Day 7 - Nuwara Eliya

We started with our usual brekkie of egg on toast, jam and toast and a selection of fruits, oh tea as well! It is Sri Lanka after all. We left Kandy at about 830, the scenery slowly changed from the usual palms, banana trees and bush to hills and glorious tea! The plant itself not that impressive on its own but seeing the plantations go as far as the eye can see is really beautiful. It wasn't long before we pulled over to take some photos of the view, where we met 3 cheeky boys asking everyone who stopped for some money so they could go buy some toffee! We took a few pics of them and gave them a donation towards their sweet treat. Our next stop was at a small waterfall, we started exploring and taking some pictures when a little girl walked over and said hello, we talked to her for a little while and she took great interest in Becs diamond pendant, telling Bec to give it to her as Bec had 2 necklaces (the other being an elephant on some string) while she had none. Bec wasn't willing to share so we took some photos with her and wandered on. Next we met Asha who I'm guessing was the previous girls sister, she picked some flowers for Bec and again we had a little chat and took some pics. Again we drove on with nothing to see but tea! But no complaints from us! We stopped at the Glenloch tea plantation/factory, after a cup of tea we were shown around the factory from drying to grinding to baking and finally large 20kg bags of the finished product. Glenloch produces 25% of Sri Lanka tea. We were also educated in the ins and outs of different tea types and quality. After buying some fresh tea we had a little walk around outside soaking up the beauty of it all, along came another friendly little girl called Fatima, she was a little shy but Bec got her talking, she was a very cute little kid! We drove on and stopped at another waterfall, these falls were a fair bit bigger and we headed up a little path next to the water, after about 15 or so minutes of steep steps and having lost sight of the falls we decided to turn back, there were a couple of paths to the falls so we took one that looked nice and had a closer look, waterfalls are always nice! And this one was no exception, we dipped our toes in but it was freezing! Next to us some locals were having a bath laughing at us... We drove on and stopped off at another plantation called Mackwoods, which is the biggest plantation in Sri Lanka, distinguished by its Hollywood esque white sign on the hills surrounded by tea. We walked down some steps into a valley with a river at the bottom and hills of tea on both sides, really beautiful place. We hung around here taking some pictures and enjoying it all for a little while and then headed onto our destination Nuwara Eliya, we headed to the hotel to get rid of our bags and after that went back into town. Town was quite dead, as it was election day a lot of the shops were closed so not much was going on, we walked through the local market which had about half its stalls open with lots of fresh fruit and veg and some possibly not so fresh meat and fish. Next Jerome bought us a little street food, some vadai with some deep fried chili to boot, it was yum but the chili got quite hot after the first one. Soon after we headed back to the hotel for dinner, which was a little different! For the first time this trip we didn't have rice! It was dal curry with some rotti style bread but it wasn't like a pancake shape instead it was cooked in a tight spiral shape, so when you ate it fell apart into strands. After dinner we went to bed. It's mostly been early nights so far not sure why we are so sleepy at the end of each day!! Getting old maybe!