We arrived in Sri Lanka 3 days ago (our 7th country in 4 months) and we’ve learned to heed the warning signs. We visited the Dambulla Caves yesterday and as we were walking down the trail towards the Golden Buddha, we passed some fruit sellers. Mango is in season and so I purchased one, pre-cut, to try. Within three steps, one monkey decided it wanted to try the mango as well. Fortunately, Marian spotted the moving monkey and blocked it out until I could assume a defensive position.

Today as we visited Sigiriya Rock, otherwise known as Lion’s Rock, we knew to be on the lookout for swarming bees. The article we read suggested staying away from noisy people and gave three possible courses of action depending where on the rock we encountered swarming bees.

Sigiriya Rock is a world heritage site and looks to some to be shaped like a lion. It even has two lion claws that were carved into the rock.

I’m happy to report that we climbed to the top and back down again with meeting either a noisy group or swarm of bees.

The view from the top was awesome and seeing the gardens helped us understand the tremendous amount of urban planning went into the site a thousand years ago.

It was humbling yesterday to stand in the Dambulla caves with statues of The Buddha that were carved over 900 years ago.

We’ve continued our exploration of tropical fruit and yesterday we added wood apple, and today, king coconut, to the ever expanding list of fun fruits that you get to eat in this part of the world.

Here is a pic of a wood apple in case you’ve never seen one. You have to smash open the wooden covering and then scoop out the insides which taste a bit like slightly sour, mango-applesauce. You eat the seeds and all. Tomorrow we hope to find and try soursop.
We are loving Sri Lankan curry and rice and we can’t wait to start trying to make our favs once we are home cooking for ourselves again.