Arugam Bay: Pets, Surf, And Self-Drive Safaris. Part Three: Self-Drive Safaris.

We can only surf so much in one day, then we need to eat and go find some adventuring to do.

There are safaris all over around Arugam Bay, both into Kumana National Park and Yala National Park, but both can run around one hundred and fifty to three hundred dollars (for two of us) depending on how you do it. They take you into the park, and chances are you may see elephants, leopards, sloth bears, wild boars, crocodiles, deer, wild buffalo, mongooses (we call them weasels, though), and a surplus of really brightly colored birds. We did pay for a safari in Wilpatu National Park in the North in June, and saw all of these except the sloth bear (pretty thrilling to see leopards. We saw three. Eating a deer).

Funny thing is though, they don’t fence the national parks.

Of course, the animals don’t just stop at the boundary, they wander around outside the park as well, and we just figured we could drive around outside the park, and see plenty ourselves. So, for about four US dollars worth of gas, we go touring in our trusty tuk tuk every couple of days. There are so many narrow, rough, dirt and mud roads out into the savanna country that are accessible by tuk tuk, so we searched them all out.

Tam and I have long referred to our travels as “Pooh and Piglet’s grand adventures” (you will have to guess which one is which), and have, therefore always joked about heffelumps and woozles. Well here in Sri Lanka, if you are brave enough to embark on self-drive safaris, you can see both heffelumps and woozles pretty regularly.

This is the Ruddy Mongoose (or, as we call it, a woozle). Yep. The ones that kill and eat cobras. I did not take this picture, unfortunately, because while we see them all the time, they are just too quick to get a good photo. We do have one living in the back yard of our new house, so that’s a good thing, I think?

Right?

Here is Tam (Pooh) out hunting for heffelumps. We found some tracks. Big, deep tracks. Heffelumps have huge feets. Bigger than piglet’s.

We found the heffelumps! It is really a rare thing for us to see this many together. This was a herd about fifteen strong, with two juveniles and a pretty recent baby. Such a treat. We were able to get so close this time.

This is not the best picture (it is a screenshot from a video we took), and I wish it could convey how wild it is to be this close to them all. We were only about forty meters from them here and they were all very relaxed, grazing, letting the baby explore.

I just can’t help myself. I get so excited around them! We see them almost every day, but it never gets old. Every interaction is just as moving as the previous ones. It can be hard sometimes to remind yourself that they are wild animals, and can be mighty grumpy with people and tuk tuks and such. While we were watching this group, two big bulls went after a local guy who was acting a bit aggressively towards them (the locals use shotguns and homemade fireworks to scare them out of the rice paddies, so they were quite reactive to the sounds he made), and they both trumpeted and charged a short distance. It is just amazing how quickly they go from quiet, docile grazing to full attack mode.

As you have already noticed, I am a pretty crappy wildlife photographer (come on, man, it’s an iPhone!), so I don’t have many pictures of the birds here. There are some spec-fucking-tacular birds in Sri Lanka. The bluest of metallic blues, bright yellows, and crazy greens. They are all a little too quick for me to get good photos of, but there are a few that are slow enough (or disinterested enough) to let me get a decent picture.

The painted stork. He is a big ungainly thing, very similar to the pelicans that I love so much, in that they are big, ridiculous, clumsy things, until they are in flight, and then they transform into the most graceful fliers.

I did manage to catch one in flight.

Really beautiful birds.

Tam and I talk quite often about how, if we weren’t so accustomed to seeing peacocks in captivity in the US, we would be stunned the first time we saw one in the wild. They really are gorgeous. They rival any of the birds of paradise that the nature shows are so fond of showing, and the colors are more dazzling than most birds I have seen. The wild peacocks are everywhere here, and are protected very strictly, as they are wound very deeply in Hindu mythology. Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth is associated with peacocks, and It is believed that Murugan, the war god rode on a peacock named Paravani. The feathers are used here in Sri Lanka to ward off evil spirits, and for healing.

I caught this guy doing some booty-shaking dance in a lot next door. The video is amazing (I will post it eventually). It was the first time I have seen a wild peacock do the whole dance.

Pretty spectacular.

And, next…

Crocodiles!

These may be Tam’s most primal fear, but I love them! Just like sharks, they evolved into their perfect form over a hundred million years ago, and have remained unchanged since. They are the perfect predator, the perfect fit for their environment.

And they are just really kind of cool.

They can be hard to spot. Often they look like logs, or sticks in the water, sometimes they are just sitting on rocks and hard to see (crocs on a rock). If you can magnify these pictures, there are crocs here. These are all Mugger crocodiles. They are a little smaller than saltwater crocs (which they do have here), but live in more freshwater lagoons and lakes. Many of these pictured are three to five meters in length.

There’s a bunch of them!

They lie in wait in all these waterways. There are buffalo all over here, and people swimming in all these little rivers and lakes. Several of the pictures up there were taken at places where, the day before, there were people standing in the exact same spots, in waist deep water (right where I am pointing in that picture). One family was even standing on the same sandbar with their small toddler running around five feet from where those two huge crocs were the day before. Unfortunately, crocodile-human interactions are quite common still in Sri Lanka. About fifty people are attacked every year, with as many as twenty being killed (and those are the ones that get reported).

This was a big bugger. I wonder what that bird is thinking?

Safaris are not just all about the animals. They can be about the surroundings, the flora as well as the fauna, and the scenery. Our mini self-driven safaris were no exception.

We had so many stunning visuals.

These are shelter huts for the folks who work the rice paddies. It’s dry season now, but they will be occupied soon. It is starting to rain. I love the hut on the giant boulder. I might even live there. It is a brilliant way to stay away from the crocodiles!

We saw a bunch of these trees. They grow right out of and around these big rocks and granite domes. I love the idea that they have found a solid anchor for themselves. This is a windy place, and they are massive trees.

Tree in the road at the Panama Wewa, and an island in the crocodile lake.

This is called the Giving Tree. We are not sure why, and nobody offered any reason as to why it is called that. It looks like it may have given much of itself over the years. It is in the middle of the middle of nowhere, surrounded by rice paddies.

So often I look at my pictures from Sri Lanka, and I realize that the sky here is as much a character as any of the animals or places. I am not sure why, but it always looks amazing in photos.

And then, when you travel with Tam, you will always find some weird stuff too…

The best scarecrow ever!

And the calm at the end of the day…

I love this little guy, sitting up there on lookout, watching the setting sun. He seems so serene. This picture just relaxes me and puts my soul at ease for some reason. Sri Lanka does the same thing for me.

Every day I am so grateful to be here, to have these experiences, and to feel my very being relaxing. This place is magical, mysterious, and continuously striking.