Five set free

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. – Lao Tzu

And Grandma makes 5.  For two weeks Grandma (Heidi’s mom) joined our pack of nomads.  Chad developed his thirst for travel based on his own sincere curiosity.  Heidi’s was inherited.  Her Mom left the country solo at age 21 on her first plane flight to England (we call it the “motherland” because she left part of her heart there and often goes back to visit it) Raising her kids she always prioritized experiencing new cultures.  Heidi’s Dad loved the journey.  For him, destinations took the backseat to a pure joy of getting there.  He loved all forms of transport and his joy was sincere when he was in motion.  So, when we told Mom with a month of notice the dates that we thought we would be in Sri Lanka and welcomed her to join us, she had a flight within minutes.  With that, the tentative dates became real and we too booked a flight.  She flew halfway around the world by herself with sucky connections to meet up with us and we appreciate it so much.  Her plane landed early and left her wandering around looking for us while we fought traffic to get to the airport and then we told her that we had one night of accommodation reserved but that we would figure out our itinerary.  She is kinda like a cliff diver, leaping off into the unknown, with the faith that it will be a blast.  It has been smoking hot here and with our usual glitches (occasional power outages, her A/C cut off the first night, tricky stairs in a downpour, bugs, train broke into two pieces – at our stop fortunately, etc.) but she dove in and found joy in our adventure.  Spending this time with her has re-energized us all and we’ve created a great treasure trove of memories to share.

Sri Lanka seems like a natural place to travel with a more extended family unit.  Most travelers we see here are young backpackers and the novelty of our three generations seems to get some extra kind hospitality.  And most of the “hotels” are actually guesthouses where the family lives there and it feels more like you are staying with a family than at a hotel.  Also, Sri Lankans typically eat at home so there aren’t very many “local restaurants” here, so the families we’ve stayed with have prepared most of our meals.  We’ve gotten around the country making plans one city at a time.  One of the worlds best rated scenic train rides is here so we prioritized that journey and other than that it has been a lot of Tuk Tuks and some taxi vans.  We can split up into two Tuk Tuks for rides of less than an hour and for longer rides we enjoy the A/C in a mini van.  It has been fun to see our drivers stop at a roadside shrine to make an offering asking for a safe journey.  And the family thread continues as they often refer to Heidi and Olivia as “Mama”.

Here we have explored beaches, temples (Buddhist & Hindu), plantations, ancient sites, critters, and our taste buds.  Sri Lanka is remarkably fertile.  It is famous for growing tea and spices.  Many glorious spices came from here to be sold at the markets we saw in Zanzibar over the centuries, carried along by the Trade Winds.   Seeing how many spices are grown here explains the symphony of flavors in their curries.  Chad and Heidi are especially enjoying the curry.  They make it milder for tourists and serve about 5 different little bowls of yummy along with a big pile of rice.  Every time it is a bit different and it is all so good!  They also use so much coconut in interesting ways.  Usually that flavor is overpowering but here I often learn something delicious was made with coconut afterwards and am amazed how the flavors all balanced so it didn’t scream “Coconut”.  Grandma has enjoyed seeing the spice and tea plantations immensely.  Finding our first cinnamon plant you would have thought she saw Harrison Ford based on her reaction.  But, having been in her spice cupboards for 70 years, I guess they are celebrities too and it is fun to see where they come from.

We have tried our luck at seeing creatures in their glorious wild homes again, with less success. However, when we strike out on our target species, we still see other wonderful animals.  In Sri Lanka, our blue whale search turned up an acrobatic pod of Spinner Dolphins (a first for Grandma to see dolphins).  Our search for the elusive leopard yielded colorful bird life and Asiatic Elephant.  Oh,and one of our priorities here was seeing the monkeys made famous to us in the Disney Nature film Monkey Kingdom.  That was funny to us. In our research of the area where it was filmed NOTHING mentioned monkeys.  Countrywide few times were monkeys mentioned in the guidebooks.  I then thought, “I bet the Lonely Planet for Colorado doesn’t mention we have squirrels, maybe monkeys are like squirrels to them!”  Well, yes. They are.  We booked a Monkey Tour, for an outrageous sum by local standards, to see the monkeys from the movie with one of the researchers from the team that consulted. That group of squirrels, I mean monkeys, is the longest continually studied group of primates in the world.  That fact also enhanced the allure for us to meet these folks. However, when we told our taxi driver that we had an appointment for a monkey tour he didn’t believe us.  He was shocked and said “I hope you aren’t paying for that!  You can just give him a little tip.”  We kept our secret of what we would pay. And then at our hotel we said we had a monkey tour and he asked “Didn’t you see them on the way here along the road?”.  But we had committed to our tour and we went. We saw the troop that played the villains in Monkey Kingdom and fulfilled our dream of watching them play all over the temple ruins.  Seeing them have a pool party was an extra surprise that was awesome. The little ones took running starts to the edge of the pool and jumped in. They wrestled in the water trying to hold each other under as long as possible. The moms watched closely from the waters edge, helping pull the swimmers out or the littles would climb out using a tail dangling nearby.  Chad, Heidi and Shia could sit and watch monkeys all day (Liam likes the sticks he finds better).  The tour was a ripoff, but we assured that we got the experience we desired. And he played the movie for us again, which is still a great movie.

It is hard to sum of everything we did here, and the obvious highlight was having Grandma here.  That trumps the others.  Now for  her highlights:

• Seeing Monkeys for the first time.  We got out of the taxi at our hotel in Mirissa and there they were clambering all over the trees in the yard.
• The train journey – The views on our journeys have been amazing.  Sri Lanka is like a kaleidascope with colors, religions, landscapes continually shifting before our eyes.  One town is dominated by Catholic shrines, the next has Buddhist temples and Dagobas, then you see the Muslim women dominate the streets in another area, and then a Hindu temple rises up looking like it was built out of candy necklaces.  On the train the landscape shifted from tea plantations, to cloud draped mountaintops, through jungle and then an evergreen forest, and down into rice paddies. Folks use the tracks as a sidewalk so as soon as the train passes by the tracks behind us fill with folks going about their business.  Grandma was nervous when she heard “6 hour train ride” but it was so enjoyable in our observation saloon, with the windows letting in the cool mountain breeze, the time just flew by.
• Tea Plantation – We visited Handungoda Tea Estate and seeing the tea plants and processing was fascinating, with 145 year old equipment still getting the job done. Plus, we got our first exposure to black pepper vines and cinnamon trees.  We had a nice cuppa sitting out in the beautiful tropical garden together as a family.  It was wonderful.

Grandma’s Lowlight – Heat & Humidity.  It is hot here, really hot.  Within minutes of showering the clammy feeling on Grandma’s skin would test her patience.  She didn’t much care for the mosquitoes either, although we haven’t seen a lot of them for such a tropical climate.