Best Bike Ride Ever
Most people stay in Tissa simply to go on Safari, but this place has heaps of charm and stunning beauty. We only had an afternoon to explore before our animal adventure the following morning. We began our self guided tour with a trip to the local ATM. You need cash for most things in Sri Lanka so we headed off to replenish our funds. Riding into town wasn’t too bad, although we did have to negotiate a roundabout and with a moderate amount of traffic (driving on the left hand side of the road) I was a bit nervous, but we made it through. As we rode our bicycles through town almost everyone we passed stopped and stared with a big grin, and waved or said hello. We got the feeling that white people on bicycles wasn’t a common thing in this area.
Shortly after making it through the roundabout we came to a cross walk where a car came to a quick stop to allow pedestrians to cross. This quick stop was promptly followed by a loud crunch as a motorbike rear ended the car. It was a low speed crash and no one was hurt but it left a decent amount of damage. I turned to Andre and told him I felt fairly certain we were partially responsible for the accident. He shook his head in disagreement and I could see he didn’t understand that I simply meant that we were such a spectacle we likely distracted the guy on the motorbike.
After we grabbed our cash we started out for the lake. Biking around the lake and through the rural areas reminded me a lot of Fish Island in Cambodia. The sun shone through the rice fields in the late afternoon with a golden light making the lush greenery even more radiant. We passed water buffaloes and gray langurs, bats, peacocks and dozens of other birds. As we stopped to watch some water buffaloes off in the distance a man came up and started making some very loud guttural noises, apparently to get them to move along, but I saw no sign that they were persuaded by his bellowing.
Andre Makes a Friend
During our stay in Tissa Andre made one very good friend. Tina belonged to the owners of our residence and immediately became Andre’s shadow. She would follow him everywhere he went on the property, chill out beside him as he sat reading, and would lie at the door of our room after we called it a day. Every morning I could see the shadow of her paws pacing outside the door waiting for her buddy. It was very sweet.
We also made some human friends. We met Kate from Newcastle (NSW, Australia), a comically rigid Austrian man who made sure to clarify he was Austrian and not Australian, a young German couple and an Australian and Canadian that had lived on a sail boat for the past two years. Chris was from Sydney so I couldn’t help but ask if he by chance knew my old partner Nick, since he is also into sailing and they are about the same age. I felt silly asking. It reminded me of when people find out you’re Canadian and then ask if you know Jeff from Montreal. But, the world is a small place, and the sailing community isn’t huge, and he was from Sydney not Perth… But no, he didn’t know Nick.
What About The Sarafi?
Right. The reason we came to Tissa was to go on safari. Staying anywhere just outside Yala National Park was beyond our set budget so we chose Tissamaharama as our base, and what an excellent base it was. Muzo and Hosni had arrived later the same day and were staying at a place about ten minutes away. We connected with them that evening to get a bit more info on the day ahead. Our pick up time was 5 am so we set our alarms for 4:30.
Having never been on a safari I googled what I should bring and started packing a bag. In the end I had a day pack with bug spray, sun cream, umbrella, binoculars (yes, I brought a tiny pair on our trip because I love nature, and spying on neighbors), snacks, water, and a sweater for the cool 45 minute morning drive to the park entrance.
We had an early night, but whenever I have to wake up at an unusual hour I tend to have a terrible night’s sleep because I worry that I will sleep in. True to form I woke up almost every hour. At least all I had to do in the morning was roll out of bed, rinse and put on clothes.
195 days in…
Want to read about our safaris? Yes, safaris plural. After experiencing Yala we decided we wanted to check out my initial pick, Udawalawe. Two days later as Tissa as our base we went on our second safari. Check out my next blog for all the details on both.