DAY 160 MOUNT LAVINIA ELEPHANTS NEVER FORGET TO LOOK BOTH WAYS

Elephants learn to look both ways before crossing the road or train tracks at an early age – as do many Sri Lankans. The train ride yesterday from Colombo to Mount Lavinia was interestingly beautiful because the tracks are laid literally 10 meters from the breaking waves of the Indian Ocean. The ramifications of this is that you can see and fell the ocean spray from your open train window as the train travels south down the tracks. Very nice. However, also, now you have tracks and trains on prime beachfront property. Which means the prime beach front real estate is now longer “prime”. So most of the beachfront dwellings are shacks and shanties. The nicer houses and apartments are located about 100-200 meters from the tracks and deafening noise of the train. What follows? Now you have a row of poor disadvantages people living on “prime” beachfront that is visited by “rich” foreign travellers. So, as tourists, we learned quickly to “look both ways” – not for fear of an approaching train, or an approaching elephant, but for fear of the encroaching Sri Lankan male who likes to hover around and strike up meaningless conversation, or just hover. Unfortunately for us we were the only tourists besides 3 Russian guys on the beach. Normally I like a beach without the crowds of tourists, but here at Mount Lavinia beach I was hoping some other foreigners would appear to take some of the hoverers. We could not for this reason enjoy the beach. I did jump in and enjoy the waves for a bit but had to come out because of a hoverer. Oh well. We have been peacefully approached throughout Sri Lankan without any issues, but since we are now near the big city of Colombo – everything fells a little different – another level of distraction. And when your children are distracting enough, you do not need any thing else. So, we headed home, crossed the tracks, looked both ways (not for a train) and enjoyed some Viena inspired oven baked chocolate chunk cookies. Yes, we have an oven. Maybe we will cook a turkey tomorrow. Will we dare to go to the beach for sunset? A dream with Jerry showing us around Columbia and taking pictures of the Brazos River.