotel in Ilha to call on Jane Flood, who runs walking tours of Maputo, with an architectural focus. Turns out the woman who welcomed us was indeed the one-and-only Jane Flood! She had loads of recommendations for us, and was very helpful.

It was getting late in the day, so we finished our tour of the plaza and then took a taxi home. Maputo is known for its king shrimp, so we headed over to Marna Brasa based on the recommendation from the guest house folks. It was excellent, with a vinho verde. (Most restaurants here have three categories for wine: red, white, and green. The green refers to the age of the wine - verdes are very young wines).

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We were up at a more reasonable hour this morning. Had the same breakfast (scrambled eggs, buttered toast with the crust cut off, bacon, fruit salad, plain yogurt, and good tea/coffee). It's a standard breakfast served almost everywhere we go, but they do a good job of it here.

Started at the National Art Museum in the baixa. It was good, although half of it was under construction. Walked across to Txhapo Txhapo, a hip little restaurant recommended by Jane Flood. It was quite good, and their mixed fruit drinks were excellent. The air conditioning was a nice break from the heat.

Then onto a couple art galleries in search of souvenirs. First went to Núcleo de Arte, which had some very interesting paintings and sculptures in their showroom. Walked next to Tilandia, which was also good, although I found Núcleo to be more interesting. We went back and this time wandered through the back rooms beyond the bar, where the artists were at work, or at least in the process of getting inspired. (By that I mean drinking and smoking up). There were more pieces on display here, for lower prices. We ended up buying two paintings and two sculptures. It was a long process to pay, as they had to unpack a new printer to print off the document needed to take art out of the country.

By the time we were done it was almost 5pm so we took a taxi home. We had no energy to head out, plus the restaurant at the guest house was quite good and had great atmosphere. Their special of the day was grilled shrimp, so while in Maputo, eat as Maputans. Had another vinho verde, and called it a night.

Maputo was a really enjoyable city, with lots of arts and culture, and really cool architecture. The food was also really quite good. We were glad we tacked it onto our trip to Mozambique.

Maputo, Mozambique

Breakfast was dull at Hotel Milénio. We were still feeling full from the heavy curries at dinner, so I just had boiled eggs and a bun. The stuff labelled as butter was some sort of processed stuff so I didn't have any.

Anyways we packed up and took a taxi to the airport, a short 3km drive from the centre of town. This was our only internal flight in Mozambique and the only option was LAM, of which I read unpleasant things about their reliability and cancelled flights. We arrived two hours before our flight, and were promptly and efficiently checked in. We boarded on time, and left the gate on schedule. Maybe we were lucky, or maybe you just can't trust everything you read on the web. We scored with the emergency exit row seats and lots of leg room. Flipped open their in-flight magazine and saw a feature article on Jardim de Aloes, where we had just stayed! Overall we were quite pleased with our LAM flight.

In Maputo the guest house had arranged for a taxi to pick us up and sure enough there was a driver with an Sr Erick Da Sousa sign waiting. From the air, I hadn't seen much traffic and it was a quick ten minute drive on good roads to Sommerschield Guest House, in an upscale residential area. We were greeted by Rita and Sylvia, who were great at making us feel at home. They opened the guest house because they wanted people visiting Maputo to have a home away from home.

They have a little restaurant open all day and so we had some lunch, and then headed out to tourist for the afternoon. Walked all the way into town down Av Julius Nyerere, about 4km. The architecture in Maputo is really cool - mostly designed and influenced by Pancho Guedes. The architecture is very distinctive and if I saw a picture of a random building I could likely guess if it was from Maputo.

We stopped in at JN 281 to check out the menu (based on their high rating in tripadvisor), made reservations, and then took a taxi back home. Had some issues with the water (they were doing some work at the guest house to add another 5,000L tank, there have been water shortages in Maputo recently). But everything was fixed up and we were good to go. It was still a bit early so we had a beer on the patio, with a nice breeze blowing through.

Then onto JN 281. Their specialty is picanhna, a popular cut in Brasil but not so common back home in Toronto. We both ordered it. The owner, Pedro, came by to recommend wines. He was quite the character and wine connoisseur. We selected our wine, which he decanted and then came by every couple minutes to sniff to see if it had opened up yet. In the meantime, we were being served slices after slices of picanhna, cut super thin and medium rare. We were worried we would fill up before Pedro allowed us to drink the wine! Finally he gave up on the the bottle, and opened another pricier one (but for us, Pedro said, the same cost). Because this also had to breathe for five minutes, he suggested a caipirinha, to which we obliged. It took them almost five minutes to make the drinks, but never mind, it takes time to make a good drink from scratch. Eventually we had the wine with the picanhna, which went very well.

Somehow we still had room for dessert, a homemade chocolate mousse of a secret family recipe. It was excellent. We took a taxi home and rolled ourselves into bed, rather full from dinner.

Nampula, Mozambique

We had another enjoyable breakfast at Jardim de Aloes wth Bruno and Judy. Judy gave us a tour of the other two rooms, which had cool antiques that she had collected over time. It's almost like they started the b&b to have somewhere to display all their art! They've also done a great job restoring the place - the old roof beams are hand-hewn from iron wood and are in great shape.

Our driver was waiting at 10am to drive us to Nampula, 2.5 hours from Ilha. We had arranged for him to drive us to see e highlights once in Nampula. We could have just walked around but it was the hottest part of the day.

We stopped first at the busy Sunday market, which had mostly local items for sale. There was a small area with souvenirs, but nothing special. We saw the Cathedral of Nossa Senhora de Fâtima from the outside. Then off to the National Ethnography museum. There was a small market behind the museum, which had better quality than the Sunday market. For a transit stop, it wasn't too bad of a town.

We arrived at Hotel Milénio about 3pm. I was a bit surprised that they had my reservation as they had been spotty with emails. We threw our stuff in our room and grabbed a snack in the hotel lobby (the main restaurant was only open until 3pm for lunch, we just a missed it). We then tried to have a beer, only to discover to our horror that the hotel was dry. This was not mentioned in the Lonely Planet.

So we just used the rather fast wifi to catch up on news.

It's a bit dangerous to walk around at night, so we had dinner in the hotel restaurant. It was mostly Indian food (there's a sizeable population of Indian descent in Nampula). Probably would have gone better with beer but as previously mentioned, the hotel is dry.

Mozambique Island, Mozambique

Breakfast at Jardim de Aloes was on the mid-roof terrace, shaded by the large leaves of an old almond tree. We chatted with Bruno and Judy about our trip, places to see in Ilha (Portuguese for island, and shorthand for Mozambique Island), and restaurants to try and those to just have a coffee.

It was just after 10am by the time we started touring around Stone Town. There was hardly anyone about - probably because it's the hottest part of the day. The old alleys and buildings are cool to see, half of them in states of reconstruction. In five years or so Stone Town will look very different.

We zigzagged through Stone Town, stopping in at the one souvenir store to browse. (I'm sure the number of stores will change too as tourism increases).

By noon we were tired from the heat, and stopped in at Anchor d'Ouro for pizza. Whiled away a couple hours sipping on lime drinks. We thought about a coffee but the power was out so they couldn't run the machine.

We walked back home to wait until 3pm for the cooler air to wander around the rest of Stone Town. There was a wedding somewhere in Ilha and we saw cars decked out in tissue paper flowers, and women in bright red dresses.

Had a beer in the hostel across the street from our hotel, and then went to our rooftop terrace to watch the sunset.

We debated trying another restaurant for dinner, but ended up at Karibu again. Had their tuna with sesame seeds which was the highlight, and a couple other dishes.

We watched the stars from our rooftop terrace after dinner. The wifi was finally working so I posted some pics.

Mozambique Island, Mozambique

We had arranged for a dhow back to Mozambique Island at 2pm, so had a relaxing morning. Packed up our bags which had become more strewn about than normal cause we had had four nights here, plus there was lots of space to spread out. Had lunch, and then boarded the dhow. It was full tide so the dhow was able to come all the way up to the lagoon, and we didn't need to wade through water to board.

Our stay at Coral Lodge included a day trip to the Island, so we had a guide for the afternoon courtesy of Coral Lodge. We docked, and has our bags taken to Jardim de Aloes, owned by a friendly Italian named Bruno. A couple minutes later our guide (Eddie) arrived and we rushed off on our tour.

We quickly saw the Palace of São Paulo and the Fort of São Sebastião. Our guide explained the dark history of slavery with Mozambique Island. There's two colours of rocks used to build the fort - the black coral rock was cut out by slaves from the southern part of the island. That area (Makuti Town) is the poorer half, which floods during rainy season due to the digging out of all the rocks. The lighter coloured rocks were brought from Portugal as ballast for empty ships coming to pick up slaves.

After the Fort we walked through the alleys and streets of Stone Town, and then through Makuti Town. The contrast is quite obvious. We reached the southern point (the island is about 3km long) just in time for the sunset.

By the time we walked back to our hotel we were pretty much done for the day.

Our room at Jardim de Aloes was filled with really cool antiques. My end table was an old safe. It was almost like staying in a museum!

Bruno had recommended Karibu's for dinner, and gave directions - left, right, right, follow the road with the archways, take the fork to the right, pass through two pillars, and you're there.

It was a great little Portuguese restaurant, in a centuries old building with original floors and 20' ceilings. The food was excellent - we split two appetizers and two mains which was too much food but we wanted to try everything.

Walked back home (the alleys are really beautiful at night), and fell asleep.

Cabaceira Pequena, Mozambique

The hottest part of the day is between breakfast and lunch so we relaxed in our villa, watching dhows pass by on the water, a nice breeze going through the open windows.

After lunch we were restless so decided to try to walk to the point closest to Mozambique Island, where we could see a big baobab tree. On google maps I could see a foot path the whole way so it didn't seem too complicated. We asked the manager if it was dangerous and she said it was okay, but preferred if we went with a guide from the lodge. She also provided aqua shoes as we had to cross the lagoon.

We started out at 3pm, feeling a little silly having a guide carrying water for us for what we figured was a 30 minute round trip. The guide set out at a quick pace, and we were at the 400-year old baobab tree in about 15 minutes. Then the guide continued on, more inland thorough grasses, then back to the shoreline. We passed by piles of rocks and wood which the locals use to dry out the white rocks, which are ground down and used for whitewashing walls.

We eventually arrived at the village of Cabaceira Pequena, pop. 1,600. Our guide (and most of the staff) are from the village. We walked down the main road, seeing village life as it has existed for centuries. Saw women getting water from the well just outside town. There were four mosques, a hospital, and a primary school. On the way back to the resort, we passed by a soccer game which half the village was watching from the sidelines. It was two teams from the village, teenagers, who were really good. We stopped to watch for a couple minutes, during which one team made a substitution and by the time they changed shirts (they only have 11 shirts for each team) we had left to get back before sunset.

It was really cool to see the village, and the two hour walk was much more than we had planned.

We cleaned up and went to the main lodge for dinner. We had the "Mozambique special" which was rice and five different curries. It was okay. They ran out of our favourite, the prawn curry. We had a last beer at Coral Lodge and then headed off to bed.

Cabaceira Pequena, Mozambique

We woke up jetlagged at 4am, Heather wandered out to the deck facing the ocean to watch the sunrise at 4:30am. (We're at the eastern end of the time zone, the sun is up from 4:30am - 5:30pm). It was cloudy so it just got brighter but no colours. It was very surreal to watch in our tired state.

We fell back asleep until 8am or so and then went to the main lodge for breakfast. The food was great again, although the tea was disappointing, maybe cause our last trip was to Sri Lanka. Heather said the coffee was good though.

We didn't do much until lunch, adjusting to the heat and the time. Then more eating. It was a seafood stew, with lobster, calamari, shrimp, fish. Way too much food but very tasty. I added a little homemade piri piri sauce, which was too hot for me.

After lunch we tried snorkeling up the lagoon but the tide wasn't high enough and so we gave up. The snorkeling gear was brand new, the best I've ever used.

I walked down the beach and tried not to step into the crab holes. The holes are ginormous here, about 4" diameter. The crabs come out of their holes with sand, scoot sideways like in the cartoons, dump the sand, and then scoot back in. Very entertaining. There were also the most interesting shells I've ever seen. I'll have to post a pic of our collection.

Dinner was a choice between seafood and something else. We went with seafood, getting our fill while on the coast.

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Today we had a little excursion to a nearby island. We tried more snorkeling near the island, but the visibility was bad, so didn't try for long. Had a pretty picnic lunch on the island. It's supposedly one of the highlights of a stay at Coral Lodge. The staff do a great job, but it's just not our thing. It was interesting enough though, and the shells on the beach were even cooler.

Came back home in the dhow, relaxed, cleaned up, and we're just having a cocktail before dinner. There's no wind today, and so a million mosquitoes. The hotel gave us bug spray which we used liberally. There's other guests that arrived today so we no longer have the place to ourselves, it's okay though, I tipped the maître d' so we have the best table :)

Cabaceira Pequena, Mozambique

We finally reached Coral Lodge in Mozambique, 39 hours after we left Toronto. We were trying to figure out if it's the most distant place (time-wise) of all the places we've visited.  Without doing all the math, it's up there. 

We flew Toronto- Amsterdam- Johannesburg on KLM. The first leg was on an older plane and it was funny to watch everyone trying to use touch gestures on a non-touch screen. There were auto-massage booths at Schipol (€2 for five minutes) that were great. I would have extended my massage but was trapped by the chair and couldn't reach to tap to pay with my iPhone in time. 

We stayed overnight in Johannesburg at Sunrock Guesthouse near the airport. The next morning we were back at OR Tambo Intl to catch our flight to Nampula in northern Mozambique.  The check-in and departure was really quick, and we were on our way!  

The bureaucracy was very structured on arrival. We had to show our Yellow Fever certificate before even entering the airport. The immigration official very closely checked our facial features to make sure it matched our passport pics. 

The Coral Lodge driver was waiting at arrivals for us. We tried to get meticals from the ATM but the machine wanted a 6-digit PIN so it didn't work. Oh well. We had USD and rand so we were okay for cash. 

It's a tight schedule to get to Coral Lodge from Nampula in the same day as the plane arrives with just enough time to drive to Mozambique Island (2.5 hours) and then cross back to the mainland by dhow (30 minutes) before it gets dark. 

The road from Nampula to Mozambique Island is the best paved road in the country. There was a little notebook in the car with the background of each town we drove through. Saw lots for sale along the roadside - grass bundles for thatched roofs, sacks of charcoal, cashew fruit. 

The bridge to Mozambique Island is a single-lane road. Every 500m or so there's a place to pullover and allow opposing traffic to pass. The full Mozambique Island is a UNESCO heritage site and it looked really cool as we drove through. We have a couple days here later on to explore. 

We reached the north end of the island where we transferred to a dhow.  There's no pier or anything, we just rolled up our pants and waded through knee-deep water to board.  The water was calm and the sun was just setting as we navigated the sand bars at low tide. 

We reached Coral Lodge a few minutes after sunset.  We waded into shore while the staff picked up our bags and carried them to our room. We're the only guests right now (there's 10 villas, so it's not busy even when full).  We have the entire beach to ourselves which fades into the distance on both sides.  
We cleaned up and went to the main lodge for dinner. It was a three-course meal, all very excellent. First was calamari, freshly caught that day. Then a half-lobster each, which was so big we didn't even finish it. Dessert was panacotta, wrapped in a thin shell of fresh mango. Mmm good. A very enjoyable start to our vacation!

Toronto, Canada

We're off to southeastern Africa for six weeks to see Mozambique, Victoria Falls, safaris, and trekking in Lesotho. We didn't think we'd be back on safari so soon (we were in Uganda three years ago), but on our last couple trips we've met a few people who have really liked Mozambique, and so the trip was planned around that.

The Mozambique visa was one of the more laborious visas that I've applied for. There's no consulate in Canada, so we had to FedEx our passports with return envelope (I would have said couriered, but the instructions specified FedEx) to the Mozambique embassy in Washington, with proof of flights, hotels, 2 photos, and a money order payable to the embassy. I wasn't sure how to declare the contents on the FedEx site (to send across the border) as there's a dropdown with dozens of options including a birth certificate, but no passport. I think I selected personal items. The embassy processed our request rather quickly, and within three days we had our passports back with a nice looking full-page visa sticker.

In South Africa we're renting a car for almost three weeks. Car rentals are pretty cheap there, about $20 / day. Almost half of that is for the GPS! It's left drive in South Africa, and I've rented a standard, so it will be a little different. I have driven stick in England for a couple days, and didn't run into anything, so we should be okay.

Our friend Marissa and her friend Nancy are joining us for a couple weeks for the safaris in South Africa and Swaziland. You may remember Marissa from some of our previous trips. In Swaziland we're hoping to see rhinos at Mkhaya Game Reserve. The accommodations are a little freaky -- the walls on the cottages are only about waist-high, with the rest open to the outside!

Victoria Falls is the last of the big four waterfalls that have been on my list forever (the others being Niagara, Angel Falls, and Iguazu). There's others that have added to list over time, such as Kaiteur Falls and Gullfoss, but it started with those four because they were marked on the world map I had at the time. Victoria Falls is at low-flow while we're there which means we can swim in Devil's Pool, overlooking the falls. We're staying in both the Zimbabwe and Zambia sides of the falls (or Zim and Zam, as the guide books call it), so we'll get to a total of six countries this trip.

Toronto, Canada

So we're finally home after nine weeks traveling through Myanmar, Bhutan and Sri Lanka! It was our longest trip together so far. Each leg was unique, and having Bhutan in the middle varied the climates too.

Myanmar has amazing sights. Bagan is one of the coolest things to see in the world (#2 on my list), in my opinion, topped only by Machu Picchu. Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon made it in at #16, so it was quite the start to our trip. The food on the other hand was disappointing -- it was very heavy, as Burmese like to cook with lots and lots of oil. We were lucky to be able to stay at Macleod Island off the southern tip of Myanmar in the Andaman Sea. This area was previously off-limits to tourists, but now it's possible to visit. It's off the beaten path right now, but that will change quickly. Tourist infrastructure is coming along here -- we used ATMs in all the tourist places, and mid-range accommodation is more readily available around the country (unlike say Jordan, where there's maybe 3 cities with midrange hotels). Wifi was pretty good in almost all the places we stayed at. Cheap domestic flights make it easy to get around -- we either flew or took boats on the Irrawady to get between cities.

Bhutan was exactly how I had pictured it. Tiger's Nest was really cool to see, although I enjoyed even more the five days on the Druk Path trek, and the dzong in Punakha. Having a full-time guide turned out to be not so bad, and in fact is a great way for Bhutan to teach visitors about the history and culture of their country. Out of the three countries we visited this trip, Bhutan is the one you should visit now before it changes. Bhutan has historically followed a "high value low impact" strategy, but the National Council is debating dropping the tariff for international visitors. So I think the low number of tourists, which was one of the main attractions for us, will soon change. There were 68K international tourists in 2014 (up from 38K in 2011), and in addition 65K regional tourists who are exempt from the tariff. fyi if you are thinking of going to Bhutan, you should read the Bhutan Tourism Monitor's annual report, it's really useful for trip planning. In terms of infrastructure, we were able to use ATMs and there was decent wifi at all the hotels. The food was really good, and very spicy (chilies are a main ingredient in some dishes!), but all the restaurants can tone it down for tourists. We got accustomed (a little) to the spiciness and found other food bland afterwards without the chilies.

Sri Lanka has a little bit of everything -- ruins, beaches, diving, colonial towns, trekking, safari. There's lots of boutique hotels, more so in the south. I was very surprised at the ruins -- Polonnaruwa was amazing, up there with other ruins in the world. ATMs and wifi were everywhere.

From a technology standpoint, fast wifi is now so ubiquitous that I was able to upload all my outtakes as we went (average of about 100 pics a day). Another change on this trip was downloadable Google Maps (I know it was possible previously to download maps from 3rd parties, but it's much easier in Google Maps). So now, when we look at the map while walking about, we don't attract the attention of every local as we used to when pulling out the guide book to look at the map.

We started thinking about our next trip on the flight home. It will likely be food-based -- maybe Argentina (there's lots to Argentina that we haven't yet seen). Anyways, I'm sure we'll change our minds about 10 times before we settle on a place. Until then!

Bangkok, Thailand

We were up at 4am for the 2nd time in a week to catch our transportation, this morning a 7:20am flight from Colombo to Bangkok. It's about an hour drive from downtown Colombo to the airport (twice that during the day with traffic). Heather's foam roller (lost on the train ride here and supposedly found, and to be delivered to the hotel) didn't appear over the four days we spent in Colombo, so it is officially lost.

We had no problems carrying our souvenirs as carry-on on SriLankan Airlines. (Emirates is much stricter so we'll have to figure something out for the flight home to Toronto.) Spent our last rupees on very expensive teas and muffins (equivalent of over $20 USD for two teas and two muffins) while waiting for the gate to open. Our flight was an older plane and the seats weren't that comfortable, but it beat standing up on a train for seven hours.

We were lucky going through immigration at BKK. The line-up is normally about an hour, but it was temporarily overflowed when we arrived so they shunted us to a VIP line-up which only took 15 minutes! We hit a very narrow window with our luck, as the other passengers on our plane were nowhere to be seen when we picked up our luggage from the conveyor.

The taxi to our hotel was also quicker than previous, maybe because it was the middle of the day. We checked in, got our left-luggage (which was now five (!) bags of souvenirs and winter clothes). We had had snacks at the Colombo airport, and then had breakfast on the plane, so we weren't hungry for lunch in Bangkok. Just munched on the apples in the room. Measured the bigger souvenirs using string, so that we could shop for a suitcase that fit.

We were first in the lounge for happy hour at 5:30pm. (Maybe skipping lunch wasn't a great idea?) Grazed on the tapas and had a few drinks. We then threw caution to the wind and had a coffee after 5pm! *gasp* This was an intentional attempt to mess up our sleep to get back on Eastern Standard Time (a 12-hour difference from Bangkok).

We decided to head into the night market to look for a large suitcase, rather than wait until tomorrow. Took the skytrain two stops to the start of the market. There were more stalls than our previous visit prior to Bhutan when it was raining. Wandered through, but didn't see anything else souvenir-wise. Came across a luggage store, and bought the largest suitcase they had, which according to my string measurements would fit everything, for about $30 USD. It will go straight to Goodwill when we get back home, if it survives the trip, and doesn't fold up like a cheap suitcase, haha.

I was still a bit hungry so we went to the italian restaurant in the hotel. The restaurant seating area was closed (it was 10:30pm) but they served us poolside. We split a draft beer and the pizza, and then went to bed, enjoying our last chance to sleep in a bed until we got home.

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Slept in, thanks to the late coffee keeping us up for part of the night. After breakfast we took the boat to the tourist area, to go to the amulet market near the temples. We had walked quickly through the market on our first time through, but not really looked at it. I was looking for some small trinkets as souvenirs. (Back home, we have an old wooden hotel key holder, with 100 key boxes. We figured we'd buy some small items from each country that we visit together. We're up to 19 now. The amulets would make a nice little souvenir).

There were even more tourists in Bangkok as it's the height of busy season. We were glad we had done our touristing in early December when it was just busy. Had lunch at a ramen place near the docks, and then caught the boat home.

Spent the rest of the afternoon packing our souvenirs in the suitcase we bought at the market the previous night. All of our clothing now became wrapping for fragile souvenirs. All the souvenirs fit in the suitcase, including the large butter tea urn from Bhutan. I was pretty sure the suitcase was within the size limits allowed by Emirates, but was concerned about the weight. In economy we were allowed two pieces each, with a weight restriction on both the total weight, and the individual weight. I thought the big suitcase was over the individual weight.

We celebrated the end of our vacation at the hotel's italian restaurant, trying their four-course degustazion menu. It was really good. Had a espresso to finish off, so that we'd be able to stay awake until our flight left at 2am.

Checked out at 10pm (it was easier to book the room for the night, even though we were leaving at 10pm) and caught a taxi to BKK airport. It normally takes an hour but it was only 30 minutes at night! But we used up the extra time while checking in. The large suitcase was over our weight limit, and it cost $50 USD in overage charges, which took almost 30 minutes for Emirates to process.

It was a long ways home, 7 hours to Dubai, 4 hours layover, and then 14 hours to Toronto. It was rush hour in Toronto, so took the UP Express to downtown and then a taxi home. The total cost was about the same as a taxi straight from Pearson to home, but this way we skipped the rush hour traffic. Home at last!

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Heather woke up feeling a bit under the weather so we had a slower start to the day. On Sundays there's an outdoor art market near the National Museum, so we tuktuk'd over and checked it out. The quality was good, much better than I had expected.

Back in Kamburugamuwa, Heather had really liked the painting that was hung in our room. We asked the hotel owners about it, but all they could remember was that they bought it in an art market in Colombo. The artist had signed the painting but it wasn't really readable.

So by luck we recognized some paintings by the same artist at the Sunday art market! There was just a small sampling on display, so we got the contact info for the artist, to see if they have anything similar to the one Heather liked.

Went to some more souvenir places, and then had a late lunch at Mango, an Indian restaurant near our hotel. It was tasty but a bit heavy.

It was drizzling on our walk home, only the 3rd time it's rained on us on the whole trip over nine weeks! Pretty lucky. We had our umbrellas so we stayed dry.

Had dinner at the hotel again. We were getting deep into the menu and it was getting more average. Didnt have too much to drink as we had an early wake up call at 4am to catch our flight to Bangkok. It did feel like the end of our trip -- the rest is just getting back home to Toronto.

Colombo, Sri Lanka

We had a quiet Christmas in Colombo. Everything was closed (and it was a Friday so the Muslim shops were mostly closed too). There was no traffic on the roads at all. This worked out for us, as we wanted to spend a day walking about the Colombo Fort area to see all the old colonial architecture.

There's a lot of old buildings in Colombo Fort crumbling away; gentrification is under way and restoring the glory of the buildings. The Fort area is contained and smallish (we walked up and down every street in about two hours) and it's easy to see most of the area developing into a tourist destination like the old town in Galle. While in the Old Dutch Hospital yesterday (a smaller version of the Distillery District in Toronto), we made reservations at the Ministry of Crab a local institution, for lunch on Dec 26.

Walked though the markets in Pettah, saw the largest banana market I've ever seen. We had a hankering for sushi (some of the highest rated restaurants in tripadvisor were Japanese, and Colombo's on the ocean).

The only restaurants open were those in large tourist hotels, so took a tuktuk to Yu Mi in the Taj hotel. The sushi was okay; fresh but a little bland. The Japanese tea was very good, served in a proper teapot and cups. Anyways the sushi hit the spot.

As we were walking home, another couple waved to us from inside the Taj. It took us a few seconds to place the faces - they were also guests at our hotel.

Relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. Our room had a great covered porch area with seating and overhead fan. Very nice for reading or having a beer. (The beers had been delivered earlier to our minibar cause Christmas is a dry day by law in Sri Lanka).

Around 15 minutes to sunset, took a tuktuk out to Galle Face Green to watch the sunset. The boardwalk along Galle Face Green is very popular with locals at sunset and it was even busier being a holiday. The sunset was nice. It was just the sun and the ocean but no subject like boats or islands so I didn't post any pics.

Had dinner at the hotel again. It has great ambience and the kitchen is highly rated. We figured we'd have lunches at other places, and then dinners here every day. It's more relaxing not to have to take tuktuks after we'd cleaned up, and the kitchen was very good at our hotel.

...

Ministry of Crab day! We started at the National Museum close to our hotel, which was great. It was more interesting because we'd already seen most of the ruins documented in the museum. We spent about 90 minutes going through.

Took a tuktuk to the Ministry of Crab. Most of the tuktuk drivers we took today remarked about it being the 11th anniversary of the tsunami that killed over 40,000 people in Sri Lanka on Boxing Day 2004. Dec 26 is now National Safety Day, but I'm not sure what that entails.

We arrived early at the restaurant, but were able to get seated. It's quite a production here. We ordered a small chili garlic crab each (600g), garlic butter clams to split as a starter, homemade ginger beers, and freshly baked kade bread.

Got our bibs and ginger beer.

The clams were excellent, perfectly cooked (Heather is very particular about her seafood).

Next came the crabs. Served in the shell, with lots of sauce to dip the kade. Mmm good! (Not as good as the king crab we had in the market in Santiago, but very good). At first we thought we may need to order more clams, but there's plenty of meat on the crabs here and we were stuffed by the end. Heather couldn't even finish hers and I had to help :)

For dessert went to nearby Heladiv Tea, which had excellent tea and dessert, and lousy service.

We were both stuffed. Took a tuktuk down Galle Rd to Barefoot, a local fabric store that Heather had been wanting to check out. Souvenir shopped, and then walked towards the hotel checking out the stores (in particular looking for the Cashew Corporation shop - cashews are a big crop here). Didn't find the cashew place, and ended up walking all the way home, just as well after the big lunch.

We were still full at dinner, so just ordered some smaller items and called it tapas. Also had a few drinks (Heather tried their arrak cocktail, I had some Lion Lagers) as the bar was able to serve today.

Colombo, Sri Lanka

So here is my 2nd best train ride story ever. (It will be hard to top the story of getting left off the train in Siberia).

We woke up at 4am to catch our 5am train from Anuradhapura to Colombo. That's not nearly as bad as it sounds as we've been in bed by 9pm most nights.

Our tuktuk driver drove us over to the train station at 4:30am. The station was crowded with locals, lined up to buy tickets. It was likely the busiest travel day of the year, a combination of Christmas and Poya, the full moon celebration. Otherwise we would have had no issues getting 1st class tickets and seats.

The platform was crowded, with people staking out their spots on the platform edge. Heather and I discussed our strategy - Heather would jump in first and grab seats, and I would follow with both our packs. I had had some experience boarding crowded trains traveling hard seat with Gerry through China years ago, for Heather it was fairly new.

The train pulled into the station on time. People jumped into the open doorways well before the train stopped. Next thing I knew, Heather had jumped on too. I had to wait another 10 seconds for the train to stop, shuffling down the platform to get on the same car that Heather boarded.

It was madness on the train, as people pushed through in both directions trying to find seats and/or join their family and friends that had grabbed and saved seats.

Unfortunately after getting on the train, Heather had turned left into the 3rd class car instead of right into the 2nd class. By the time she realized (just a few seconds) and turned around it was too late - all the seats were gone.

So we situated ourselves in the middle of the car, with the hope that it would just be crowded at the doorways. At least we had space on the luggage racks for our big packs, plus two bags of souvenirs, and Heather's foam roller (which fit perfectly in a canvas bag that she got at Winners).

We settled in standing up for the scheduled five hours to Colombo. It was okay for the first couple hours. The sun was yet to rise so it was cooler. We had a couple Snickers bars as our breakfast.

I had offlined the full train route in Google Maps (this option just appeared yesterday on the iPhone app). But I couldn't access any satellites through the metal train top, so while we had a map, it was hard to tell where we were. The train station signs weren't visible through the windows as we were standing.

Every 20 minutes or so we stopped at a station and more people boarded. By 8am, the aisles were full, and people started crowding into the space between the seats. The etiquette we observed was that kids were always allowed to go the windows, standing in the floor space in front of seats, the seated passengers becoming their uncle or auntie. If someone gave up their seat (eg to a parent with a baby) then they got dibs on the floor space. The advantage of the floor space in between the seats is that by etiquette that was limited to one adult.

In the aisle proper, it was as many people that could fit. By 9am, it was so crowded I couldn't move my feet to adjust them. It wasn't always possible to reach a handhold for balance, so we just held onto each other.

More people boarded. The rack space was at a premium, and another passenger adjusted our smaller bags to fit theirs. It was a few seats down so we couldn't reach to make sure ours were still secure. It only looked like foam roller might fall - but it was light so wouldn't hurt anyone.

About 20 minutes later we heard half the car gasp. We looked around, and realized that the foam roller had fallen, bounced off someone's head, and right out the open window.

We knew it was just a foam roller and easily replaceable, but the other passengers didn't. They thought a valuable luggage belonging to the westerners had just been lost. Heather had actually debated leaving the roller behind in the hotel, as we were near the end of the trip and it's a nuisance to cart through airports as carry on. So we weren't concerned at all about the loss, it was sort of funny. The only part Heather wanted was the bag, as she hadn't seen anything similar anywhere.

By 10am (the train was running about an hour late) it was so crowded I didn't need hand holds for balance - I was so squished up against the other passengers that there was nowhere to fall over.

There was an excited conversation on the car near where the foam roller had fallen out the window, and then one of the passengers declared, 'they have found your luggage'. The guy asked us to write our address, and then it would be delivered!

We had thought most people would get off the train at Colombo, making it easier to get all our stuff. But most people stayed on the train. Just before Colombo, a couple other passengers who were disembarking told us to get ready and push for the door.

So we pushed and were pushed through the crowd to the door as the train stopped at Colombo. I'm still not clear on how we got off the train with all our stuff. It was almost like we body surfed to the exit, pointing out our luggage on the racks along the way, which other passengers added to the flowing current and they floated beside us until we popped out the door. It was like magic.

There were as many people on the platform waiting to board as were already on the train, including lots of backpackers. I didn't see how they could all fit.

We got our packs together and got a tuktuk to our hotel (Taru Villas Lake Lodge). We had splurged on an upgraded room as it was the last stop on our trip, which looked even better after the train ride.

Had lunch, cleaned up, and then went into Colombo Fort for a couple hours. Most places were closed today (Dec 24) because of Poya, and everything is closed Dec 25 for Christmas.

By law, alcohol isn't served on either Poya or Christmas (amongst other days). Hotels can get around this by stocking your mini bar to order, as long as you drink in your room. Our room had a nice patio and garden area, so that worked for us :)

Had dinner at the hotel (most restaurants were closed), a long ways away from our train ride experience.

Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka

Had breakfast at 7:15am to get an early start at Sigiriya. Breakfast included hoppers (crepe-like bread) with coconut and jaggery, very yummy.

Our plan was to go to Sigiriya by tuktuk, return to the hotel to pick up our bags, and then go by car to Anuradhapura.

We booked the same tuktuk driver that we had for Pollanaruwa, as he was excellent. Left the hotel at 8am, arriving at Sigirya just before 8:30am.

Sigiriya is a rocky outcrop rising 200m with vertical walls, with the remains of an ancient civilization at the top. It's one of the things that attracted us to Sri Lanka in the first place.

Sigiriya is also the most-visited tourist site in Sri Lanka, and the guide books all suggest climbing early morning. So of course there were 50 million tourists who all left their hotels around 8am to start the climb.

First was the traffic jam getting into the entrance. Next was the 10 minute line up to buy tickets. Then another 10 minute line up to show the ticket to enter.

So finally we were at the start of the climb! Not so fast. It's a narrow paved path, impossible to pass anyone. Tour guides stop their groups in the middle of the path to give their spiel.

It took us over an hour to get to the top, about 10 minutes of actual walking, and the rest waiting. At the top step, the people in front of us stopped to remark, wow, we're at the top and have a short discussion about the climb. Umm, well maybe you're at the top, and the people behind you are waiting for you to move from the top step.

At the top, there's not much to see in terms of ruins. The best viewpoint is an aerial view that you see if you google Sigiriya, which was likely taken from a plane.

So as you can tell we didn't like the excursion. If you're a historian or archeologist it's pretty cool; unfortunately I'm neither. The climb itself is entirely in the shade, it's just at the top where you're in the sun. So you don't need to do the climb at 8am, although it looked just as busy when we left.

Took the tuktuk back to our hotel, had some tea (cause that's what you do in Sri Lanka), switched over to the car, and drove to Anuradhapura.

Our driver had to call the guesthouse a couple times to find it (we've been keeping the hotel phone numbers handy for a few years now, as all the taxi drivers have cell phones). It was in a quiet residential area, the street circling a park area with a pickup cricket game going on in the middle.

We checked in and then took a tuktuk for lunch. First drove by the train station to get reserved seats for our train to Colombo, but it was sold out.

Ate a late lunch at 2pm at Mango Mango, recommended by the guesthouse. It was okay. We relaxed back at the hotel, got served dinner at 6:30pm, way too close after lunch but we hadn't specified a time and I guess that's when the other guests were eating (they had younger kids). At least they had beer, except limited fridge space and so our 2nd beer was warm.

Made plans for a tuktuk driver to take us around the Anuradhapura ruins tomorrow. I had planned two days to see the ruins based on the Lonely Planet but the guesthouse said it would only take four hours. After dinner read up on the city and surrounding area to figure out what to do with the extra day. There were some temples and short climbs that might have interested us at the start of our trip, but we were out-templed so looked at options to get to Colombo a day early.

...

Woke up at 7am for breakfast. Our Colombo hotel had emailed back and they had a room available for us to arrive a day early, so we booked it.

Breakfast was okay at the guesthouse, except for the tea which tasted like it was from teabags circa 1970. It was disappointing after all the great loose-leaf tea we've been having in Sri Lanka.

We asked our tuktuk driver about going by the train station to check for tickets to Colombo on Dec 24th, but he said it would be sold out. Not only did we hit the Christmas rush, it also coincided with Poya (the full moon celebrations). He recommended we catch the 5am train on Dec 24th, with the general admission 2nd class tickets sold the day-of.

So we were off to see the ruins of Anuradhapura, our last bit of touristing on this trip. (We still have Colombo to see, but that's more about souvenirs).

The ruins were cool, not as varied as Pollanaruwa, but worthwhile to see. The Anuradhapura ruins are active religious sites and so we had to take off our shoes at most of them. (Unlike Pollanaruwa which is an archaeological site, and shoes are okay).

The ruins are scattered about a few km. We stopped at about 15-20 sites, including four large dagobas, which take a few minutes each to walk around. That doesn't sound like much effort, but it is when you're barefoot and walking on stones that have been baking in the sun.

We were lucky at one dagoba to see an enormous fabric being carried into the dagoba, to be wrapped around its circumference.

It was a hot day, and we were glad we took at tuktuk rather than renting bicycles for the day. The roads linking the sites are filled with cars, and it's not as obvious where things are, compared to say Pollanaruwa or Bagan, where it was easier to navigate.

After a week of rice and curry for lunch and dinner, we wanted something different, which in Anuradhapura means Pizza Hut (they also have KFC here but we were also out-chickened). The pizzas were close to a pizza from home. We were embarrassed to ask our tuktuk driver to take us to Pizza Hut but oh well.

Arranged with our driver to by picked up at 4:30am the next day to catch our train. Had dinner (rice and curry, not too bad), did a bit of packing, and went to bed.

Habarana, Sri Lanka

We had french toast with treacle for breakfast, a nice break from eggs and toast. Our B&B in Kandy varied the breakfast every day, which was also nice.

We had arranged for a driver to take us from Kandy to Habarana, stopping en route at Dambulla to see the rock caves.

The drive to Dambulla was straight, which was better for Heather's carsickness after the winding roads in Hill Country around Kandy. We stopped for some quick pics at a Hindu temple in Matale, just before Dambulla,which was on the road so we didn't have to make a detour to visit.

The parking lot at the cave temples was large, but not too many cars / buses yet, which boded well. Paid our $15 USD each, and climbed up 166m on a wide staircase where it was easy to pass the slower people.

Just before the cave entrance we removed our shoes (it's a religious site) and left them with the shoe check stand. (The shoe check is primarily for tourists - locals just leave their shoes on the pathside.)

There are five caves, all beside each other on a stretch of rock face. They were all very impressive, filled with large Buddhas over the centuries. Cave II was the largest and most spectacular. This is what I had pictured the caves in Pindaya (in Myanmar) to look like. The Dambulla caves were well worth the visit.

It was only a 30 minute drive from the caves to Habarana. It's not a very big town - more like a junction town that has sprawled out due to its central location to ruins and national parks / safaris.

We stayed at Mutu Village, which our driver had to stop for directions to find. It's down a small road in the forest (as are most places in Habarana). We switched to an upgraded room in the newer wing, which was on the upper floor with a big balcony. Monkeys and squirrels roamed about the trees and roof of the hotel. Mangoes and papaya were in season and were literally falling from the trees. Seriously, it was a concern not to have one fall on your head walking from our room to the dining area.

So as you can imagine it was a great place to relax for the remainder of the day. We only had two errands, quickly completed: go out for lunch, and buy beer. The hotel folks suggested we have the tuktuk driver stop for us to pick up water and beer, which we could store in our mini fridge, and have with dinner.

Dinner was small (the norm in Sri Lanka). The beers were excellent - the freshest we've had in Sri Lanka. Our tuktuk driver had insisted on stopping at different places to buy water and beer - it looks like he knows his stuff :)

...

Breakfast at Mutu Village our first day was a local breakfast, but it did include hoppers (a rice flour and coconut milk crepe-like bread) and omelette, which we ate.

We left the hotel at 8:30am with our tuktuk driver to start our touristing of Pollanaruwa. It was about an hour by tuktuk to the ticket office. Our driver was great at explaining how to avoid the would-be guides and touts, and exactly where to go and what to see.

Tickets were $25 USD each, but well worth it as we found out.

The ruins are spread out over a few km, and follow an easy south-to-north path. The ruins start of in the south with relatively minor ruins, and get progressively more impressive as you head north. I had no idea, even with the research I had done booking the trip, that the ruins in Pollanaruwa were so great. They rank up there with the top ruin collections in the world, not in the top tier with Angkor Wat or Bagan, but definitely in the next tier, with say Jerash. They're really cool.

Anyways, five hours later I was duly impressed. We had lunch at a tourist place overlooking a rice field, and then back to the hotel, exhausted from the day of touring in the heat. Heather was so tired she managed to fall asleep in the back of the tuktuk.

Dinner was good, and we finished our beers and went to bed.

Kandy, Sri Lanka

We had a day full of sitting in a car today, driving out to Nuwara Eliya, through beautiful scenery of tea plantations in Hill Country.

We had the same private driver (that drove us here from the south) pick us up around 8am. It was about a 90 minute drive to Glenloch Tea Factory, the tea plantation that our B&B had recommended. Got the standard tourist tour, which was similar to what we saw in Malaysia, except there was more production going on. There weren't any tea leaf pickers on the estate so had the driver stop along the rest of the way whenever I saw some pickers.

The hill country was beautiful to drive through. I suppose the train ride is equally great.

It rained on-and-off after we visited the tea plantation, but we were in the car so it didn't matter. Stopped briefly in Nuwara Eliya, and at a Bhuddist temple that was closed between puja, otherwise a rather sedentary day.

We had dinner at the B&B. Went up (the house was on a hillside, with the entrance at the top level, and the other floors descending below into the valley) for a drink around 7pm. Patrick was pouring Johnnie Walker Black Label scotch, "cause it was Christmas".

Dinner was excellent, Sri Lankan, with rice and curry and vegetable dishes. Best was the dessert, curds and treacle, but this was the kind of curd you'd get from an organic curd specialty store. And treacle is always good. Mmm.

Kandy, Sri Lanka

We took a private driver from Kamburugamuwa to Kandy, our longest travel day of the Sri Lanka trip. The folks at the Imagine Villa said normally people would break the journey into two, going by train via Ella. The train ride from Ella towards Kandy is supposed to be really scenic.

Anyways I had booked our hotels back in June (as it's busy season now), and the LP had said it was a seven hour train ride from Matara to Kandy, which sounded okay. What the LP didn't mention is that there's two ways to go, the scenic (long) way, or the fast way going back through Colombo. I thought it was seven hours for the scenic route.

We didn't fancy seven hours in 2nd class going back through Colombo, so instead booked the private driver. The fast route by car takes the new (finished in 2013) highway, and about five hours. We booked the driver though the Kandy B&B cause they quoted us a much cheaper rate.

We arrived in Kandy around 12:30pm. Heather said that over our trips, we've now visited Sucre, Salt and Kandy.

We stayed at Hantana Range View, a B&B run by an older couple that reminded me of some of my parents' friends. It had a great view overlooking Kandy.

We had the obligatory tea, which was excellent. Patrick had worked in the tea industry for 45 years, with Patrick and his wife Francis living in estate houses on the tea plantations. A long way to say, they knew their tea. They favoured BOP from a particular estate (I forget which one), served very properly from a white ceramic tea pot, at just the perfect temperature and steepness (degree of steep? steepidity?)

We hadn't had lunch, and also hadn't counted on having the afternoon free (we had been told the drive could take all day). So took a tuktuk into the centre of town, and found a restaurant for lunch, Midland Cafe. Turns out this is place rates highly on tripadvisor, we stumbled across it. Had the rice and curry, which was good, and inexpensive.

There was a sweet shop across the street, so we treated ourselves to some burfi, (an Indian sweet), and a "Lipton tea". Unlike Myanmar, where a Lipton tea meant a black tea, in this place it was sort of a Nespresso for tea, with instant chai-in-a-cup.

Well fed and on a sugar high, we walked around a bit of downtown, scouting out the sites to see the next day. Also stopped into a couple souvenir shops.

The B&B had lent us a cell phone, so that we could call the tuktuk driver to pick us up. Cleaned up back at the hotel, and then went back into town for dinner. Kandy is mostly a dry town, with only tourist hotel restaurants serving alcohol, so we went to the Royal Hotel for dinner. We found out later that the hotel had once been owned by Patrick's grandfather, and only recently purchased and restored. We felt transported back to a colonial era. The food was okay. The staff were very eager, but had no clue. Anyways, we were there for the atmosphere which was great.

...

We had breakfast at the B&B (i suppose otherwise it would just be a B), and then took a tuktuk into town. Visited the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic. They have three periods a day where the relic is open for viewing (and prayers and offerings) called puja. We timed our visit for the 9:30am puja.

There was a large lineup of devotees already there. We joined the throngs, squeezing into queue and shuffling past the relic. You don't actually see the tooth (it's inside multiple caskets), but it's more about the experience of seeing all the devotees.

Next was the World Buddhism Museum. It's part of the temple complex, and so it's the first time I've visited a museum barefoot.

The museum was excellent. It showed the evolution of Buddhism through the world, and had exhibits from many countries. We were surprised by how many we had already seen, although our reasons were for the ruins. The museum was very extensive, we spent almost two hours there.

Had lunch at the Olde Empire Cafe, which was targeted at tourists, which suited us fine as we wanted the use a clean washroom.

We then took a tuktuk to the botanical gardens. It was pricey to enter ($11 each vs 50 cents for locals) (a lot of sites in Sri Lanka are priced much higher for tourist). We've seen a lot of botanical gardens recently - in Myanmar, Singapore, and now here. There was some cool stuff, the best was the cannonball tree. It was a nice refreshing walk around.

Just as we were leaving the gardens, it started to rain. Got a random tuktuk, except we didn't have an address or phone number. I knew the way by sight, but the driver took a different main road. Aargh. Also we had the rain covers on the tuktuk so we had very little visibility. Ended up back in the centre, so decided to walk back from there as we knew the way.

It was now pouring, and our little fold-up umbrellas kept our head and shoulders dry, but that's about it. We were soaked by the time we reached the B&B, but we had to launder our clothes anyways so it didn't matter. The only thing was our shoes were soaked too. I had my big hiking shoes and Heather had her flats, so we had shoes we could wear for dinner.

We tried another place for dinner, Senani, recommended by Frances. It was overlooking the lake and temple, and we got the last railing-front table. The wait staff here was much better. We were still full from lunch, so just split the deviled cashews (which were excellent) and the chicken biryani. We arranged a pickup time with the hotel tuktuk so we had no issues getting back home :)

Kamburugamuwa, Sri Lanka

I had booked with Scuba Diving Weligama to go diving today, but the weather was really stormy when I woke up, so I called to cancel. The dive itself would have been fine, but I didn't like the idea of being in dive boat in the choppy seas. Plus there had been thunder and lightning all night, and forecast to continue through the morning. Heather said the thunder was shaking the ground; I slept right through it.

It was cooler in the morning with the heavy cloud cover, a nice break from the heat. We had breakfast on the porch as usual, and then read our books for a bit.

Around 11am we started to get antsy and decided to get a tuktuk to go into town for a couple hours.

First we went back to Mirissa for lunch. I had chicken roti, Heather tried the kotu, which is roti chopped up with vegetables and other fillings. The rotis were made to order, and really fresh.

Next to the east of our hotel to Matara. It's a transportation hub for the region and there was way more traffic. There's a couple small forts to see, and we just wanted to walk around the town a bit.

The forts were okay, one was really small, the other was under renovations. But we stumbled across the local food market which we really enjoyed.

Walked across the pedestrian bridge to see the temple on a small island, but didn't want to take our shoes off and get our feet dirty, so just looked at it from the outside.

Met up with our tuktuk driver at the temple as planned, and went back to the hotel. Matara was a nice little excursion to while away the day. Jumped in the pool to cool down.

We chatted with the owners while having a sundowner. They offered us a drink on the house so both of us had the daiquiris that Heather liked the other day :)

For dinner we had the fish special. I can't remember the type of fish, except that neither of us had had it before. It was okay. Dessert was a repeat of our first day, and very tasty as usual.