Asia and Srilanka- Day 13

We were moving from Ella to Mirissa today however we had some things booked in on the way there. The first stop was just outside Ella. Ravana Falls is a beautiful waterfall that is 25m high. We arivved and wandered down to the falls to see a lot of monkeys and people selling things. The falls were really pretty and the monkeys just added a cool atmosphere. A vendor gave Anthony some local quartz for free and we had a good chat to him. This place is well worth a stop if you are driving past.

We had decided to give Yala safari a go. This is the one that is mostly visited by tourists here in Sri Lanka. I had heard very mixed reviews and escpecially after such an amazing safari in Wilpattu it was going to be very hard to beat. Our driver organised a jeep for us and after lunch we were off towards the park. Even before we entered the park we had our first spotting and saw a beautiful elephant just on the side of the road.

Now onto a review for Yala. We were not very impressed our driver was pretty terrible. He just wanted to race to particular things to try and se a leopard or elephant and never once asked what we wanted out of the safari. We asked him to stop a couple of times, to see the painted stork and the hare and he looked really put out. We spent so much time lined up in 1 million jeeps, because sometimes a leopard comes here. Then we would ask him to go somewhere else so we could slowly look through the park and by that point you would be stuck. In Wilpattu they made sure traffic could go past and no one would hig a view. This was not the case in Yala.

Don’t get me wrong we had some great sightings and the park is beautiful but Wilpattu is definetly a much better all round experience. If the driver had asked us what we wanted I imagine it would have been amazing.

On the drive back as well the heavens opened and we had to hold the side flaps of the jeep down to try not to get wet. It was a very exciting drive back!