Adventures of sunny & amber on planet curry , creatures & chaos! ( Backpacking Sri Lanka)


It all started with the tarantula . 

Amber awoke her 1st night at 2 am to find this furry friend scaling the walls erratically . 
After the sleepless night she told Sunny who causally said " oh yeah there's always something crazy in the rooms, I'm sure it's fine". 

Sunny goes in with the broom and looks behind the picture Amber said it hid behind, low and behold it was a brown /red haired big ass scary tarantula. Sunny screams Amber screams and eventually after moving the beds chairs and screaming some more the hairy beast is set free far outside with the broom.


Amber picks up her pillow and wham.... A patch of the hair from the spider embeds in her arm causing a painful and itchy reaction. Sunny pulls each if the micro fiberglass like hairs from Ambers arm with tweezers .

The girls from the orphanage next door all come running to see what all the excitement is about. 

Hopefully it was not a poisonous spider.... But some people said it was and to see the doctor when she gets home... Hopefully she lasts that long.

Sunny and Amber sit on the porch talking about the fiasco.

Amber suddenly saw that Sunnys face  had the look of shock as her jaw dropped , so she looked off in the same direction. 

" oh my god...."they both said .
A humongous snake was at the end of the porch , 6 feet long, thick, standing up to knee level. 

It looked at the 2 girls and then slowly slithered away... Sunny runs after it to look at it better while Amber decides its much safer  to stay far back on the porch. The excitement from the tarantula was enough. She didn't need to add a snake bite into her first full day here.

(Photo:re-enactment wooden snake) 

It went on its way back to the trees. What a day.

After several more events like this entailing an array of ants, cockroaches and lots of harmless geckos and frogs.... Sunny and Amber take a much needed day off at a beautiful hotel called the Riviera.

On the 1st night as they are going off to bed Amber looks behind the door and said " what is that?" 
Sunny freaks out saying that it is the thousand leg red fire bug that was in her sheets on Zanzibar 3 years ago. It bit her leg and made her tongue go numb and she got sick from the poison reaction. 

" oh my god..." Again...

Sunny grabs a trash can and a Tavel magazine and knocks the scary buddy into the can while Amber holds the front door open. Sunny throws it out into the night.... Hopefully it will not return and hopefully will never rein-act the bed sheet situation !

Other quirks and chaos :

- On the way to catch their train from Ella to Nawara Eliya, the Tuktuk floored it up the crazy mountain hill which was part concrete and part mud slide but with them in the back seat and  150lbs of luggage it was so heavy that the tuk tuk rolled backwards twice . The girls jumped out the side door as there was a risk of the tuk tuk flipping backwards down the mountain from all the weight. The tuktuk buddy floored it again up the mountain and the girls chased in pursuit as he had all their luggage. He eventually made it to the top and everyone was on time for the most beautiful train ride on earth leaving Ella .

- At the end of a beautiful waterfall hike near Ella Rock, the clouds rushed in and dumped a lake of water on them. They took shelter for a few minutes under the overhang of a small school directly beside the train tracks they had been walking on. The trail to the hotel had turned into a mud water fall and they had to hall ass up the gushing muddy water back to the hotel . ... Soaked.


- The bus going to Ella (which no one in Sri Lanka seems to know is even a town) suddenly stopped in the middle of the highway and the driver yelled at us to get off the bus. The driver honked his horn repeatedly and eventually hopped out through his tiny side door and flagged down the bus in front of us so that he would wait for us while we got our bags. Sunnys bag was so heavy that as she tried to lift it she swung around and fell beckwards onto the street while Amber managed to muscle her bag on to her back while holding her small backpack and a large bottle of water. She heard Sunny yell and turned around to see her laying like a beached whale in the road laughing. Amber asked if she was ok and Sunny said she was fine. Amber then managed to also grab a hold of Sunnys extra back pack and haul ass down the road to the other bus. Turned out that bus was going the wrong direction and at the next stop we jumped off that bus... And Sunny grabbed the 1st Tuktuk kid she saw while Amber grabbed the bags from the back of the bus. They got in his 3wheeler and started on the right road to Ella but not before stopping so he could show his sister that he had two white girls in the back. It was the craziest most beautiful drive ever.


- Photo shoot anyone! On any given day at least 4-5 people want a photo shoot with you. Random strangers on the beach, bus, temple, street, church,  shops....but the worst is when boys sneakily follow you around  taping you on video. Then the bad side of Amber and Sunny comes out and those buddies better make a run for it. Makes me feel bad for movie stars, what a nightmare .

- Coconut shell anyone: Good for washing your dishes when there's no wash cloth or soap.... And there are never any cloths and soap!


- Land of no sleep: aka toooo hot, damp, loud, dogs, temple chanting, horn beeping, random reggae music and then someone brings you tea or has a question for you at 6 am.... You get the idea.

- None of the speedometers work in any vehicle but their horns sure do.

- Driving in any vehicle is like playing chicken.

- Construction zones are poorly marked and even when a tractor load of 20 foot steel beams is backing out onto the highway, none of the workers are there to try and stop the traffic. The tractor driver takes his life and any oncoming traffic into his hands.
 

- Poor hurt neglected and battered street doggens everywhere ... All over the roads and beaches :(

- Beautiful Buddhas , temples and wooden elephants.
 

All in all its been an adventure. 

The project time with the kids and friends we made is absolutely  the highlight!
Those nicer stories will be featured in several other blogs to come so stay tuned.


April 2015

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