Sixth Stop - Sri Lanka
19.05.2009
Sri Lanka main Info:
-Democratic Socialist Republic
- Island country off of 19.3 miles from India
- Apart of South Asia
Sigiriya Rock Fortress
My first visit in Sri Lanka was the Sigiriya Rock Fortress. It is located in the central Matale District of Sri Lanka. This castle/ancient rock fortress has many gardens, reservoirs and other structures. It also has water gardens and little homes built from the rocks at the base of it. In these houses there are ancient paintings which is what makes this a tourist attraction. This is known to have been built around AD 477-495). This was one interesting place to envision what Sri Lanka was like in the past. It was a good place to visit first and understand some of Sri Lanka's culture. After roaming around taking a couple of pictures I decided to go get some food. I wanted something authentic so I went to. The Almahara Sea food restaurant. This is such an amazing place, it was in the shape of a circle basically and in the center was a huge aquarium. It essentially made me sad that I was eating seafood once my food had arrived.
After I had finished my food I decided to go walk and view the Wasgamuwa National Park. I took a taxi there and then walked by foot to enjoy some of the outdoors. This park is filled with wildlife! It was once a natural reserve but then turned into a national park in 1984.
Total park area: The total park area is 39,322 ha. Ha, I am not sure what kind of measuring system that is. I love elephants and this is one of the most populated areas of Sri Lanka for elephants. While walking around I saw many birds flying over my head and I found out that there are over a 100 different species of birds in the area, which really amazed me. Besides that there are, leopard, sloth bear, sambhur, spotted and barking deer, wild board, wild buffalo, Purple face leaf monkey, Torque Macaque, Loris and the Drongo bird. After seeing these amazing creatures in there natural habitat, I decided I wanted to see the underwater habitat of Sri Lanka.
I wanted to go scuba diving! The best place some of locals refeared me to was Negombo because of some of the ship wrecks that occured there. From Negombo beach I went to the dive site called Hanova. This was dive was kinda pricey but totally worth it! I love scuba diving!
There are known to be over 138 species of coral in Sri Lanka's waters.
After this long day I have decided to go stay at the hotel, Ceylon Continental Hotel Colombo. What I liked about this hotel was that it was really close to the beach and it was only 35km from the Colombo Airport.
