Yala National Park

We are heading to Yala National Park here. It took us about 3 1/2 hours to get there. Terry woke up with a sour stomach, but he ended up taking some magic potion that our driver stopped to get along the side of the road and he felt better an hour or two later. Little sketchy but all worked out ok. We have learned that it is always an adventure in Sri Lanka…you never know what will happen!

First stop…elephant ride! I know…little crazy because we rode the elephant bareback but how could we NOT ride an elephant. We did have to pay Miles to get up there…he was a bit unsure. There was no way Ayla was getting up there and Terry had some stomach issues so he declined as well. Sue thought about it and Vern was a no.

There is our guy!

Wow…it was a big animal.

Little tough to hold on to with only a rope…crazy!

off for a little walk

We even got to feed the elephant bananas on our walk. 

Little lunch before our Yala Safari…

Grandma and Ayla

Miles loved spending time with Grandpa!

Our bill was 8283 rupees…converting money is always fun!

Our Safari Jeep driver met us at this restaurant and then we traveled about 30 minutes to get into Yala. It had stadium type seats…the kids thought it was soooo cool! It was pretty fun…weather was literally perfect.

Miles pumped for our adventure!

Sri Lankans having an afternoon bathing session. Not sure I would bath in there but they sure loved it. You can also see the kid high in the tree…he jumped right off! Pretty eye opening experience.

You can see that they put a ton of people in these cars. The back of that truck had about 10-15 people in there. They pack 'em in! 

This is our driver…I really am not even going to try and type his name. Super great guy and did a great job driving us around all week. He spoke a little bit of english, but we managed to communicate fine. He even got to go on the safari with us. He rode inside the car with the safari driver. 

Here we go!

Oh wait…here we go!

Wait…another quick shot…clearly we can't get enough! ha! We did see a monkey waiting right here…but that was the only monkey we saw in the park. The rest we saw from our villa.

Yala National Park

We saw a few elephants, but this little guy we saw the closest. So cool to see an elephant in the wild!

The rock in the middle of the picture is called Elephant Rock…hard to see but it really did look like an elephant. So beautiful!

our safari kids

enjoying the ride

beautiful sunset

It is hard to see the animals in these pictures but we did see quite a few…warthog, elephant, alligators, peacocks, lizards big and small, lots of birds and various types of deer. Pretty cool day!