We left for our morning game drive in the cover of darkness (5:30 am) in order to arrive at the park just when the sun was up at 6.
We spent 3 hours driving around Block 1 of the park. We saw crocodiles, brightly colored birds, more peacocks so many peacocks, monkeys, deer (a.k.a leopard breakfast), a 3rd kind of mongoose, more wild boars, more water buffalo, hare, elephants... but NO leopards or sloth bears. We saw fresh leopard tracks but not the actual leopard.
Pictures from the morning drive
My favorite bird. Similar to a flamingo. I'm not sure if you can see in the picture but there's a crocodile in the water right next to this bird. He's too fast for the crocodile and the crocodile knows it so they basically just ignore each other.
Some monkeys in the foreground with some baby wild boars in the background
Elephant. Taken with my phone so we are really very close. The baby in the background right is about 2 months old.
There aren't many animals out during the day. Too hot. So we returned to the camp around 9:30. Had breakfast. Rested. Went out for an afternoon drive at 3 pm.
We hit the mother lode in the afternoon drive. It started out like the others... monkeys, birds, buffalo. It started to pick up when we saw a jackal. And then we got the call and our driver raced across the park just in time to see this beautiful leopard out for a walk. This is a female.
On our way out of the park, we also saw a sloth bear. Check out the claws.
Then just outside the park in the sanctuary area, we saw another female leopard, a herd of like 35 female and baby elephants and this big boy just wandering back into the park.
The food here is good. Dinner last night is below. The red circular stuff is string hoppers (steamed rice noodles). The plate in the middle is fried chicken. All the bowls on the outside are curry.
We told them no more curry. Please. Tonight's dinner is BBQ chicken.
We have learned quite a bit... the female peacock has a green neck and the male has a blue neck. They also make a call that sounds like a cat meow. Only 5% of Asian elephants have tusks. The monkeys and the deer hang out together because they warn each other about predators.
The park stretches all the way to the coast. That's the Indian Ocean behind us and the next land mass south of here is Antarctica.
Here's what our safari jeep looks like
Tomorrow morning we have a short game drive and then take the seaplane back to Colombo.
One crazy thing... the farmers here just turn their cows free every morning so you see cows just wandering around everywhere grazing. This one was in our camp today.
At night, you see the cows all walking down the road back to their respective farms. Inside the park, there is a herd of like 10 domestic cows that decided to abandon the farming life and now just live together inside the park.
We spent 3 hours driving around Block 1 of the park. We saw crocodiles, brightly colored birds, more peacocks so many peacocks, monkeys, deer (a.k.a leopard breakfast), a 3rd kind of mongoose, more wild boars, more water buffalo, hare, elephants... but NO leopards or sloth bears. We saw fresh leopard tracks but not the actual leopard.
Pictures from the morning drive
My favorite bird. Similar to a flamingo. I'm not sure if you can see in the picture but there's a crocodile in the water right next to this bird. He's too fast for the crocodile and the crocodile knows it so they basically just ignore each other.
Some monkeys in the foreground with some baby wild boars in the background
Elephant. Taken with my phone so we are really very close. The baby in the background right is about 2 months old.
There aren't many animals out during the day. Too hot. So we returned to the camp around 9:30. Had breakfast. Rested. Went out for an afternoon drive at 3 pm.
We hit the mother lode in the afternoon drive. It started out like the others... monkeys, birds, buffalo. It started to pick up when we saw a jackal. And then we got the call and our driver raced across the park just in time to see this beautiful leopard out for a walk. This is a female.
On our way out of the park, we also saw a sloth bear. Check out the claws.
Then just outside the park in the sanctuary area, we saw another female leopard, a herd of like 35 female and baby elephants and this big boy just wandering back into the park.
The food here is good. Dinner last night is below. The red circular stuff is string hoppers (steamed rice noodles). The plate in the middle is fried chicken. All the bowls on the outside are curry.
We told them no more curry. Please. Tonight's dinner is BBQ chicken.
We have learned quite a bit... the female peacock has a green neck and the male has a blue neck. They also make a call that sounds like a cat meow. Only 5% of Asian elephants have tusks. The monkeys and the deer hang out together because they warn each other about predators.
The park stretches all the way to the coast. That's the Indian Ocean behind us and the next land mass south of here is Antarctica.
Here's what our safari jeep looks like
Tomorrow morning we have a short game drive and then take the seaplane back to Colombo.
One crazy thing... the farmers here just turn their cows free every morning so you see cows just wandering around everywhere grazing. This one was in our camp today.
At night, you see the cows all walking down the road back to their respective farms. Inside the park, there is a herd of like 10 domestic cows that decided to abandon the farming life and now just live together inside the park.
why do i suspect there will be a safari jeep parked in your garage soon enough?
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