HIKE UP ELLA ROCK ELLA TOWN
Only one adventure today – to the top of Dwana Rock or Ravana Rock or Ella Rock – the rock where all the guesthouses of Ella (and there are many and many more coming) want their windows and verandas facing. I climbed Ella Rock earlier in the week, but not with Ezra, Viena or Dwana. Climbing with Ezra and Viena requires a little more logistics to decrease to suffering of everyone. Sometimes, a small logistical effort on the front end of an adventure to jump start everything makes all the difference in the day. The first part of a hike with the children is usually to most grueling regardless of the terrain, so I try as much as possible to make the 1st part easy. So we took a tuk-tuk with MR Nelson the 1km up to the train station and bought 4 tickets (40 cents) for Kithalella on the 6:40 train. The train saved us another 2 km of walking down the train track to the trail-head. That is an easy 3km we di not walk. A huge head-start. I had already re-conned the trail, but we missed the turn for fear of picking up an unwanted guide up the mountain. The left turn is about 500 meters past the Kithalella train depot. We crossed the bridge and headed immediately uphill on the steep trail to the left right after the bridge. After the initial short steep part, the trail gently slopes through some high grasses. The village is on the right. We rested at a point on the ridge where we could see where we slept out on Little Adam’s Peak.That was an amazing night. Ezra was definitely the slowest, but we were making good time. The second part of the trail is pretty steep, but Ezra and Viena led most of the way up. We were up at the tip of Ella Rock in less than 2 hours from the bridge. We had a chocolate peanut butter jelly picnic at the top. A nice shady place. The trail is half in shade and half out of shade. We saw about 10 other hikers on the trail. Half of those hikers had guides with them. The descent was slow going. Viena slipped once and Ezra was at Dwana’s side for most of the walk down. We arrived at the bridge where the local children were being bathed by their mom. Ezra and Viena immediately joined them. We had heard about a Cobra but we did not see any snakes. The most difficult part of the whole hike was walking the 2km back on the railroad tracks in the heat of the day. The coolest part of the hike was hearing from a local family to move off the tracks because the train was coming … and the train did come … toot! toot!
oneworldtwokids 