8 Months This Once

On our halfway through our whole trip day, June 24, we arrived in a town called Weligama. Welligama is famous for its amazing surfing no matter if you're a beginner or not. Of course me and my sister were complete beginners so it was a great place to start. Most people I saw as I watched the surf, were riding on the broken waves that were about 3/4 of a foot high. I laughed out loud because it looked so simple and funny, but as I found out, that was what I rode for most of the time too. In the background, I could see much bigger waves with much better surfers riding them. There were tons of surf schools all along the beach so we chose one that looked good and had a decent price, and we took our first lesson. It was way easier to get up than I expected, but the hard part was staying up. I fell down right away. After a few tries I figured it out relatively well. I started trying to turn, but failed miserably. My sister did well as well and got up a couple times.   Maya

Sea Turtles in Sri Lanka On April 23rd Mom, Dad and I (Maya) went to see turtles! We left our hotel in Tangalle at 8pm and Lucas said that he was too tired and sick to come so we left him behind. We got to the Turtle Watch headquarters at 8:30pm where they work 24/7 . In the day time they watch the nests and make sure that nobody (person or animal) comes and steals the eggs!   At night time the workers watch for turtles to come and lay their eggs, then mark where the nests are, and even help gently dig up nests that are trying to hatch! It is a really important beach for turtles! We learned that there are 7 different species of sea turtles in the entire world and five of those species go to the beach that we were on to lay their eggs. We stood there for about 30 minutes and tried to understand the Turtle Watch guide talk, which was hard with his strong Sri Lankan accent.   He said that we were very lucky because some babies hatched and we would get to see them!   He also said

Ohhhh the trains of Sri Lanka, some fun times we had on those!  We took 3 trains in total, about 4-5 hours each ride. Which ride was the best varies with who you ask, but my favourite was the train from Kandy to Nuwara Eliya. If you ask anyone else in the family, they will probably tell you that the train from Colombo to Kandy was the best. I'll start with Colombo to Kandy.  Colombo had the largest train station by far, but it was at the end of the line. So no matter what train you took the train was empty to start. Still though, before the train had even stopped, people were piling on to get a seat. We thought we were prepared, we had found out which side had more beautiful views, and we were right where the door was supposed to stop, but if it wasn't for the man working for the train station, we would only have got three seats. You see, trains in Sri Lanka are not like trains in Canada, or the west period.  If you get a seat, you get to sit, if you don't get a seat, y

After a week of R&R on the beach in the Maldives we were ready for adventure again. We flew into Sri Lanka in the late afternoon and hopped on a bus bound for the capital, Colombo.  It would be about an hour long ride. The bus filled up quickly with locals, and once all of the seats were occupied, they packed more people into the aisle - personal space was at a premium which, as we found out, was a common situation on Sri Lankan public transport!   Soon the south Asian music began to play. Thankfully it was at a reasonable volume since we were already working with a bumpy ride, claustrophobic conditions and a slow pace with more people getting on and off at numerous stops along the way. Except for L ucas, who was already feeling ill from the airline food (he ended up "tossing his curry cookies" 1/2 way into the bus ride - poor guy) we found the bus ride interesting - a great people watching setting.   By the time we reached our intended stop in Colombo, night had falle