Sri Lanka 2026

This morning there were a lot of Easter decorations at breakfast as it's Easter Sunday  Afterwards we said goodbye to another 3 members of our group as they carried on with their adventures. The bus seemed very quiet! Check in went smoothly and after a spot of retail therapy and we said our goodbyes to the remaining group as they headed home. It's been a pleasure to spend our holiday with such a lovely group. Just the two of us now! Good bye Columbo Our flight to Male on the Maldives took about 1 hour. We were met by hotel rep once we had cleared customs, checked in for our sea plane flight and shown to the lounge where, whilst we waited for around 40 minutes, we could help ourselves to food/drink and go out on the balcony to watch the other seaplanes. A real treat. Our plane left on time with 10 passengers. The trolley service came in a box and consisted of earplugs, which we absolutely needed, and a wipe! ...

This morning we were up early as usual and wandered along the beach taking photos of the surfers, not on my phone though! There are  couple of interesting trees in the grounds of the hotel. A fish poison tree, the flower is used by fishermen to tranquilise the fish and make them easier to catch. and a screw pine tree After breakfast we said our goodbyes and were waved off by the two leaving us to go on their next adventure We stopped a mile or so along the road to see the stilt fishermen, it was really just for the tourists and a good money spinner for the fishermen who didn't take kindly to those, not in our group, trying to take a photo without paying! We then drove a short while to visit a small folk musem inspired by a local writer. The museum is a typical house from the Koggala region and is set amongst beautiful gardens Including this very interestingly named tree! A cashew nut growing on the cashew tree ...

This morning we decided to have a more relaxing time and had a leisurely stroll along the small private beach before breakfast.  After a good breakfast we went for a walk along the main road outside the hotel but it was searingly hot and with humidity in the 90's so after 10 minutes we were done! There was a lot of traffic fumes, rubbish in the ditches and plenty of mossies hatching out, so not the best of areas to walk anyway. We spent the rest of the morning under shade by the pool, having the occasional cooling dip and reading our books. Some of the group went whale watching and we lucky enough to see pilot whales and dolphins.  Mid afternoon we went in a tuk tuk convoy  to cinnamon island where we learnt about cinnamon production,  And saw a water monitor lizzard  On the boat trip around the mangrove swamps we saw a lesser spotted photographer, a purple faced monkeys (they are very shy) ...