Elections and travels . . .

We've had a great break in the hills whilst the elections have been going on. There have been a number of difficulties in the country as a result of the former Prime Minister being elected as President. We expect further instability in the next few weeks and the scale of this will be understood within the next 2 weeks. Thankfully none of this is likely to be anywhere near us, but it could affect our operations nationally. You can probably find out plenty more on the situation here if you search around on the web.
For the Joseph fans amongst you, here's a few photos of his total infatuation with anything mechanical. He's speaking so many words now and frequently asks us to let him sit on motorbikes and tuk-tuks . . . as you can see.

The tractor picture was taken during our tour of a tea plantation and factory, which was great fun. They were completely horrified when we took their free cups of tea and added milk and mixed different blends and then announced that that's what a proper cup of tea should taste like!

Our election enforced holiday took us to the hills. We started off in Kandy - a city in the hills, where we stayed at a great guest house . . . and here is a photo of one of their lovely meals. Everything has chilli in it, but was lovely. This meal included plantaine, rice, fried aubergine, beetroot, sweet potato, peppers, chicken, and various unidentified shredded vegetables.






Kandy Botanical gardens are gorgeous, and we were amused by the aptly named "drunken trees", pictured below.










Transport was interesting. We had the option of paying a couple of hundred dollars to hire a car for a week - to drive on extremely bumpy hazardous roads and feel ill all week, or to pay just a couple of pounds to take the train . . . which was very very dirty, falling to bits, took twice as long as a car, but gave a much more comfortable ride, with amazing views, and better safety. We chose the train and really enjoyed ourselves.

The most amusing incident occurred when I flushed the toilet and flooded the train . . . they asked me why I flushed it! As I flushed, the pipe jetted water all over my legs and flooded half a carriage before we managed to isolate it. I thought you'd appreciate the picture of the gorgeous toilet! And one of the gorgeous train . . .

Joseph loved leaning out of the window, taking in the view, waving and calling "hi" to people and "bye" as we left them behind. He was a real star . . .















OK, so I made comments about rail safety - we saw many discarded carriages along our route and decided not to enquire further!














A typical photo of a rural railway station for you. I should have photographed the mad busy city station.



We loved Kandy and the rest of the hill country. We visited the temple of the tooth (supposed to have one of Buddha's teeth in it but it's reported to have been stolen and destroyed several times over the centuries. We moved on from Kandy to Newara Eliya which has lovely countryside around it including Worlds End (with a sheer 880m drop to the valley below) and the lovely Bakers waterfall. We moved on to Ella which has great views from the centre of Sri Lanka right to the coast on a clear day - amazing.

Here's Joseph walking down from "Little Adam's Peak", a hill looking over the plains below. He absolutely loves the outdoors and would spend his whole life outside and on mountains if we'd let him.

We finished up our travels at Hunas Falls hotel which is just gorgeous, and has this fantastic water fall below it.
All in all, we managed to get some really valuable time together as a family . . . relaxing and having fun.

















So our latest news is that we're back home, getting the house sorted. We're trying to get the washing machine fixed, a connection to the internet, the rest of the promised furniture delivered, a widespread damp problem fixed, the tv connected, mossie screens installed (we're still being eaten alive and it's horrible!), the previous phone and electricity bills paid so they don't act on the notices we've received that we're about to be cut off . . . funny . . . we thought we'd escape some of those issues coming over here!

Work is going well. I've been asked to design a whole load of sewage stabilisation ponds across the south of the country . . . the difficulty is that I think we need an entirely different solution to sewage treatment but this solution has already been promised. It's good to be involved in this kind of real engineering though.

Sarah's parents arrive here on Thursday. It'll be just great to see them (not just because they're bringing real Cadbury's chocolate!). We hope the house is in some kind of order when they get here.