It is now early in the afternoon of Good Friday here, and again the only sign I have seen so far was the offer of a hot cross bun on the tray of pastries at breakfast. . .
Some of my breakfast companions and others with whom I am friendly have all talked at length about our visit to Colombo, and we all agreed on how impressed we were with what we had seen, including the cleanliness of the streets. Everywhere we drove in our different buses we saw people sweeping pavements and removing any rubbish.
Everyone said they would love to come back and explore more of the island and see its botanical gardens and forests, its wildlife and countryside - the monkeys, the baby elephant orphanage (there are over 5000 elephants in Sri Lanka), the rice paddies, the tea plantations, and so on.
I did get to see a couple of cute little monkeys when they were unexpectedly thrust on me by two enterprising locals waiting to ‘nab’ someone as we got off the bus for a quick photo stop at the Town Hall. My very amused travelling companion took a couple of photos of me with the monkeys around my neck, and I took one when the monkeys climbed back on their owners’ necks. Unfortunately my photo did not work out. (I only had a split second to take it.) I may email the photos that did work to some of you. This was all at a cost of $10 USD I might add. The young ‘monkey men’ were very pushy.
After the Town Hall we also saw the outside of a beautiful museum set up for the people by a former British governor, who managed to get local sponsorship, and a unique performing arts centre in the shape of a lotus flower. In the end I lost count of all the lovely buildings we saw.
Our final visit was to a Buddhist temple-museum, where we saw just so many beautiful and very old works of art. And over the road where our bus was parked on a construction site, there was an elephant tethered, which if course I simply had to photograph.
All in all a great day and such a welcome change from having been confined to the ship.
The photos are taking too long to download, so I will try sending them early tomorrow morning in Part 4.
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