Colombo, Sri Lanka
We arrived in the port of Colombo at 8 am. We are to meet our tour guide at 9 am. The message I received was to look for the sign of the tour company, Kingfisher Tours. This is a working port but there were tour busses right next to the ship. We spent about 15 minutes looking for our guide. No luck. I called him and he said he is waiting outside the port at gate 1A. Take the shuttle bus. We got on the shuttle bus but the driver waited at least 20 mins before leaving for the port gate. We arrived at gate 2. We had no choice. This is where the bus took us. I called our guide. “I will be there in 5 minutes”. I the mean time I had to deal with the many taxi and tuk tuk drivers. “You need a taxi?”. Somehow “no” has no meaning in Sri Lanka. They will continue to pester. I had to get quite angry with them and they finally left us alone.
Aashik arrived 15 minutes later. It was just him, the driver and the two of us. Perfect combination. Our first stop was a jewelry store. Many of the independent and ship tours follow a similar plan. Take them for a “demonstration” while the real goal is to sell them something. We spent over an hour here. Terri found some things she couldn’t live without. The salesmen is always the easiest sell.
We left and I asked about timing of events for the day. It was a long way to Sagiriya, one of the places to see on our agenda. We were told there was plenty of time. I told Aashik that our number one goal was to be back on the ship before 10:30 pm. “Not a problem”, I was told. One of things to see on this trip were elephants. One can “wash” an elephant. I told our guide that this is the first thing to eliminate if timing was an issue.
After an hour or two of driving we stopped at a spice market. The guide there knew timing was an issue so he showed us all of the spices he sold quite quickly. Many had medicinal purposes. We also got a backrub with red oil. Again, many claims of medicinal uses. The back rubs were great.
Back into the car. The traffic was awful. A two lane highway the entire time. Our driver spent most of the time in the passing lane. We alternated between 50 mph and 30 mph. Lots of horn usage. No one gets angry like they do back home. Just a fact of life here. In and out of traffic. Semi heading down the road in the opposite direction? No problem. I think I can make it. Terri kept her head in her phone the entire ride. Probably a good thing.
Next stop was the Elephant place. We did get out but told the folks there that we had no interest. Maybe our guide has a listening problem or thinks we have more time that we do. We got back into the car.
By the time we got close to Sagiriya, it was way past lunch and close to dinner. Dinner we had to pay for but lunch was included. The tour company cut us a break on the dinner cost since we had no lunch. Who has the time? To get to dinner we had to get into a cart that was pulled by an ox. That took us to a lake where we got into some ancient looking, hand paddled boat. Across the lake we went to an ancient village. Here, a few women showed us the ancient ways to prepare a meal. It was a great meal.
It’s now going on 6 pm. Sigiriya is 8 miles away but with traffic it would be about 40 mins. The port is 80 miles. 3 hrs? Sigiriya had 2500 steps to climb. 2 hours needed to do that. We hated ourselves but we opted for the safe route. Head back to the ship. Paddle across the lake and another ox ride? No sir. We had a tuk tuk waiting for us to take us back to the car. I told our tour guide to “haul ass” back to the ship. It was lost in the translation but he was already doing that. More of the same driving back. Back and forth. This time it was getting dark. Our guide was stopped by the police and given a ticket on the way back. Cost of doing business I guess. I would have felt a little better if my seatbelt worked. It reminded me of one of my colleagues at Dearborn High. Seat belt was ripped and disconnected. Instead of having the seat belt fixed she chose to “sew it” back together. Someone will be cursing as they travel through the windshield.
Halfway back we got on an expressway. Who knew? We only went a max of 65 but traffic was much better here as it is a toll road.
Back to Colombo and more traffic. There are tuk tuks, people pushing carts, people everywhere. There is a large population of Muslim’s and it was time to break fast at it is Ramadan. The city was a madhouse with people.
We arrived back at the ship at close to 9 pm. 1.5 hours to spare but going to Sigiriya would have been a mistake.
It was a both fun and stressful days. More of these to come!…