Asia and Srilanka- Day 8

This was a huge huge day. We were up early and out of the door at 6am to start our all day safari. We were the only ones in the safari jeep as well which was pretty amazing. We made it to the park entrance as it started getting light and our driver ran off to organise our park pass and permits.

It was then full steam ahead to our 12 hour safari tour. We started driving through the park. I have made a list of all the animals with pictures we saw down below so I will just give you a quick write up of the day. Wilpattu National Park is stunning. It is full of forested areas and huge lakes all of which were teeming with life.

We were not far into the park when we came across a whole lot of jeeps parked to the side. We drove up and into line and saw a beautiful sloth bear just walking along. These are pretty rare to see in the park so even our driver was excited. Even better the sloth bear decided to wander along next to the car and then curl up and have a sleep. It was such a magical experience. It was also the main animal Anthony wanted to see so to have it happen so early was remarkable.

We headed down to the wetlands along some very interesting roads, we had to do a lot of water driving. At some puddles the water was above the wheels. Our driver took us to a empty part of the wetlands to have breaksfast. It was very pretty and we saw lots of birds.

During this whole safari Anthony and our guide spent a lot of time both hanging out the windows to look at birding book and compare what they thought each bird was.

We had a toilet and stretch break at one of the rest camps we had to put all our gear in the cab of the truck because of the monkeys. They were hilarious climbing in all the trucks, swinging off the poles and just causing a ruckus! There was also a beautiful viewing point off one of the wetlands here.