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Day 14. Galle

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 Today was essentially travelling. We left at 8.30 in two minivans rather than our usual large bus. This was so we could take back roads south. It was just a one lane road, potholed and winding, and when we encountered vans and trucks coming the long way passing was complicated. For the first hour or so the hills were covered by tea plantations which essentially look like rows of hedges. It took us about four hours to reach a town on a main road, in Embilipitiya, where we stopped and had lunch in a hotel by the lake. This also gave time for the big bus to catch up to us. Then we could swap back and continue on our way; it was around 4pm by the time we were approaching Galle. We stopped at a turtle hatchery, essentially just a patch of sand where they bury rescued eggs, and a group of concrete tanks to rehabilitate injured turtles. Then we went on to the old town of Galle. Fortunately, this turned out to be interesting. Though I hadn't listened to any of the information, I gather th...
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Day 15. Galle, Colombo

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 Quite a long day today. That's the tour company trying to pack things in to catch up for the gaps in our itinerary. So we left Galle at 8.30 and drove around the coast, anticlockwise, towards Colombo. First stop was the Tsunami Museum. This turned out to be a cement block house aand a wooden shack containing photos and statements in poor English, and an explanation from the woman whose house it used to be, which was moving and sad in equal measure, and we tried not to stay longer than we had to (true of all our stops). Shortly after that we stopped at a combination cinnamon processing plant (they steam huge quantities of leaves for oil) and moonstone factory (a milky semi-precious stone mined from an on-site shaft). Similar to previous entries, the guide has a smooth patter that tells you this is all a sales pitch. Almost everyone except us bought something. Cinnamon Leaves The astop after that was a boat trip - a small, fibreglass open boat that went a short distance up the Madu ...
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Day 13. Nuwara Eliya, Hatton

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 Well things seemed completely different today. For a start we woke up to blue skies, and then the guide told us that we might be able to get out today or tomorrow – and that he’d report back later. We’d heard that we could get phone signal on the hillside at the hotel’s farm garden, so after breakfast the group of us walked up the hill, following a stream of hotel staff. At the top we got some mobile signal. This was patchy at best – some of my texts went through, others didn’t, and there was still not mobile data. This was frustrating so after a while we gave up and walked around the town. It was very different from yesterday there, too. The ground was mostly dry and the cleanup was in full swing, with trucks carrying away the litter and debris that had accumulated. There was a long queue for petrol at one station, so either they were running out or other places had already run out. But on the walk back there was a food market that had largely resumed normal business. Aroun...
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