America's Special Day!

Bettysue says: January 20, 2009. We are first to start this great day for America. We went to the Botanical Gardens and laid out in the sun around the pool. We can watch CNN and started watching it when it was 5AM in Washington DC time – everyone is bundled up from the cold and we are sunbathing. Everyone here, when we say we are Americans, - say Obama!. Taxi and tuk-tuk drivers, hotel waiters, restaurant owners. The whole world is happy today. It is wonderful to the people of colour that America has a president of colour. And then, there is the hope and relief that we have survived 8 horrible years – others have not been so lucky.

We left Colombo and drove up the Kandy road – the scenery changing into what Bali looks like – palm trees and rice fields. Along the way we stop for something – some part of the palm tree that is edible and sold in small plastic bags from the people on the roadsides. Small while balls of fiber – not juicy – and tasting vaguely of coconut – not too bad. We also stop for some roasted cashews.

2 hours along, we pull into the elephant orphanage. It is government run and it is a rescue operation. Babies without mothers, injured or blind elephants are taken in here – fed, some by bottle and taken to the river twice a day. They have lots of elephant company – about 80 are here. But they are not trained to be around people and they are not wild. The public can come close but pretty much kept away from touching them, which is as well because they are huge and not domesticated animals. We watch them eating, cleverly ripping up tender fibers from logs with their strong trunks. Sri Lankan elephants have only 6 % with tusks but if you have them, they are handy at ripping these logs. I have heard criticism of the orphanage as too touristy. I only saw a few foreigners and mostly Sri Lankans and the support that the tourist activity sure goes a long way to feed these huge animals. There is another facility that limits human contact, feeds only what wild elephants eat and hopes to return the elephants to the wild. But the elephants at the orphanage will never go back to the wild. All of the elephants in the river is a beautiful sight.

I had my palm read by a Sri Lankan palmist – I will live to be 91!

We traveled on to Kandy and next morning went to the Temple of the Tooth – Buddha’s tooth was taken from his cremation and delivered to Sri Lanka – and now this is a very important Buddhist site. We went with pilgrims and when they opened the little gate, we could see the chamber where the gold chest that has the tooth in it - can’t see the tooth.













Monkeys come to our balcony – many many monkeys – they are cheeky and will rampage your room if you leave the sliding doors unlocked.

More later….