Lanka Challenge - Days 10 & 11

We have unfortunately slipped way behind with our posts on our Sri Lanka adventures.While it seems like a life time ago already, looking over the photos transports me right back to Sri Lanka.

Day 10 was another well deserved and cherished rest day. We were in the beautiful city of Kandy and despite the temptation to laze around our wonderful hotel all day, we mustered up the energy to head into town to explore it at a slightly less frenzied pace than the previous day. Kandy is, quite simply, a lovely city. If it had a beach, I would be there tomorrow with no plans of ever leaving. However, for an in-land city, it had just the right balance of prettiness and city action to make for a great day of walking. After checking out the Temple of the Tooth (with every man and his dog it seemed) we spent a lazy hour wandering slowly around Kandy Lake. It soon became obvious that this was the place for young couples to sneak away from the watchful eyes of parents... there was a lot of hushed talking and hand holding! Our Tuk Tuk drive back to the hotel that afternoon was certainly eventful - our poor driver got hideously lost up in the hills leading back to the hotel. His "short cut" took us up some extremely narrow and rocky lanes (not roads) with sheer cliff drops to one side. Where was my map and compass when I needed it? I think all three of us let out a sigh of relief when we popped out at a gap in the road right by the hotel.

The next morning we left Kandy early getting back in the good 'ol Chilli Express. Once we had located our instruction sheet for the day, which was waiting for us at a nearby university, we were back on the road and weaving our way up the through the hills outside of Kandy
 
One of the photo challenges we were given was to take a photo of 10 tuk tuks lined up with their Sri Lankan drivers and our tuk tuk in the photo. We thought we had accomplished this in the morning until I decided to look over the photo 2 minutes later and realised that the 10th driver was not in the frame of the shot. So....we did it again about 1 km down the road from the previous spot with another wonderful 10 drivers who were more than happy to pose and smile (meanwhile probably thinking 'what the hell is going on here??'). Gotta love Sri Lanka!

Day 11 was all about the tea - one of Sri Lanka's main exports. After a brief stop at the architecturally confusing and death defying Ambuluwawa Temple (I have no idea how this temple remains upright) we were soon driving through tea plantation after tea plantation.
 

A challenge for the day was to stop at three tea plantations and collect samples of different teas (collect =  not buy, not steal, but convince them to give us free samples). The first tea plantation gave us a great tour through the factory, complete with a tea-making 101 lesson and some taste testing afterwards. Despite the desire to linger and sip on endless cups of tasty tea, it was onwards and upwards (literally) through tea country and into the cloud covered mountains. The scenery was stunning and the roads were crazy - so it was really just another fantastic day on this amazing adventure through Sri Lanka.

Our final assignment for the day was to locate a scout camp just outside of a town called Nuwara Eliya. We (finally!) arrived just as the sun was starting to dip and the last challenge was to build a replica Sri Lankan flag only using materials we could pillage from the surrounding bush. I have to admit, this was probably one of my favourite challenges. I am proud to say that what team Chilli Express lacked in artistic ability, we made up with a little creativity, a lot of heart and some magic MacGyver moments.

We made it to the hotel that night in the dark, washed the days grit out of our hair and celebrated our flag challenge win with a nice big glass of wine.

Stay tuned for Day 12 - the final leg of the Lanka Challenge.


//Kate