Sazz In The City: Hollaaa for Yalaaaa!

Monkeys en route to Yala rocking that
Flock of Seagulls hairdo!

What a fabulous 2 days! We’re now back in the car on our 4-hour transfer drive from Yala National Park to our last stop in Sri Lanka, the UNESCO heritage town of Galle, so time to catch up on a bit of blogging!

We’ve just spent the last 2 days on safari at Yala, which is home to a ton of wildlife – most notably, the leopard! We arrived just after 2pm on Friday after a long, long 6hr drive from Hatton. We were genuinely sad to leave Tea Trails and our baby chef – but, alas, we weren’t plantation owners and this wasn’t the 1920’s, so we had to go. The first half of the drive was very winding and took us through multiple tea plantations, again with stunningly beautiful views. The weather was a bit overcast again, so we’d definitely got lucky with the sunshine on our hike yesterday.

Stunning scenery as we drove from Hatton to Yala

There’s not much really to report on our long journey – 6hrs is a long time to be sat in the back of a car, but at least we had water and snacks (cream crackers!) and Kingsley stopped a couple of times for restroom breaks, as well as some local snacks from roadside stalls. We tried the bright orange King Coconut – the little old lady expertly hacked the top off with a massive knife and popped in a straw, so we rehydrated with very tasty (if a little warm) coconut water. He also bought us a mango each from this little old chap with a similarly fierce looking machete who deftly sliced it up – it was probably the best mango I’ve ever had in my life. It was so sweet and it was so fresh, it had a wonderful fragrance to it. Delicious!

Tea at the Tea Castle, anyone?

Beautiful tea plantations still abound!

Stretching our legs en route

We stopped to look at a waterfall, as we drove through this backpacker’s paradise town called Ella but, other than that, it was a pretty uneventful drive. By the time we finally arrived at Uga Chena Huts, I was completely bursting for the loo, so said a hurried goodbye to Kingsley as he dropped us and the bags off for our 2 day stay!

Our room at Chena huts

So the Chena huts resort is about 15 mins drive from the formal entrance to the park – however, the park is pretty much all around so wildlife was to be seen everywhere! We were greeted by the reception people with a cold towel and a fruit juice and given two American flags to put up on their welcome board (they give one to each guest according to their nationality) and we placed them in a slot next to a Canadian flag, while they applauded. A bit kooky but a nice way to welcome people from all over the world, I guess!

Private plunge pool out on our deck

We were then shown to our room, along this wooden plank walkway that was framed and enclosed by lush green bush. There are only a total of 14 rooms in the whole resort and, like the Tea Trails place, its all-inclusive, so no need to worry about anything during our stay! Our room was gorgeous – probably the best one yet. Like the one in Sigiriya, it also had a private plunge pool – and the weather was sunny and gorgeous, so there was a high chance we might actually get to use it this time!

We just had time to drop off our bags and head back up to the lobby area and the Basses Restaurant for a late lunch, ahead of our first safari at 3.30pm. The food was delicious (perhaps not quite as yummy as Baby Chef’s – but a very close second), washed down with a lovely chilled glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

OK doky - don't need to be told twice not to leave the door open!!

Stylish bathroom

View from the restaurant overlooking the beach - a bit overcast

Walkway to our villa

Then it was time to hop back into the little electric golf buggy and get driven from the lobby back to where all the safari jeeps were waiting, and were we met our guide for our next 4 drives, Bernard. He’s been working as a guide for 5 years, the last 2.5 of which at Chena Huts – and he was terrific. He was incredibly knowledgeable – rattling off bird names and explaining the various animal behaviors we were seeing. There were a TON of peacocks and peahens throughout the park, herds of water buffalo, white spotted deer, whole squads of grey langhur monkies (the babies were soooo cute!), land monitor lizards, Asian elephants, mongoose (including the rare King Mongoose), flocks of brilliant green bee-eater birds, spoonbills, eagles, jackals, leggy storks, bite-y logs (aka crocodiles), lapwings, big flappy butterflies, kingfishers, warthogs, fat black Carpenter bees – as well as a ton of other wildlife I’ve probably already forgotten. But – lets face it – everyone who was in the park was primarily interested in just seeing one animal, above all else – the highly elusive leopard.

Evil crocodile

Talking with Bernard (I can’t actually remember what his real name is, but he looked like a Bernard, so lets go with that), he said there are 60-65 leopards within the park expanse of 15,000 hectares, so one of the highest densities in the world. I dunno – that didn’t sound particularly dense to me, but OK. Bernard wouldn’t be drawn on how often they see leopards – I asked him a couple of times and he never directly answered the question, so I took that to mean “not often”. So we didn’t have particularly high expectations going in – and that was totally fine.

We were in this awesome HUGE jeep truck with insane tires (the same Toyota Hilux that proved indestructible on Top Gear) and were joined by this British/Italian couple who were on their honeymoon and had just arrived. There were only 6 seats in the jeep, so it wasn’t too crowded and you had a good view all round. All in, we headed off to the park for our afternoon drive – we had to stop and get tickets and there were a few jeeps there, but not so nuts as in the elephant preserve. The park closes at 6pm, just before sunset, so we had a good 2.5hrs to find us some leopards!!

Green bee-eater

It was terrific – on the drive out approaching the park, we saw our first buffalo and crocodiles, then deer – then a solitary male elephant. By the time we finished our 4^th drive, we were such old-hands at the whole game game, we didn’t even slow down for monkeys anymore! Been there, seen that – where’s dat leopard at?

Pair of spoonbills - apparently they mate for
life - awwww!

Anyway, after a couple of hours driving around, we’d seen a ton of stuff but – alas – no leopard. We got to the park gates just before six and had resigned ourselves to having struck out. But then – just as we were on the road towards the hotel – we saw one!!! Well, to be precise, we first saw the cluster of jeeps but then we saw it!! It was just walking along the side of the road without a care in the world and, while aware of all the jeeps, was completely unfazed by them. (Now, had some idiot actually gotten out of the truck, it would be a completely different story). Apparently Bernard had been listening out for deer distress calls – a high-pitched 2 sound call – and had used that to get us into the right place. It was amazing. It was a young male, about 2-3yrs old, and he was so beautiful in how he moved, so quiet and languid. We (and the 6 other jeeps) tracked him for about 15-20mins, eventually losing him after he climbed up some rocks then headed back into the jungle undergrowth. According to Bernard, its quite common for leopards to use the roads as boundaries for their territory – guess it makes sense as they are easier to traverse than dense jungle! All the same, it was quite weird to see a leopard strolling by the side of the road! So everyone (including Bernard) was REALLY happy to have seen a leopard – it kinda took the pressure off the next 3 drives as everything after that was a bonus.

spotted deer

So imagine how delighted and surprised we were to see one again on our very next drive, the next morning!! This time it was a female leopard, in a different part of the park – again, just as we were on our way out after 3.5hrs of searching! Again, she was walking along the side of the road, stopping to mark her territory by rubbing herself on a tree trunk. We also got lucky by being in the perfect spot to watch a small herd of elephants (including a baby one!) come down to a watering hole to drink. I think we lucked out with our jeep team – Bernard was fantastic and our driver was a complete Rockstar! I have no idea how he managed to navigate us through some of those roads – the experience reminded me of a previous blog post I’d written entitled “If Washing Machines Had Wheels”. It was extremely bouncy and you had to be on perpetual guard against errant branches slapping against the side of the jeep, looking for inattentive eyeballs to impale.

WHOOO-HOOOOO! Spotting a leopard right at the very end
of our first drive!!!

Warthog hovering up algae in the pond right next to the hotel
entrance

Our last two drives were fun – but this time the leopard eluded us. But we felt very fortunate to have seen one – talking with Kingsley earlier on, he said he’d had some guests a couple of weeks ago who’d also stayed for 2 days/4 drives and hadn’t seen one at all!

Sample menu - the food was excellent again!

So, all in all, it was a great stay at Chena Huts and Yala National Park. The one slightly weird/uncomfortable moment was last night at dinner. We’d been seated in a special little area, which was all decked out in lamps and flowers and was very romantical. In fact, our honeymooning Britalian couple were seated at the one other table a few feet away. We’d enjoyed a yummy dinner (pork chops for me, pizza for ManpanionTM – we needed a break from the constant curry!) and were about to get up and leave after the waiter had cleared our plates. He then announced that he had a special surprise for dessert – and returned with 2 other waiters plus a cake with the inscription “happy weddead life” on it plus a knife wrapped in red ribbon, which he duly presented to me. He then directed me to cut the cake, while wishing us a very happy honeymoon! Yikes!!! Each of the waiters then shook our hands and wished us a happy wedded life before leaving us with our free, completely undeserved celebratory cake. I was slightly mortified (but obviously didn’t say anything, not wishing to cause any embarrassment) and couldn’t help but wonder if they’d got their tables mixed up and we had, in fact, been the mistaken recipients of the cake destined for the real honeymooning couple! So I did feel quite uncomfortable in case of potential Cake Challenge (“Hey! YOU THERE! You got our cake!) but hey – free cake is free cake, so we had their cake and ate it.

Hmmm...fake cake!!!

Pretty lotus flowers in the ponds throughout the hotel

Cool leopard sculpture just outside the hotel
restaurant

The coastline at Yala National Park

Plenty of places to chill out at the hotel

So that was our safari adventure. Now we have another couple of hours drive before we reach the city of Galle and our last 2 nights in Sri Lanka before heading off to our Maldives paradise!!! Hope you are enjoying the trip as much as we are!!

Here are some more pics from our drives - not bad for just an iPhone!! Enjoy!