Adventures with four girls: Our spring break trip to Sri Lanka

Despite a 3 a.m. pow-wow the night before our early departure wondering if we should really go through with this (3 of the 4 girls had a fever), we took a leap of faith that the girls would recover just as quickly at a beach house in Sri Lanka and decided to continue on with our trip.

Even though Anna was mildly sick for the first 3 1/2 days of our 6-day trip and Jane ended up sick (again) the day before we left, we still managed to have a very special vacation. Sri Lanka is beautiful and so very different from brown, sandy desert, it was refreshing to have had a different vista for a week. And at only a 4-hour flight away, very doable for a spring break trip.

The most memorable thing I would say about Sri Lanka was the driving! Wow. It is *highly* recommended that tourists hire drivers and not self-drive and now I know why. A two-lane road would often have a bicycle, a huge container truck, a motorcycle, a tuk-tuk (small 3-wheeled taxi) and OUR FAMILY (in a passenger van) all squeezed in those two lanes at the same time - and yes, all vehicles would be moving - 1/2 in one direction and 1/2 in the other. I finally learned that I just couldn't watch. It somehow seems to all work. In the cumulative something like 13+ hours of driving during our stay, we never saw a single accident (which is not anything like I could say about the driving here in the UAE). I must say that I was very impressed with our drivers - they seemed to know when they could pass around a relatively blind curve and when to anticipate when someone coming from the other direction might be passing around another relatively blind curve. Traffic doesn't go very fast either. There aren't freeways or anything - everything is basically on slow-moving main roadways with shops and houses along the route. Sometimes the door to the shops was only about 3-4 feet off the road so drivers had to watch for pedestrians, too.

We spent the first 4 days on the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka near the town of Bentota. We had plenty of pool and beach time but also had some excursions to a turtle hatchery, the historic fort town of Galle on the southern tip of the tear-drop shaped island, views of many Buddhist temples along the way and a visit to an estate and gardens designed by the most famous architect in Sri Lanka (Geoffrey Bawa for his brother).

Some friends here in Abu Dhabi recommended our rental villa and we were very, very happy with our accommodations. It was one of three villas around a large shared infinity pool right on the beach. We shared a chef with the other two houses and the food was outstanding - we ate lunch one day at another really nice hotel in an historic building and our chefs cooking was just as good as at this 5-star property. We helped select the menus and would set the time of our meals. We also had a full-time house helper who quietly took care of us - he set the table, cleared it off (with our girls' help), got our beds ready, kept us supplied with drinks and pool towels, etc. We felt very pampered during our stay. The villa was basically an open-air living and dining room on the downstairs. - no windows, just shutters that were closed up at night and opened all day. Two bedrooms and baths were upstairs along a balcony overlooking the beach. The 3 big girls shared a king-sized "princess" bed (a.k.a. mosquito net), we had the other and Anna slept in a crib (also with a mosquito net) in the bathroom some and mostly with us. We had one rainstorm the whole stay and our villa lost power. Although Jane was a little nervous, we enjoyed our evening by candlelight. We also had a few "visitors" in the villa which were fun to watch. Anna would shout, "Wook, a yizard!" She was the best lizard spotter of the group.

When we first arrived, I was a bit concerned about a lack of privacy - our living room opened up completely (remember no doors or windows) right out to the pool as did the two neighboring villas. But it worked out much better than we could have expected - the middle villa housed a British family with 2, 6 and 8 year olds - so built-in playmates! Their oldest and our Regan hit it off beautifully and became quite the friends (and Jane tagged along fine). The 6-year old brother joined in some. Our two-year olds stared at each other from a distance and eyed each other's binkies and blankies suspiciously. The other family had two boys and a tiny newborn baby but their boys seemed to enjoy each other's company enough that they didn't feel compelled to seek our our girls (plus they were a little older and probably preferred boy company at that age).

We really loved our turtle sanctuary visit. Sri Lanka has a lot of different types of turtles that lay eggs on the beach but the eggs are vulnerable to dogs and other predators. So the turtle sanctuaries rebury the eggs on protected properties, let them hatch and release the babies at night (so the birds can't see them and eat them) when they are 3-days old. We were able to hold the eggs (they looked and felt remarkably like ping-pong balls - so much that Jake is convinced that is what they use to show us what they are like). We were also able to hold a turtle. They don't normally let people hold a turtle but amazingly a bird dropped a baby turtle from the sky (one that wasn't born in the sanctuary) so we were able to hold that one. It was fun seeing the 100s of baby turtles and the few larger injured ones they had who couldn't be released to the wild.

This particular sanctuary was also hit very hard by the '04 tsunami that killed over 30,000 Sri Lankans. There was an interesting story at the sanctuary about the tsunami and how the director donned a life preserver and set about saving as many people as he could. The villas where we stayed had just been completed and the owners (3 British women who lived scattered around the globe who were good friends in school in the UK) were there with friends for a grand opening celebration. The tsunami petered out a little just north of our villas. Only one wave hit our villas but it was 6-7 feet tall and certainly surprised everyone and caused a lot of damage. The house manager said she saw the wave but had no idea what it was. She survived by holding onto a palm tree. There were some guests who were in a ground floor bedroom who were injured by floating/ falling furniture but no one died on that property. On our drive further south to Galle, we could still see damaged buildings and it is still obviously a painful subject there. We were relieved to learn that a warning system has been put in place since then. Jane also helped by praying that there wouldn't be a tsunami during our stay (she is very nervous about natural disasters in general).

We spent the last two days on a quick trip into the hill country of Sri Lanka. Rice fields, tea, rubber, pineapple and cashew plantations, beautiful vistas! The highlight of our trip into the hills was visiting an elephant foundation where they take in and take care of injured or abused elephants. Regan, Anna, Jake and I were able to help bathe an elephant (with the broken husk of a coconut) and our real highlight was getting to ride two of them. I knew I wanted to ride one but I must admit to being a little frightened at first. Those animals are big and TALL. Regan and I were on one elephant and Jake and Anna were on another. Anna screamed for the first minute or two, "I YIKE EL-PHANT" which means "I DO NOT LIKE RIDING THIS ELEPHANT!). She must have finally realized it was a done deal so she stopped crying and hopefully managed to enjoy an adventure that not too many 2-year olds born in Charlotte, NC get to do. I'm not sure she ever really enjoyed it but she'll tell you that she rode a "BIG el-phant with Daddy." Regan was a little nervous, too, but she relaxed and was able to enjoy it. We discovered that going up a hill isn't that bad but it is a bit nerve-wracking to go down a hill where you feel you are about to catapult over its head. We also passed some local men working on a truck and they jumped back when the elephant got close (clearly a little nervous about it - which made me nervous since I was wondering what they knew that I didn't).

We stayed at an interesting very small hotel w.a.y. up in the hills. The reviews I ready just said it was 5 km from Kandy (the town we were visiting). They didn't say that it was 5km up some of the steepest, curviest roads you could imagine! I think our driver was a little lost though because I noticed the drive down was a lot shorter than our drive up so maybe we had a uniquely long and circuitous route on the way up. The view was stunning and would have been a good place to relax and get some massages and enjoy a glass of wine from the steep cliff drop off... but we had 4 small children so our stay wasn't quite like that. Instead we were scrambling to make sure no one fell out a window or off a cliff. We left with six and fortunately returned with six - safety mission accomplished.

We had a long 3-hour drive back to the airport and at this point I must do a call-out to Sri Lankan Airlines. We had relatively low expectations (I've flown Air Zimbabwe and Kenya Airlines before and thought it would be similar). Jake had even lower expectations but the airline was great! More spacious economy seats, attentive service. Food was pretty good. Little gifts (coloring books and caps) for the kids. We had a wide-body on our return flight with personal entertainment systems and complementary wine and cocktails (yes, in economy!). The plane was newish and clean and the bathrooms even had diaper changing stations (which many U.S. carriers don't have). And get this - we forgot to get our stroller when we arrived in Sri Lanka (I know, I still don't know how we forgot that!) and didn't even realize it until a couple of days later. It was gate-checked so it didn't even have a tag on it that identified it as ours. Well, I asked about it when we checked in for our return flight and low and behold they had it and sent it on to Dubai with us. Wow. And the Colombo airport had a little indoor playground for the kids - score! My only complaint was that they wouldn't let us take Anna's car seat on the plane for the return light (FAA-approved for flight apparently doesn't carry much weight in places that don't know or care about the FAA). Anna did fine without her car seat so it worked out in the end but I was nervous in Dubai when it didn't come out on the baggage carousel - we had a 90 minute drive to Abu Dhabi ahead of us). But it eventually showed up.

A small downer to the trip is that Jane somehow lost her backpack upon our return between passport control at the Dubai airport and the parking lot. Inside her backpack was her carefully selected special stuffed animals that she picked to take the trip with us since she didn't want to sleep without them (and her Sri Lankan coins she was excited to add to her coin collection). I had to break the news to her that we hadn't left it in the car service that brought us home (which we thought when she went to bed the day we got back) and that it was left in the airport somewhere and they we may never get it back. She certainly shed a few tears over the potential loss but actually handled it better than I would have thought. After some work, I've lodged an inquiry with the Dubai airport. I received a response today saying that it had been received and that they had forwarded the details to the police department which runs the lost and found. I have visions of a bomb squad surrounding an abandoned pink and green butterfly backpack filled with stuffed animals. I'm not holding out a lot of hope but haven't given up yet. I took Jane to a store yesterday and let her pick out a new stuffed animal. Part of me wanted her to feel the consequences of not keeping up with her things but she is so attached to her animals that I figured that is punishment enough. She picked out a really soft elephant that she named Ellie that will hopefully be a good reminder of our Sri Lankan elephant adventure and trip.

Overall a thumbs-up of a trip but I must confess that I was a little on edge about having four small kids (and sometime feverish ones at that) in a remote developing country that just got over a civil war two years ago (we did see more military around than I expected as well). We were at least 3 hours from the main city of Colombo the whole trip except for flying in/ out. Jane got out of the pool one day complaining of a headache. She curled up and promptly fell asleep on the deck chair cradling her head. I'm thinking "BRAIN ANEURYSM." Okay, so maybe that was a little over the top reaction (and one I didn't voice to anyone out loud). It also helped that the mom of the villa next door was a doctor - which once I found that out, I felt immensely better (especially after her 6-year old fell out of a tree when I was 3-feet away). But it did make me think of the risks we take in taking our children on certain vacations. I'm sure there are plenty of wonderful doctors there but I had little idea of how to identify the right ones or any ability to quickly get to one when we were in a relatively remote area. I can't figure out if that affects how I plan to vacation with our kids in the future but I did breathe a sigh of relief when we got back safely to the UAE.

Enjoy some of our pictures:

Note the green tuk-tuk squeezed only inches from the
truck to its left

View from our villa over the pool

View from our villa across the pool to the beach and Indian Ocean

Meredith and Anna in our open air living and dining room

One of the bedrooms with a "princess" bed

View out a bedroom onto a terrace

Regan and Jane holding turtle eggs with our hatchery guide (and we
somehow managed to not take any pictures of the live turtles)

At Galle Fort at the tip of Sri Lanka

Mere peaking over the edge at a giant monitor lizard (it was big!)

Whole family at Galle Fort (lighthouse in background)

Anna with flower in gorgeous high chair
at the Amanwella hotel in Galle

Sunset from our villa

Jane, Jake and Regan enjoying the pool

We just passed an elephant!

Typical view outside the van window - lots of shops, tuk-tuks,
bicycles, pedestrians, motorcycles, trucks, cars and vans.

We really enjoyed our stroll through Brief Gardens
(the estate built by a famous Sri Lankan architect)

We found lots of beautiful flowers on the pathways of the gardens

Regan and her new friend would climb this tree
and swing from a branch to another tree. I could
barely watch - especially when the younger
brother took a bad tumble on this back - ouch!

View of our villa from the beach. Note the great fence!

The waves don't look very big in this picture but they were honestly
too big for swimming or boogie boarding. They were probably 5-6 foot waves.

Regan frolicking in the beach foam.

Anna kicking back at the pool (she never got all the way in
the whole time and preferred to just sit on the steps and play
with buckets and watering cans)