We had decided to go in to Yala main entrance, block 1, a little later than the opening at 6.00am because the queues would be twice as bad as they had been the previous afternoon, and we prefer not to be in a long convoy of safari vehicles all eating each others dust. So we left Tringa Villas at 7.00am armed with a packed breakfast of cheese and tomato sandwiches and fresh fruit. This time “Speedy Gonzales” picked us up from our hotel. He had also provided the lunch for the day.
It was much better and quieter entering the park after “rush hour” and we didn’t start racing around for some time. The roads in the park are not good at all, many partially washed away by the recent heavy rains, lots of really waterlogged roads with thick mud requiring 4×4 driving….but Speedy navigated them well even though he sometimes had little regard for his fellow passengers and we rocked and rolled, bumped and bruised ourselves as he occasionally tossed us around. Unfortunately he seemed to think that if we had seen a type of bird or mammal the previous day we wouldn’t want to stop and watch it again…he soon learnt the error of his ways…..Once again we had several near misses of seeing leopard or bear, but lovely sightings of many other creatures both big and small, a jackal took us by surprise on the way into the park…the good start got better and better. The scenery was magnificent with a clear view of the infamous “Elephant Rock”.

The park has some fairly strict rules, in the fact that if you are doing a whole day Safari you must stop between 12 noon and 2pm so the drivers can rest in the heat of the day. They also don’t let visitors in the park between these hours…morning Safari’s must be out by 12 and afternoon safari’s can’t enter before 2 pm. So at 12.00 we arrived at a newly built visitors centre on the coast of The Indian Ocean. It was amazing to know that there was no land in front of us until you reach the Antarctic. The visitors centre is built on the remains of an old guest house. This got destroyed in the 2004 Tsunami. Unfortunately the 12 Japanese who were staying there also lost their lives. We had never really heard of it affecting Sri Lanka because the focus was on Indonesia and Thailand. In Sri Lanka over 30,000 people died, almost a million were displaced and around 150,000 people lost their main source of livelihood. The new centre, where we stopped for our rather scrumpy lunch of chicken curry, dhal, potato curry and beans provides some seating and a washroom block.

We dutifully waited our two hours watching a fair few drivers sleeping, and enjoying conversations with Suminda before we set off on our afternoon “rallying in the jungle”!!!! However, it was a fruitful afternoon. Lots of vehicles were hanging around a certain area because a bear had been seen on previous days in the area. We were very fortunate to suddenly spot a baby bear …before we had managed to take many photos our driver was shouting to the other drivers as to his find…we then had trouble jostling for a decent position to see the mama bear who was deeper in the jungle. The shouting and yelling between drivers was unreal, there were over 30 vehicles all trying to see the bears, who actually seemed to take no notice of the furore they were causing amongst the jeep fraternity. We soon tired of this unethical, unnatural situation, but not before taking a good few shots, and moved on….our next commotion was a huge bull elephant, who had taken to attacking vehicles if he could smell fruit, walking down the road. We very quickly put all our bags in the front cab and shut the windows. The driver was obviously scared of this notoriously angry fruit lover and put his foot down speeding past until he was at a distance of safety.

It had been an eventful day and we returned back to the hotel, hot, sweaty, dusty but contented.
Our evening meal was Kottu a sort of chopped bread with vegetables in spices with chopped chicken and egg…however this one arrived with the fried egg laid across the top rather than chopped into it. I had asked the cook not to make it too dry so he served it with some rather tasteless dhal. We had loved this dish in Kandy but this was one of the most unsavoury meals we had, had during our time in Sri Lanka. Dry and tasteless we ended up leaving more than we had eaten. With such a limiting menu of only 3 fixed meals and Kottu we were a little at a loss for choice….not even a Sri Lankan curry on offer…or in fact any curry…We once again ended up going to bed a bit on the hungry side.