thank god they've gone

o james



and adam



thank you for coming to my counrty, but now i would like to splee.

OH OH OH

And boy and Jimmy want a packed lunch on their arrival at Exeter! Hall's Scotch eggs would be nice but Sandwiches would be cool too.... NOT RICE AND CURRY PLEASE :)

tHE Big rocK

We walked up a big rock with an old city on top. It was called Sigirya, it looked like we wouldn't make it for sunrise!



We were horrified to find out this involved climbing MORE steps, but as it turned out it wasn't as far as it looked



This sign gave us the motivation we needed to rush quietly to the top.



The steps were old, wobbly and rusty and Rabid dogs and monkies were everywhere, but we made it to the summit alive, On the way down we took this photo...



Yup they are really jimmy's legs!

Jimmy came up with the idea of a short cut back to our Guest house, A good idea but the path was narrow and we found these tracks...



We were thinking they might be from a trex and we should make a run for it, but some local childeren kindly informed us they were fresh elephant track. Real wild elephants were seconds away, and toursit was on the menu so we headed back the way we came, making it a bit of a long cut. At least we're alive

being alive was nearly ended the next day by the mental bus driver on the way home, the average speed in Sri Lanka is about 20kph!!! (That's a real fact!!!) but the bus driver wanted to break the land speed record and so we averaged warp 2.7! If you don't belive me when I say he was mad check out his decorations at the front...



How could he see???? (if you look closley you'll see the display is complemented with lots of flashing LEDs we have a video!!! :)

This may well be our last post and so I thought we thought we'd finish with a very typical Sri Lankan sight. (zoom in on the driver :) how'd he know?)



Tomorrow we're gonna chill at joes house, Jimmy is gonna fight off his itchy Mozzie bites, Joe needs to get rid of his TB with the £1.50 drugs the doctor gave him and boy needs to clear an ear infection... It's clear we all need a rest :)

Kandyan dancing

We dragged choe along to watch the kandyan dancing. He thinks it's rubbish but it was ok. He fell asleep and missed all the good bits. I'm not sure how as it was very loud



And then it turned into a Snickfest!!! With firewalking... you could feel the heat! I think this guys been studying the Shay's technique

Unawatuna

then we went on some buses (bad) and got to the beach (good). the beach was only 35 miles from the forest (good) but took 6 hours to get to (very very bad). here is our room at the beach (very good)



it was a poya day when we arrived, so there was no booze at all, except for in the bars (illegally). here is a moon.



here is jimmy hiding from the nose down and joe giving their position away.

the next day joe and the boy decided to swim the mile or so out to the rocky island. jimmy is not a cretin so he stayed on the beach. every single local told us it was completely safe, but then when we got back they all told us we were mental. the boy lamed up getting back into the sea by putting his hand on a sea urchin, going "aargh" and falling into the sea before being sandpapered a few times by the coral. luckily this got us a free rescue in a dive boat with some french people in bikinis, while jimmy mocked from the shore.



the dudes at the dive centre then dug the spines out with a rusty nail leaving the boys thumb looking heroically mashed up. then after, every time the dive boat went past we got a wave and a cheer, which impressed the ladies no end. probably.



we never found out what the service in the direction was. answers on a postcard.



u na wa tu na, it wasn't this cloudy all the time but boy took the photo at the last minute...

Sinharaja

on top of a hill in the forest. note forest in background.



long walk to the top. the guide wanted to go home so he ran up at 30mph and we had to keep up. we may have been hot but he was worse, we were much fitter. note forest in background.



leeches EVERYWHERE! if you look closely at this picture you will see lots of red green and blue dots. but if you look a little less closely you will see gallons of blood oozing up the boy's leg. unfortunately the boy is the only first aider, and he can't reach his own foot, so we just left him like that. note more forest in background.



here's one of the little buggers. ok they look cute and friendly but actually they are YUCKY OOZING SLUG THINGS. and almost as persistent as the tuk tuk drivers.



we went and explored some forest. here is joe and jimmy in the forest. note backdrop of forest, if you can see it through the trees.



we went for a stroll up a stream, it was just like dartmoor but with lots of trees and leeches and leopards, and a lot hotter and more humid, and with everything completely different. and with no rescue opportunities. here is jimmy shortly before entering stream nose first.



here are some of the MITEY boulders we had to climb up. (note forest on side of stream in background). the way we did it was, me or jimmy threw the boy up like a feather, then he pulled us up with a stick. the boy thought it would be a better idea to use a nest of fire ants for this purpose, but he realised the error of his ways eventually.



pangolin - the rarerest thing we saw. this was the only one in the whole forest but sadly it looked a bit ill.



you have to watch where you're going a bit, cos even the male spider (the red blob on the right) is as big as a fist, and the female actually leaves craters in the ground where her feet fall (see: Shelob). she also weaves her web across the path at cunning head height in order to eat small children.



the forest scared adam and jimmy (but not jimmy, he was NOT scared, honest) so they hid in their leopard nets and swapped ideas on how to fight the Shelobs.



tis but a flesh wound!

Colombo

in the greatest city in sri lanka we:

gate crashed a wedding:



went to Galle Face Brown and drunk tea and gate crashed another wedding



looked at lots of rubbish and tuk tuks

DISCLAIMER: the following photo is not at all representative of colombo, which is a highly modernised, clean, unpolluted and welcoming international city. really.

ha POO ta lay or ha poo TAR lay

quick post of pics cos they are the best much better than the writing huh i don't think.

we went on a lovely train to haputale



we reckoned we hadn't had enough walking so we walked 15 more k's.

adam and jimmy stood on a slippery hill, before falling 70ft on to the railway tracks



this is all that remained i am sorry to report:



haputale station, viewed from the tracks, the ONLY way to travel



the next day we decided to pull out all the stops and walk 30km. but we chickened out and got a 3 wheeler instead. all the way up to lipton's seat, where Mr Lipton himself placed his bum.

head stand on lipton's seat, to add to the boy's collection:



adam and jimmy picking tea :) illegally.

adam's big protruding peak

we made a pilgramage to the tip of his peak.

not as easy as it sounds, we had to get up at 2am. it's about a hundred miles vertical climb - 4800 steps up, then 4799 down (you can jump the last one).

it is the most sacred mountain ever for just about everyone, and to show how sacred they think it is, they cover it in tat stores and litter, all climb up it at once, then shit all over it. so that was what we did too.

the idea is you start really really early then get up to the top for the sunrise (or sunset, as it's known in some parts) to watch some triangular shadow do something. we didn't actually make it to the actual top in time due to the fact that there was an enormous queue for the summit:



but that did mean that we got a wocked view of the sunset, from the steps. we took about 87000 photos, of which this is the bestest:



when you get to the top you can see for miles, here is the view; spoiled by the disreputable expedition party in front.

o vast audience of fans

i am back in sri lanka

prepare! for more rambling and rubbihs pictures.

EXCEPT!

because i am here with the boy, the updates as to what we are doing will be generally on this blog

Adam and rosie's blog

we have just writ a post, fear not it is just as good as normal ones, and still has pictures, o fans

here is the post; for the next 3 weeks these two blogs will be linked as the closest of siamese cats:

we got here.

and the flight was long, and jimmy did what he does best, again and again*. but we mostly spent three days not spleeing at all. so we got a taxi along this long road with dogs, got to joe's place at about 6am, woke up his flat mates by clumping around and shouting, then spleed for three whole hours!

*Sleeping

we took our first tuktuk ride! adam and jimmy were quivring in fear and calling for their mothers (word to them). sri lankan driving is very very dangerous, but very very slow too. so when you crash you just get a slight bump, then carry on. basically you overtake whenever you can, then just squeeze bewteen the oncoming traffic and hope you live. and beep your horn lots.

so we got up the next day and had arseburningly hot rice and curry. joe ate his in 3 and a half seconds then pretended not to be bothered, while adam and jimmy sweated, quivred in fear and called for their mothers.

then we went to a temple, where we all got full-body searched 6 separate times. one of the guards thought adam's badger balm might be a bomb, or drugs or something, so he put a load of it on his lips. werd to him too.

then it utterly rained, because this is the Dry Season in Sri Lanka:



then we saw a closed door, behing which apparently is a box, which has never been opened and apparently contains 72 other boxes, and apparently the innermost box has a tooth from the actual buddha. if the portuguese didn't actually just throw it in the sea that is.

then we went on a lovely lovely walk through lots of spare mud. see, it rains so much in sri lanka that all the mud gets washed away, so they have to dig up more mud from lakes and export it all around the country so they can put it in big piles on paths so that tourists have to walk slower, thus making it easier for the conmen, thus boosting the local economy.

then we went to the qualitay outside eating place (joe's favourite) and had whole-clove garlic curry, and beef that didn't chew (joe actually dislocated his jaw after the 974th chew) BUT every bite released spicey limey beefy goodness.

then we did MORE spleeing, then saw some elephants the next day.



the boy fed an actual elephant!

then it rained AGAIN OMG FFS this country is borked!



then all the elephants ran by but the boy is a mong with tech so he buggered up the video taking. you can just imagine it instead.

we left to find that our driver was still waiting for us, so we said FIND US COCONUTS, and he did:



we have almost tried all the food mentioned in the rough guide now! the boy's copy now has loads of ticks in it. this makes him happy.

we will post again when something exciting happens. OMG THAT IS TOMORROW!

love

adam
james
joe