Day 5. 12 February 2026 Sri Lanka. Galle to Ella

We had an early breakfast, 8am lol, check out and we’re on the road by 8:35am on our way to Ella.
I haven’t mentioned this before but our transport for our trip is 10 seater Toyota van, plenty of room to spread out.
On the freeway we saw a sign saying “Beware of Peacocks”, they are the road hazard equivalent of kangaroos at home. Colourful pieces of roadkill. Later there were elephant warning signs!
The country side for the first part of the drive was mainly forest with a lot of palm trees broken up with rice fields on the lower flat grounds. The rice is dried on low mounds next to the fields, we saw people winnowing the chaff from the grain. The farmers isra biological control to protect their crops from mice. The place poles around their fields, during the night owls use them to hunt mice from, helping to minimise crop losses.
We saw fauna bridges over the highway as we passed through a National Park, an attempt to protect the wildlife.
Further inland banana plantations became more common. Sri Lanka has around 60 varieties of banana, ranging in size from finger length to the length of your forearm.
Dogs run free everywhere we have been so far. Most seem healthy and well fed. We have had dogs bark at us from behind fences, totally understandable. We have only seen one dog get aggressive, and that was on our bike ride yesterday, it didn’t like our bike tour leader one little bit, but was fine with Deb and myself. Most dogs we have seen are lazing around and sleeping in small packs. We have encountered many on this drive, apparently they think traffic gives way to them, and there about 95% right.
Along the highway where wild elephants are known to be electric fencing has been installed to stop the elephants getting onto the road.
We passed by Yala NP, the best park to see leopards in Sri Lanka, the islands apex natural predator. But it’s the most popular park, with lots of tourists and you see more jeeps than wildlife. We decided a long time ago we didn’t want to go there.
We saw a lot of Buffalo being herded along the roads, from small herds of about 6 to one over 30, feeding on the verge.
We passed through an area well know for its cannabis production, even though it is illegal in Sri Lanka. It is said that cannabis was introduced to Europe from Sri Lanka.
We stopped at a roadside stall and got some red bananas. While we were there we saw some monkeys in the trees above the stall.
From there we started climbing steeply into the highlands. The road got fairly, no very windy all the eay ip to Ella at 1100m above sea level.
Along the way we stopped at the Ravana Waterfall for a few photos then on to Ella for lunch at the Chilli Cafe, 12:45pm.
We went to our hotel/resort for the next 2 nights, 98 Acres, at about 2pm. Our room wasn’t going to be ready until 2:30. Part of the welcome, and before you complete the chevk8n process, they performed a ritual blessing for us, which ended with us being given a “pottu”. When applied as part of a blessing it is believed to protect the person and invoke divine grace.
Our room was ready promptly at 2:30 and we were given a 5 minute buggy ride to our “room”. The room is very comfortable with a view to Little Adam’s Peak and Ella Gap. Our tour company gave us an upgrade here due to scheduling issues, so we have our own pool and all the things! Very nice. We even have a wifi connected toilet with all the settings and no instruction manual! The”Turbo” setting has raised a lot of laughs!
After we settled in a bit we decided to have a night in, with the bites in our fridge and fruit we had ample supplies to nourish us.
Around 5 we slipped into our pool and relaxed for almost an hour. It started raining lightly around 5:30 and got to a light shower by 5:40 when got out. The swim was so relaxing and refreshing.
After our swim I got Deb’s good camera out and she had a bit of a play with it, it brought a nice sparkle to her. More practice is required 
#retiredlyf done our way.
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