Ceylon Travels with VnS

After a long, long, LONG drive on a highway, we finally reached Hambantota, and a little while after exiting the highway, we saw the entering board to the Bird Park! However, little did we know that even after turning from the entrance board, we were still a LONG way from the park itself. We kept driving and driving and driving! It felt never-ending. As we drove, we came across another unexpected surprise! We saw a Solar Power Plant! It was huge and there were thousands and thousands of solar panels in it. After some research, we found out that this is one of the first solar power plants in Sri Lanka and it opened in 2016. The goal of this project was to turn to renewable energy and provide power through the area through Solar Energy.  Finally, we arrived at Bird Park. At the entrance, there were some stalls that sold mango 'Achcharu', which is a spicy and popular street food Sri Lankans love. It's just mango tossed in in chilli, pepper and salt! We could not resist buying ...

 On the way to Hambantota, to our next location, we came across something unexpected and we had to stop the car to get down and take a closer look! This is a fisherman's dock! This dock is the place fisherman anchor their boats after they go out to the sea and catch fish. Usually, the fisherman starts their journey to go fishing the previous night or at the crack of down before the sun comes up. This is when the ocean is at it's most calm so it is much safer and easier for the fishermen to get their job done. They usually finish fish by the morning before 12 noon. That is why we got to see all the boats docked at this moment because all of them had returned from the sea! Click on this link to take a closer look at the Fisherman's Docking Yard.

On our way to the Birds Park in Hambantota from the Martin Wickramasinghe House and Folk Museum, we saw a lot of cinnamon plantations.  Sri Lanka is famous for its cinnamon. It is widely known and believed by many that the southern part of Sri Lanka has the best soil to grow cinnamon. A lot of the cinnamon sticks grown in Sri Lanka are sent all over the world.  Have a look at the many cinnamon plantations we drove past - Cinnamon Plantations

 Welcome to the Martin Wickramasinghe House and Folk Museum!  After driving for about an hour from our breakfast spot in Hikkaduwa, we reached the museum. The museum is located in Koggala. The house and museum are located in the middle of a huge garden. The garden is full of native trees to Sri Lanka. Take a look at this video to see a glimpse of the garden - The garden and surroundings Martin Wickramasinghe is one of Sri Lanka's greatest folk authors. He was born in 1890 and died in 1976. The tour began with us first entering the museum. The museum had lots of traditional attire from various areas in Sri Lanka, along with puppets, old vehicles, masks, and other interesting artifacts from the past.  Artifacts on display at the museum Take a tour of the museum - The Museum Martin Wickramasinghe's house Next we walked over to see his house. It was small and simple, just the like the author. Martin Wickramasinghe was born here and raised and continued to live at the his hous...

 After visiting the sea turtle hatchery, it was time to have our breakfast. We decided to have a picnic by the beach.  We had Isso Wade, a popular and favorite street food in Sri Lanka. If you take a walk down Galle Face Green, you will be able to find plenty of stalls selling isso wade.  Watch this video to find out what we had for breakfast :) We enjoyed the ocean breeze and the clean beach ! Once we had our breakfast and tummies were happy and full, we headed towards the car to go to our next destination, which is The Martin Wickramasinghe Museum!  Watch this video to find out how long the travel time is to the museum :)

The Sea Turtle Hatchery was such a unique experience where Ms. Vijini and Ms. Sandy learned a lot. Walking in, we realized that the place was not too big but the walls were painted colorfully with information about saving turtles. There were a lot of cement tubs and the ground was all sand since we were right next to the beach. We then bought tickets and met the guide and the caretaker of the turtles called Mr. Sunil. He is the one who rescues the turtles and takes care of them. He also rescues turtle eggs and hatches them. Check out the videos of us walking into the Sea turtle Hatchery! Click here:  Walking into turtle hatchery Inside the Hatchery, Mr. Sunil introduced us to all the turtles, told us their names and about their species and why they needed to be rescued. First, let's meet the baby sea turtles and learn about them. The baby turtles with the tails were males while the ones without the tails are females. That is how we tell the gender of the turtles and Mr. Sunil told ...

Say hi to the three travel musketeers - ready for new discoveries!  We entered the highway from the Kotalawela Colombo entrance and made our way to Hikkaduwa. Our destination was the Urawatte Sea turtle Hatchery. On the highway, the views were just incredible. The sun was just rising which created some beautiful colours through the clouds. The morning dew was just settling, making us feel excited and blissful! ( Watch video )  After that breathtaking and unforgettable route on the highway, we finally arrived at Hikkaduwa. Click here to watch us entering Hikkaduwa ! Following Google Maps, we make our way to the Sea Turtle Hatchery, which turned out to be quite a long way. It took us a while to even see the beach but on the way, we got to experience a lot of local cultures such a rice paddy fields which is a big part of Sri Lankan culture and history. We also saw Cinnamin Plantations. Cinnamon in Sri Lanka is known as the true cinnamon of the world! There is no other place in t...

Our first adventure exploring Sri Lanka was on the 5th of March, 2021. We started our day early as we had plans to discover many locations and they were pretty far away.  Our trip began from Kaduwela (in Colombo) at 7 am. Below you will see the route along with the locations we visited on this day.  We explored the southern part of Sri Lanka along the coast. Our first destination was the Urawatte Sea Turtle Hatchery in Hikkaduwa. Thereafter we traveled to the Martin Wickramasinghe House and Folk Museum in Koggala. Last but not least, our final destination was the Birds Park in Hambantota.  The whole trip took us 12 hours and we came back to Kaduwela at 7 pm on the same day. Scrolled down our blog to join our journey exploring the south of Sri Lanka.