12th December - Day 11

Elephant day!!!!

Up early! Exciting day ahead!

We set off in a bus towards the Pinnewale Elephant Orphanage, with Sunni our driver. We arrived around 9am and ran to the ticket office to try and get elephant feeding tickets. We managed to get the last 5 milk bottle tickets and a fruit ticket. Sunni then dragged us across the site to an under-cover area where two elephants were being walked in. We handed over our milk tickets and were allowed to help the keeper feed a bottle of milk to the elephant - it was gone within seconds!

We then headed over to another area where there was a tall stand build into a tree, Cat was handed large amounts of fruit to hand feed to a rather large elephant. We were then allowed to stroke the elephant.

Our next stop was to see a blind elephant, and then to look at the herd on a field. Here there were several very young elephants (a couple of weeks old) and a few of us managed to stroke one, he even held onto Vicky's finger with his trunk.

We visited a 'poo paper factory' where they showed us how they turned elephant poo into paper... and then they tried to sell us some for extortionate prices!

The elephants then went on a bit of a run past the store towards the river, it was bath time! We followed them down to the bank and watched them all bathe. We were beckoned down to the edge of the water where some of the team were allowed to splash water onto an elephant using a coconut shell (apparently this was highly against the rules... and stopped instantly when the boss arrived).

We then went to a place where we could ride elephants. Jo, Vicky and Becky went for the challenge and after being paraded around the grassy area and posing for photos we were taken into the river. Jo went first, she had a thorough soaking from her elephant Monica, Becky had a small shower but was still very soggy and Vicky's elephant refused to give her a shower and she came out dry! (she was quite pleased about this)

Next stop was a tea factory - we had a tour and looked at the process and machines needed to make tea, and then they also treated us to free tea.

We then visited the Kandy Botanical Gardens and enjoyed looking at the beautiful orchids they had. We also got caught in a rain storm and sang lots of songs with some random children that came to sit with us.

 

We visited Kandy University and Kush gave us a tour of her department.