“Well…finally” you are all saying. Yes, it is Wednesday and I am posting my first blog (ever) from Sri Lanka of all places. We have had a jam-packed first few days.
Obviously, I arrived safe and sound (although a little late). No flights are allowed in or out of Colombo airport due to some recent unfortunate incidents so my flight came in about four hours later than scheduled.
I met up with Louise on my first day and we hired a taxi to go to the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage. This was a cool introduction to Sri Lanka. We saw the baby elephants get fed and then they marched them all up the hill, across the street and into the river for a bath. Ian and Elaine, you’ll have to get used to this soon won’t you? We spent the afternoon there, had a bite to eat and headed back to the Brown’s Beach Hotel to meet up with our Aussie cohort…Alice.
We all went out for a nice drink on the beach and then for a light dinner at a nearby restaurant. That is the one thing about the heat…it seems to take away your appetite (unless you’ve been slogging in mud up to your knees all day…but more on that later). After nearly nodding off a few times at dinner, I headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep after 30-odd hours awake.
The following day we met up with the Earthwatch crew at the hotel and packed on the bus for parts unknown (literally). There were two Earthwatch groups meeting at the hotel and the first group nearly accosted us and took us to study monkey’s in the interior instead of mangroves on the coast!!! We just barely made it off the bus before it departed and caught up with Dr. Mark Huxhall, our Project Leader and headed off to Tangalle.
The trip to Tangalle was one of the most exciting drives of my life. Driving in Sri Lanka is like no other driving experience I’ve had – Costa Rica, Carribean, Africa and the UK included. It reminds me of Brownian motion …cars, bicycles, tuk tuks (covered, three wheeled, two stroke carriages), and trucks all randomly moving with some sort of force field around them that keeps them from colliding (for the most part). I think the Bhuddist influence on the culture prevents the type of road rage you’d expect in Toronto from people driving in the same fashion. Apart from the line down the centre of the road, it really does not seem like there are any rules of the road…and even the centre dividing line is more like a guideline than an actual rule. At any rate, we arrived safe and sound in Tangalle, had a quick intro to the team and retired to bed. The team is a real united nations envoy with people from Canada, Australia, England, Belgium and Sri Lanka. Everybody is really nice and very motivated.
Sri Lanka, being 6 degrees north of the equator is extremely hot and humid with daytime temperatures above 30C and the evenings and overnight do not cool down much at all. I think it is particularly humid this time of the year because we are approaching monsoon season…in fact, I think we are having a monsoon right now. The rain is literally coming sideways. Given the heat and humidity it is important to drink plenty of water, especially when we are in the field. No worries there though, I have been drinking Fern bottled water for the most part and you’ll be happy to know that “it has been purified and bottled by most scientific methods protecting its natural biological values”. I’m not exactly sure which scientific methods, but it tastes pretty good.
Despite the heat, we have been eating various curry dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I had never really heard of curry for breakfast before (except perhaps after a night out in London!), but it is quite good. The food so far has been one of the many highlights.
So yesterday (Tuesday) we had our mangrove marathon. We went out and learned about the various types of mangroves that are present in Sri Lanka, the benefits that they provide to the ecosystem and the pressures they face. I will spare the details at this point because I am running short on time and want to wrap up. After the mangrove marathon we went for a swim, got cleaned up, had a bit of a class and then went out for dinner.
Today was an exciting day as well. One of the things I recall writing on the application for this amazing opportunity is that I would really look forward to getting my hands dirty. Well…today, I spent the better part of the morning and into the afternoon knee and elbow deep in mud and benthic matter. We set out to prepare the plot areas where we will be planting the mangroves. Our team managed to plot out and properly level 15 of 30 plots. It was very physical work involving the use of large garden hoes to level a plot of mud so that we can plant the mangroves. While the “earth” was extremely soft, it was also mucky and your feet sunk in sometimes up to your knees making it hard to get a good footing or any leverage for pulling and redistributing the mud. I am pretty sure I’ll be feeling muscles tomorrow that I didn’t know I had.
We had a nice break about mid-morning where we ate fresh pineapple, mango, and drank coconut water. It was a very refreshing break.
After a hard day slogging in the mud we went for lunch nearby. It was prepared for us by a local family. It was traditional southern Sri Lankan food and extremely tastly. We had a chick pea curry called Dal, curried tuna, and two types of bread. One was called Roti but was not like West Indian Roti at all. It was prepared with wheat flour and coconut and was pretty hard - not like the floppy west Indian roti we are used to eating. It did a great job of sopping up all the curry sauce. The other bread was made with a local cereal and looked like chocolate cake, but tasted more on the savoury side. It is actually fed to diabetics (like myself) to help control blood sugar. It has a high fibre content so it slows the uptake of sugar into the blood. I thought this was a really cool coincidence. They also prepared woodapple juice which was a bit sweet for my liking.
After lunch we headed to the beach to clean up and cool off after being in the heat and mud all morning. This is probably a good place to digress and talk about the Sri Lanka people for a minute. My first impression is that they are a kind, compassionate, hard working and laid back people. As an illustration I will use our side-tracked laden ordeal to find a beach. We started in the town of Rekawa, near our mangrove site and asked a few of the locals where a good place to swim would be. They gave us 'directions' and off we went. Now , when I say directions, I don't mean, "drive two sets of lights north on Yonge Street, make a left at Richmond, past three sets of lights and right onto Duncan street..." So we got sidetracked a number of times along the way. What was interesting is that every time we got lost, we would stop outside a house and honk the horn, bordering on friendly and incessantly, and the resident would stop whatever they were doing, come out with a big smile on their face. Dialogue between our driver and the resident would ensue in Sinhalese and then we'd be off to the next fork in the road where this was repeated. I think if I started honking my horn outside of some stranger's house in Toronto, the reaction would be somewhat different.
One of the striking observations I made during the trip to the beach was the amount of damage from the Tsunami. There were abandoned buildings with significant structural damage, rubbish and debris littered the side of the road, numerous graves from the many people who were killed and all of the trees had a distinct lean in the direction away from the ocean, obviously from the sheer power of the waves that came in during the Tsunami.
Anyway, I should run, I don't want to be late for our class on benthic matter which will be put on by Mark's PhD student, Paul.
Cheers
Chris
Obviously, I arrived safe and sound (although a little late). No flights are allowed in or out of Colombo airport due to some recent unfortunate incidents so my flight came in about four hours later than scheduled.
I met up with Louise on my first day and we hired a taxi to go to the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage. This was a cool introduction to Sri Lanka. We saw the baby elephants get fed and then they marched them all up the hill, across the street and into the river for a bath. Ian and Elaine, you’ll have to get used to this soon won’t you? We spent the afternoon there, had a bite to eat and headed back to the Brown’s Beach Hotel to meet up with our Aussie cohort…Alice.
We all went out for a nice drink on the beach and then for a light dinner at a nearby restaurant. That is the one thing about the heat…it seems to take away your appetite (unless you’ve been slogging in mud up to your knees all day…but more on that later). After nearly nodding off a few times at dinner, I headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep after 30-odd hours awake.
The following day we met up with the Earthwatch crew at the hotel and packed on the bus for parts unknown (literally). There were two Earthwatch groups meeting at the hotel and the first group nearly accosted us and took us to study monkey’s in the interior instead of mangroves on the coast!!! We just barely made it off the bus before it departed and caught up with Dr. Mark Huxhall, our Project Leader and headed off to Tangalle.
The trip to Tangalle was one of the most exciting drives of my life. Driving in Sri Lanka is like no other driving experience I’ve had – Costa Rica, Carribean, Africa and the UK included. It reminds me of Brownian motion …cars, bicycles, tuk tuks (covered, three wheeled, two stroke carriages), and trucks all randomly moving with some sort of force field around them that keeps them from colliding (for the most part). I think the Bhuddist influence on the culture prevents the type of road rage you’d expect in Toronto from people driving in the same fashion. Apart from the line down the centre of the road, it really does not seem like there are any rules of the road…and even the centre dividing line is more like a guideline than an actual rule. At any rate, we arrived safe and sound in Tangalle, had a quick intro to the team and retired to bed. The team is a real united nations envoy with people from Canada, Australia, England, Belgium and Sri Lanka. Everybody is really nice and very motivated.
Sri Lanka, being 6 degrees north of the equator is extremely hot and humid with daytime temperatures above 30C and the evenings and overnight do not cool down much at all. I think it is particularly humid this time of the year because we are approaching monsoon season…in fact, I think we are having a monsoon right now. The rain is literally coming sideways. Given the heat and humidity it is important to drink plenty of water, especially when we are in the field. No worries there though, I have been drinking Fern bottled water for the most part and you’ll be happy to know that “it has been purified and bottled by most scientific methods protecting its natural biological values”. I’m not exactly sure which scientific methods, but it tastes pretty good.
Despite the heat, we have been eating various curry dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I had never really heard of curry for breakfast before (except perhaps after a night out in London!), but it is quite good. The food so far has been one of the many highlights.
So yesterday (Tuesday) we had our mangrove marathon. We went out and learned about the various types of mangroves that are present in Sri Lanka, the benefits that they provide to the ecosystem and the pressures they face. I will spare the details at this point because I am running short on time and want to wrap up. After the mangrove marathon we went for a swim, got cleaned up, had a bit of a class and then went out for dinner.
Today was an exciting day as well. One of the things I recall writing on the application for this amazing opportunity is that I would really look forward to getting my hands dirty. Well…today, I spent the better part of the morning and into the afternoon knee and elbow deep in mud and benthic matter. We set out to prepare the plot areas where we will be planting the mangroves. Our team managed to plot out and properly level 15 of 30 plots. It was very physical work involving the use of large garden hoes to level a plot of mud so that we can plant the mangroves. While the “earth” was extremely soft, it was also mucky and your feet sunk in sometimes up to your knees making it hard to get a good footing or any leverage for pulling and redistributing the mud. I am pretty sure I’ll be feeling muscles tomorrow that I didn’t know I had.
We had a nice break about mid-morning where we ate fresh pineapple, mango, and drank coconut water. It was a very refreshing break.
After a hard day slogging in the mud we went for lunch nearby. It was prepared for us by a local family. It was traditional southern Sri Lankan food and extremely tastly. We had a chick pea curry called Dal, curried tuna, and two types of bread. One was called Roti but was not like West Indian Roti at all. It was prepared with wheat flour and coconut and was pretty hard - not like the floppy west Indian roti we are used to eating. It did a great job of sopping up all the curry sauce. The other bread was made with a local cereal and looked like chocolate cake, but tasted more on the savoury side. It is actually fed to diabetics (like myself) to help control blood sugar. It has a high fibre content so it slows the uptake of sugar into the blood. I thought this was a really cool coincidence. They also prepared woodapple juice which was a bit sweet for my liking.
After lunch we headed to the beach to clean up and cool off after being in the heat and mud all morning. This is probably a good place to digress and talk about the Sri Lanka people for a minute. My first impression is that they are a kind, compassionate, hard working and laid back people. As an illustration I will use our side-tracked laden ordeal to find a beach. We started in the town of Rekawa, near our mangrove site and asked a few of the locals where a good place to swim would be. They gave us 'directions' and off we went. Now , when I say directions, I don't mean, "drive two sets of lights north on Yonge Street, make a left at Richmond, past three sets of lights and right onto Duncan street..." So we got sidetracked a number of times along the way. What was interesting is that every time we got lost, we would stop outside a house and honk the horn, bordering on friendly and incessantly, and the resident would stop whatever they were doing, come out with a big smile on their face. Dialogue between our driver and the resident would ensue in Sinhalese and then we'd be off to the next fork in the road where this was repeated. I think if I started honking my horn outside of some stranger's house in Toronto, the reaction would be somewhat different.
One of the striking observations I made during the trip to the beach was the amount of damage from the Tsunami. There were abandoned buildings with significant structural damage, rubbish and debris littered the side of the road, numerous graves from the many people who were killed and all of the trees had a distinct lean in the direction away from the ocean, obviously from the sheer power of the waves that came in during the Tsunami.
Anyway, I should run, I don't want to be late for our class on benthic matter which will be put on by Mark's PhD student, Paul.
Cheers
Chris
