Friday 24Th July
After a very funny evening with Max and his puppets, also with Senna (the gardener) who was rather drunk and thought the puppet was real, everyone was in tears of laughter we headed off to bed at round 10:40 for an early start. Alarms went off at 4:45am when it was still dark outside! Everyone was still half asleep and very tired. We packed up all our cases and tents then took them to the baggage truck. It was a sad goodbye to MEF this morning with Jackie (one of the dogs) wanting to come with us and not getting off the coach. We finally got her off and left to start another full day of adventures. 2 1/2 hours in the coach with everyone asleep, we arrived in Kandy ready for the 8:40 train to Hambantota. At the station we all got our jam sandwiches that MEF kindly made for us. Some of the girls experienced their first traditional Sri Lankan toilet break (having to squat). A very hiper and excited train journey with beautiful views where we got a chance to see lots of parts of Sri Lanka and get a feel of the difference between English trains with doors, toilets and not many bumps, to a Sri Lankan train which had no doors, lots of bumps and a hole as the toilet. We arrived in Ella at 3:30pm after a long 7 hours on the train which everyone loved. Once we arrived in Ella we got on our bus that took us to the Janoda foundation, we arrived at around 6:30pm. We quickly settled in and set up all our mosi tents and beds which was very stressful but was a relief after it was complete. We all headed up to the main part of the foundation where we were reunited with team 3, it was a very happy and heart-warming welcome. We then all hurried to dinner which consisted of rice, vegetable and meat dishes. The locals gave us an amazing welcome which we are now really excited to meet more of them! After a hot and sweaty day we all raced to the showers, feeling refreshed and relaxed we had time to chill and share our experience of the first part of the trip with team 3.