Sri Lanka: part three

Ella was a nice little town with, what I imagine to be, breathtaking views. It was fairly cloudy while we were there so we had to imagine them. I lieu of the views I went frog hunting and manged to track down a a whole little orchestra down by the hotel pond. It was only sometime later that I realised that there was a down side to frog hunting.

Lying in bed I put my hand on something slug-like. It turned out to be a leech engorged with blood from my foot. I was able to resist a girlish scream but there was blood everywhere.

From Ella we took a brilliant bus ride down to Tangalla. The bus seemed to plunge headlong down the hill with no regard for life of limb. Oddly you get used to that attitude fairly quickly and I spent the trip looking out and the rapidly changing landscape and reading. From the misty uplands we first dipped out of the cloud and then descended further onto the coastal plain.

As the landscape flattened the nature of the agriculture changes; first from tea to vegetables and fruit trees and then to paddy and salt pans. We started to see a different fauna too. The little egrets of the north were joined by intermediate egrets, terns, ibis, pelican, kite and gulls.