Let's tea

Writing again from the beach of Negombo, a few steps away from the place where we spent our first week here. We have been traveling the south ourselves and then carried on to a national park in the west with our splended driver. From a very dirty old jeep we saw parrots, elephants, crocodiles, water buffaloes, leopards, brown bears, monkeys and squirrles. The jeep driver were though even more excited than we were, many times he went out of the car screaming and waving of enthusiasm. We got so many pictures, and Jessica were furious because of zoom isnt nearly enough for this sort of adventures, but still I think we got perfectly fine photographs and many of you will see them in her blog and in our place.

Then the tour went to the hill side, and believe me when I tell you this is the most spectacular landscapes there is. Hundreds of mountains, each higher than the highest in Scandinavia, filled with heavy jungle, beautiful lakes and numbers of waterfalls, and a horizon of tea plantages. And other plantages too; carrots, bananas, coffee, potatoes, pineapples, coconus... and pretty all the fruits you can imagine. Very impressing views and we went to a numerous plantages and factories. Highly fascinating, but the thing that captured our hearts and minds were when we had a break to photograph some tea picking women who had a tea picking break. It started out with just a few and suddenly the hill exploded with ladies. Everyone more curious than the last, who where these crazy people who wanted to photograph them? Our driver explained in sinhalese that Jessicas biological mother were also a tea picker, and they all gather around us when we showed them a photobook of Jessicas life and Sri Lankan relatives. Some of them started to cry, and this unexpected emotional situation were only to an end because we had to leave them behind.

And we continued our journey to Nuwara-Eliya, a mountain top town. We met a wonderful australian/indonesian couple, the man were some kind of a amature bookwriter and asked us to be a part of his new book about mixed couples. They were the sweetest couple too and now we hope this book will be a bestseller - they promised us royalties it if would :). Then we went on a really rough ride down from the mountains, the roads were so poor the driver had to zigzag within the road to avoid dangerous holes. Did I say the car had only one functional seatbelt out of nine... Well well.

The city of Kandy, next stop, were a city in extacy because they were cohosting the World Cup of Cricket at the moment and this very night Sri Lanka were up against England, just a few blocks from our expensive hotel. All the prices were up because of this, you see, and we had to check with ten dffrent hotels before we could get a room anywhere in the region. At the hotel there was a bit of a party going on because of the cricket. For you who dont know the game of cricket, the world cup matches starts at two in the afternoon and goes on into the late night. Originally, cricket games are held for two or three or even four days, but they have shorter games in the world cup for practical reasons. We thought about going to a game, originally the tickets were 18 kronor each but since its been sold out the secondhand tickets were now ten times that. Still not a lot, but we thought it would be a little disrespectful to go see this event just because we could - when lankans all over the country cried their eyes out because they couldnt afford it. But Sri Lanka won, we understood from the happy screams and the all night long singing at the hotel.

Now back in the place where it all began, the beach of Negombo. We thought since its our last hotel night we would have a nice one for a change, a one with swimming pool and AC. Its really nice and all the people there are scandinavians because it seems to have agreements with one of the leading swedish travel agencies. The food is like a swedish restaurants with cheeseburgers and wienerschnitzlers, and french fries. Very far from where we have stayed previous nights with seriously spiced curry and weird cardgames with natives. Tomorrow is the last day here and then we have a 24 hour traveling back to Stockholm and then another five hours to Kalmar. Work again the following day, but it will be pleassant. We both miss our dog and our friends and families a lot and there is much to be done concerning the upcoming celebration of Jessicas 20th birthday... By the way, dont get her Sri Lankan dresses for birthdaypresents, she has already bought like twenty... which each will last until the first wash :) Dont tell her I said that... :)