Sri Lanka is more beautiful than I imagined

No time to write something clever, but the people have made their demands for more photos. By "the people" I mean one anonymous comment on my last post which I suspect came from my husband, who was there when I took the photos.

Sila bodysurfing at Mirissa.


Mirissa Beach has a lot of hotels and bars.


Ram's Surfing Beach guest house, Midigama:


A green river in Colombo


Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, Kandy. The tooth was reportedly recovered from the Buddha's funeral pyre in India and secretly taken to Sri Lanka because the Buddha had said Buddhism would be safe there. The tooth is under that good tooth there. The white/red building on the lake is actually the police station. And the little rectangular island was built by a king to house his harem.

The island in Matara where 4 monks live:

Buddhist +/- Hindu "devale" near the tooth relic

Terraced tea plantations seen from the train, near Nanu Oya. The Hill Country is a giant zen garden. The rows of tea bushes wrap around trees and boulders. The plantations are so ancient and contoured to the landscape that they seem to have always been there.


Train riders wave at me. We were in the last 2nd class car and behind us in the first 3rd class car the Tamil tea pickers were singing and drumming for hours across the Hill Country.

Best breakfast ever: roti and dahl with strong sweet milk tea in Ella.

Garnets and lots of them. It's a granulite-facies world up there. This is the ONLY fresh rock I observed during the entire trip.

Coconut plantations along the coast between Weligama and Midigama


Water buffalo preparing the rice paddies near Peradeniya Junction. The egrets always attend the buffalo.


Patient buffalo calf tied nearby:


Buddhist shrine at the train station in Ella, while Sila watches a dog eat hot curry out of a crumpled piece of newspaper

For some reason, Sila loves billboards in Sinhalese.


Street scene near the airport outside Colombo. Hop a ride anywhere in a tuk-tuk but negotiate your price BEFORE you get in.


Brahman calf checks the surf at Lazy Lefts, Ram's Surfing Beach, Midigama.


A silent monument to 2004 tsunami victims on the south coast



there will be MORE photos.

Sri Lanka is a Holy Paradise

A few snapshots until I have time to do a proper post or a few...

Lazy Lefts at Ram's Surfing Beach, Midigama:

Dancers at the Kandyan Cultural Centre



The temple elephant at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, Kandy

Tiered gardens among the tea plantations, Nanu Oya


Couple of cold Lion Lagers.

Alaganik Slough

Alaganik Slough is only a short drive outside Cordova. We drove out one evening just before sunset with our friend Craig to check it out. Fishing just outside the Copper River Delta along the sand bars, you can only see that a vast flat area stretches inland with mountains on all sides. I was really looking forward to seeing the delta from inside.
There are lots of moose on the delta this time of year, and they are big ones!
The willows were flowering and attracting all kinds of pollinators,

...such as these surprisingly huge but herbivorous mosquitoes...


The Canada geese are here in full force:
The hooligan (aka euchalon, aka smelt) are running and got caught all over the banks of the slough at low tide. I don't know much about hooligans but these must be spawned out I suppose... they are known as candlefish because they are so oily that they can be dried and lit like a candle for stinky winter illumination. We watched some eagles taking them out of the river but they looked pretty bored. Obviously they are waiting for the big payday when the salmon run kicks into high gear.


The delta is unbelievably rich in color.

Cordova by day... and later in the day.

Sila and I watched a huge sea otter lolling on the dock during the stormy days we arrived in Cordova. A few hours later, the sun came out and the sea otter gave birth. We called the baby Meep because he squeeked like a toy every time his mama turned him over and over to wash and fluff him.

During the storms, Alaska Department of Fish & Game called the first "opener" for Thursday May 15 on the Copper River Flats. Due to the foul conditions, we waited it out. We were glad of that - abet a little sheepish - because the average catch per boat was ~12 fish and we had calculated we needed 13 to pay our round-trip fuel to the Flats. Over the sunny weekend following, professional net menders like Lisa here were really busy on the docks - everyone anticipating the BIG ONE opener on Monday the 19th. Oh yah, and every next opener is gonna be the BIG ONE.

Here's Cordova Harbor as we first saw it when we pulled into town. It's really a tiny harbor compared to some, but it is home to most of the south-central Alaska gillnetting fleet - usually in the 30' range - so they pack a lot of boats in that small real estate. The town is cozily wrapped around the harbor and has an old-towny feel from its turn-of-the-century spruce sided buildings with big carved wooden signs. Like many wet towns in Southeast Alaska, most of Cordova's storefronts have deep awnings and you can walk around town without getting too wet.
Here's a view from K-float where we docked, looking up to town. And that's pretty much it! You can almost make out the little ski hill above town. They have a chair lift! It was recycled from Sun Valley, Idaho.
Bustling "business district" of First Street, Cordova: picture of cuteness.


And with this view of busy Second Street we conclude our tour of the Business District. Do note that every home and business in Cordova has an absolutely a$$-Kicking view.

Here are a couple of cute houses between the harbor and the cannery row . . . Cordova is an Obama Town.


The old Canneries line the waterfront north of the small boat harbor. Whether active or "historical", they all share the extremely tall, precariously old and rotty looking piling complex from which ice is lowered to boats in big plastic totes or by shooting out of a large hose. More on that later. The docks are well above high tide and maybe even above local tsunami potential. The corregated exteriors hide thoroughly modern processing, smoking and freezing facilities as well as kids from all over the world who come to the Alaska canneries to work for the summer.Not all of those piers are seeing action these days... I think that is somebody's vegetable garden half way down this grass-covered dock but I was too scared of the rotty wood to find out.

The USCG Cutter and buoy tender Sycamore was on hand for the opening of the season, launching random safety checks on the fleet. These fishermen are generally pretty conscientious, and NOBODY wants to miss a day of fishing on account of being short a fire extinguisher or other violation. Hilarity prevailed however, because the marine suppliers in town were universally out of at least the following items:

1. day markers (a black marker in the shape of two cones point to point); required to be shown when fishing during daylight hours.
2. hand-held breathalizers (one for every person onboard required to be produced by captain in case of accidents while underway) ; and
3. the REPORT ALL INJURIES placard that must be displayed in every boat.

The auto parts store, fortunately, had a really large supply of black funnels which were readily formed into a day marker with black electrical tape - maybe not typical but probably legal? An internet search turned up the detailed text of the REPORT ALL INJURIES placard and carefully Sharpied substitutes appeared on bulkheads across the harbor. As for the breathalizers - everyone is waiting for reinforcements from Anchorage.

When the sun started setting on the harbor that clear beautiful evening, the snowy mountains around Cordova lit up with alpenglow. The harbor was like a mirror. Here are a few favorites.






Next post: the fishies.

in search of Columbia Glacier

Prince William Sound truly is one of the wonders of this world. Can't say we were blessed with good weather during our crossing - but it is gorgeous and sunny as I write from Baja Taco in Cordova, looking out over the blue harbor and snowy mountains - and hundreds of bowpickers.

En route from Whittier to Cordova, we stopped in Columbia Bay behind Glacier Island to try to get a look at Columbia Glacier. There were a lot of icebergs behind Glacier Island and we had to idle up the bay and drive from the bow to watch for ice. There were a lot of happy otters though.
At the mouth of Columbia Bay, there ice fields got so thick that we couldn't get into the bay. We took a side route into Heather Bay and Sila dropped me off in the mud on Moraine Spit. I clambered between the tide-stranded icebergs and mud and tried to get a clear view to the glacier.

The receding tide had left all kinds of strange icey forms on the spit, in shades of blue and white.

With matching seagulls.

Fresh water falling on the sea and flowing off the melting bergs was frozen into a thin sheet of shore ice - which fell also on the falling tide and broke over the rocks on the shore:

In case you ever doubted that ice is hexagonal, look deeply into your screen for gorgeous evidence of volume diffusion creep in glaciers:

We never did get a look at the mighty Columbia. It has receded miles from where it is shown on the 1960's marine charts.