April 27th, 2025

This was a new port for us and I was excited due to its proximity to Yala National Park. Yala has the highest percentage of leopards per square mile so chances are higher that you will see one. last year, when we were on the Viking world cruise, we were going to do an overnight in Yala but then the itinerary changed and we did not have the time to go to visit from Colombo.

We had booked the National Park tour through Oceania but normally when you do safaris you go early in the morning and at dusk before it gets too hot. That is when the animals are most active. Since we did not dock until 7am and it is a 2 hour drive to Yala we knew chances of seeing leopards was slim but I was still excited to go.

We had 2 very quiet sea days prior to Sri Lanka. We mostly read, watched TV and I started packing. On the second sea day we were supposed to go through face to face immigration with several Indian officials that had come on board in Phuket. They actually started the interviews at 7am (on a sea day!) and did not finish until late in the afternoon. We had asked the night before if we really needed to go since we were getting off in Sri Lanka and we were told “yes”. Of course when we got down in line they told us we did not need to go. Apparently besides doing face-to-face they also did finger prints. I do remember going through all this when we were in India last year.

The ocean was very calm sailing from Thailand to Sri Lanka. It looked like a lake. We were up in the lounge on the 10th floor in the front of the ship and I finally saw dolphins.

The port of Hambantota is an industrial port and there was nothing near it so if you did not have a tour there really was nothing to do. Centuries ago Hambantota was a major trade route for China, Thailand and Indonesia. People traveled here on Sampans and the port was known as sampan-thota which turned into Hambantota. When we traveled to Yala we passed many rice paddies and salt flats which are 2 big commodities of Sri Lanka along with spices and sapphires.

When we arrived at Yala we were put into open air jeeps that held 6 people.

We saw some elephants and these are Asian elephants which are much smaller than African elephants.

We saw monkeys and deer.

The roads were very rough and bumpy and our guide told us that they had lots of rain this year which had washed out some of the dirt roads. There were lots of watering holes and tons of bird life.

A heron and a black neck stork of which there are only 4 in Yala.

The Asian Green Bee-Eater and the white throated king-fisher were some of the birds we saw.

An Oriental garden lizard and a crocodile in the shade.

We saw lots of water buffaloes that were keeping cool. We also saw lots in the rice paddies from the bus.

There were lots of big rock formations .

At one point one of the jeeps got stuck and all the drivers from several other jeeps helped to get it out. It was quite a production and mud was flying everywhere.

We spent 2 plus hours driving around and no one saw a leopard but we had a good time. After the safari they took us to one of the resorts in Yala where we had a huge buffet lunch that had a little bit of everything. After the lunch we drove back 2 hours to the port. Kathy and I enjoyed the last sail away from our balcony reading and having a cocktail.

We are now in Colombo, Sri Lanka where we are doing another overnight. We have spent the day packing and are going to dinner tonight in town thanks to our friends Kris & James who got us reservations at the Ministry of Crab restaurant. We will then come home, shower and try to rest for a little bit before getting up at 2am to meet our taxi at 3am for the ride to the airport. In talking with our room steward last night we found out she is on the same flight as we are to Istanbul. She will get off the boat at 4pm today and go to a hotel until they take her to the airport. She is returning home to Odessa, Ukraine where her mother & daughter are. We are grateful not to be dealing with her situation. I guess they need her room for her replacement that is coming on board today.

We picked up our passports from reception after lunch but have heard nothing from the boat about what time we are getting off, if we need any help, settling up our shipboard account, etc. It really is like we don’t exist or we are a mistake that they made in letting us on and now just want us to go away. It may be a liability denying tactic but very much anti customer service/ service recovery. If all goes well we will arrive home late Tuesday night after a 22 hour trip from Sri Lanka to Atlanta and then Atlanta to Tallahassee. We are a 2 hour layover in Istanbul.