Geoff & Eileen
England, February/March 2017
What did you like most about Sri Lanka?
Scenery and wildlife.
Accommodation.
Food.
Value (although hotel food and drink prices seemed to have increased by up to 20% since last year). [Since the EU referendum result in June 2016, the Sri Lanka Rupee has strengthened by approximately 20%, hence the increase in prices.]
What did you like least about Sri Lanka?
Rampant tuk-tuk- drivers!
Hotels/Restaurants which use very small print to state that their food and beverage menu prices do not include taxes and service – we saw several people with pained expressions at The Kandy House and at Gal Oya Lodge when they realized why their bills were up to 25% more than they expected!
What is your opinion of your accommodation in Sri Lanka?
Our first 2 nights were at Noel Rodrigo’s Leopard Safaris camp at Wilpattu: the tent was large but fairly basic but this was more than made up for by the superb food and staff.
We then had one night at The Kandy House, a 9 room hotel in the hills above Kandy: very comfortable with an excellent restaurant.
Our 3rd stop was 2 nights at Gal Oya Lodge. This was a very airy and spacious lodge, with 10 large and comfortable rooms. An excellent lodge but unfortunately in our view, it is too far from Gal Oya National Park and the wildlife is too limited. A new access point may improve this in future.
Finally 12 nights at our favourite “rest and relaxation” hotel, Buckingham Place near Tangalle on the south coast, our 3rd visit. There are still 15 large bedrooms but an extension was opened just before Christmas providing a new pool, restaurant and lounge complex – all with stunning sea views. The pool is much larger and deeper than its predecessor, thus suitable for swimming rather than just wallowing. The old pool (now the “quiet pool”) is still in use with its surrounding shady trees – although it seemed to be used mainly by returning guests remembering the old days! Thoroughly recommended for a relaxing stay with good food and attentive but unobtrusive service.
What is your opinion of your chauffeur guide in Sri Lanka?
Satheesh was our chauffeur/guide throughout. He was an excellent driver, especially given the long journeys that we made. He was quietly spoken with a fairly limited English vocabulary so that we tended to converse in phrases rather than sentences! This might have been an issue if more guiding was involved, but was not a problem as our journeys were mainly transfers. He was very helpful with shopping and refreshment stops, and in pointing out local attractions en route.
In particular, he made a series of phone calls to negotiate a very early arrival into Wilpattu camp due to our flight into Colombo being brought forward several hours because of the runway works – this enabled us to have a very welcome morning siesta!
We have had situations previously where drivers seemed unwilling to suggest journey times for best traffic conditions for fear of upsetting us: I was very pleased that, when asked, Satheesh would always suggest an appropriate start time which still enabled us to have a leisurely breakfast!
We would be happy to have Satheesh again for a similar touring itinerary.
What is your opinion of your flights to and from Sri Lanka?
Once again we flew with Emirates in Business Class [from London Heathrow], after John secured some very attractive fares. Although the stopover in Dubai means changing planes and extending the journey, Emirates service was again immaculate throughout - particularly the wheelchair assistance which my wife needs at airports. All flights were on time or slightly early.
Any other comments?
The holiday included our 3rd visit to Buckingham Place near Tangalle on the south coast. A major extension was opened just before Christmas providing a new pool, restaurant and lounge complex – all with stunning sea views. The pool is much larger and deeper than its predecessor, thus suitable for swimming rather than just wallowing. The old pool (now the “quiet pool”) is still in use with its surrounding shady trees – although it seemed to be used mainly by returning guests remembering the old days!
Our 4th visit to Sri Lanka, and the 3rd with Tikalanka. As has now become customary, the main question was “where do we go in addition to Buckingham Place”? After putting a number of suggestions to John to assess their viability, we decided to visit two national parks that we have not been to previously, separated by an overnight stop in Kandy, before heading to Buckingham Place for our rest and relaxation.
Wilpattu is the largest National Park in Sri Lanka and reopened about 3 years ago after being closed during the civil war. It is about 4 hours north of Colombo off the road from Puttalam to Anuradhapura. There is little accommodation close to the park (many visitors travel from, or en route to, Anuradhapura), so we were staying for 2 nights at the Noel Rodrigo Leopard Safaris semi-permanent camp site in the park's buffer zone.
Due to the airport runway works, our flight was rescheduled to arrive at 04.00: as there was little traffic at that time, we arrived in the vicinity of the camp before 8am, which left us anticipating a long morning with lots of coffee before midday check-in. Thanks to some nifty phone work by Satheesh, our driver/guide, the camp manager allowed us straight in, so that we'd started an unexpected and welcome morning siesta in our tent by 9am! We also found that we were the only guests for our 2 nights, which gave us personal service and scope to rearrange mealtimes etc. to suit us.
Although the tents are described as "South African Safari tents", they are not the same standard of test or fittings that we have experienced in Africa, especially Botswana. The tents were large with a separate sleeping compartment with a double bed inside the main tent: there were also basic storage facilities and electric lights (we though our tent was dark but, after we mentioned it to the staff, came back from a game drive to find that bigger bubs had been installed). Outside, each tent has a separate toilet tent with flushing loo, and a shower tent with bucket shower: warm/hot water was available on request for the shower and, at the end of each game drive, the guide phoned ahead so that the water was waiting when we got back to camp. A lot of zipping and unzipping was needed when entering or leaving the tent, not to mention some agility with the high sills at each entrance: this initially concerned my wife who has some mobility issues but she managed. Placements are large – we couldn’t see any of the other tents. Food at the camp was plentiful and really excellent - probably the best rice and curry (i.e. 6 curries) we have ever had in Sri Lanka.
The first game drive on a Thursday afternoon found the park very quiet - we saw only 4 or 5 other vehicles. The following morning we were asked if we wanted to take a picnic breakfast and return to the camp around 10.30 instead of 9.30: in fact we didn't return until nearly 1pm as the guide investigated all the likely areas for leopards. The park was appreciably busier on the Friday afternoon and more so on our final drive on Saturday morning as local visitors came to the park.
We have been on enough safaris to know that it is better to have hopes than expectations, and so it proved here. We had “hoped” to see a leopard, but none had been spotted for some weeks (and we had seen some on a previous visit to Yala). Sightings included a wide range of birds including raptors and a wood owl (which we were told is rare), several varieties of deer etc. and one elephant but the undoubted highlight was a sloth bear on the track as we headed towards the park exit - there were no other vehicles around, so we had a private viewing. Wilpattu is a fascinating park with a variety of terrains which support a wide range of wildlife.
The staff at the camp are superb, from Praneeth the manager and guide, to the drivers/spotters, the cooks and the general staff. We asked to speak to one of the cooks to thank him for the excellent food and found that he had also been the keen-eyed driver/spotter on our first 2 drives!
Within 30 minutes of arriving at the camp, my wife said that it was too basic for her - by the end of our stay, she was planning a return.
One word of caution. Sri Lanka in general and Wilpattu specifically are in a prolonged dry spell. Water levels in the park were clearly low but the camp still showed some effects of previous rain - Praneeth admitted that it was not a nice place to be in heavy rain! He recommended May or June as the dry season when leopard sightings should be best.
We then moved on towards Gal Oya National Park in the east of Sri Lanka, breaking the journey with a night at The Kandy House, a very comfortable small hotel with an excellent restaurant in the hills just outside Kandy. Whilst there, we dropped in on Pathi, Tikalanka's Sri Lanka manager, who I have spoken to by phone several times in previous trips but had never met. It was good to put a face to the voice over a cup of tea.
The drive from Kandy to Gal Oya would have been very scenic had the views not been obscured by low clouds and intermittent rain showers. We arrived at the Lodge in the dry but were then confined to our room by a torrential rainstorm lasting about 3 hours.
Gal Oya Lodge is a modern Lodge with 10 rooms outside the National Park. The lounge and restaurant and the bedrooms are all large, comfortable and airy with separate seating areas and a patio with views across the surrounding jungle to the nearby hills. There is a large swimming pool and an excellent restaurant.
Unfortunately in our view this is a fine Lodge in the wrong place. Apart from some specialist birding, the main activities are the boat and jeep safaris into the National Park. It takes about 40 minutes to get from the Lodge to the boat loading point, then there are about 40 steps and, thanks to the abnormally low water levels, a clamber over some rocks to get to the boats - my wife found this a real challenge although, with a lot of help from the staff, she did make it. We raised this subsequently with the Lodge manager who said that he was aware of the low water levels but had not realised the implications for boarding! There are many varieties of sea birds on nearby rocks although mainly ones we had already seen in Wilpattu and previously at Bundala. Later the cruise neared the lakeside grasslands where we saw about 6 elephants and some spotted deer, all at a distance.
We were warned at the Lodge that wildlife viewing was likely to better on the boat trip than on a jeep safari. The park access for the jeeps is about an hour from the Lodge and after a lengthy and unexplained delay in getting paperwork sorted out, we did not enter the Park until about 85 minutes after leaving the Lodge. The drive in the Park is almost entirely through jungle with very few clear viewing opportunities - even the jungle birds were mainly brown and difficult to pick out in the foliage! We did see a few spotted deer (3?) and a giant squirrel but that was about all until, after leaving the Park, we saw an elephant in the buffer zone.
We understand that a new Park Entrance is being planned which will shorten the access from the Lodge. As that gate will be in the lakes area, it will hopefully give vehicle access to the more open areas of the Park which are currently only visible from the boats. Until and unless that happens, we think that Gal Oya Lodge will remain a fine site which is too far from its Park and where, even allowing for animal sightings never being guaranteed, there is insufficient wildlife "content" available.
And then on to Buckingham Place, a 15 room hotel set between the stunning Rekawa beach and the tranquil Rekawa lagoon just east of Tangalle on the south coast. I was not sure what there would be to say on our 3rd visit to a hotel which has yet again been voted the best small hotel in Sri Lanka in the TripAdvisor Travellers Choice awards (not to mention 10th best small hotel in the world and 23rd best hotel for romance worldwide?).
Luckily this year eponymous owner Nick Buckingham has given us some new facilities to review. There are no additional bedrooms but the long-planned Oceanfront development opened just before Christmas. The new restaurant, lounge, bar and pool complex has a stunning location overlooking the ocean: the infinity pool is 25 metres long and deep enough for swimmers (unlike the old 10m pool) and has an additional 8m shallow section with swim-up bar. A major improvement for us is the shallow steps and full length handrail into the pool which mean that my wife is able get in and out, which she couldn’t do in the old pool. There are sunbeds at both ends of the pool, and chairs and bean bags on the deck between the pool and the restaurant, although space can be limited if the hotel is full. The restaurant is much larger than its predecessor, with some tables placed outside on the deck in the evening. There is also a new path with direct access to Rekawa beach, although a sharp drop actually onto the beach caused by wind erosion of sand steps meant that it was too much for my wife who also struggled with the original rough track outside the hotel. The old pool and surrounding grass area with shady trees remain in use for those wanting a quieter spot or who, like us, remember the "old days" (a staff member said that returning guests were often seen at the old pool).
One impact for us is that our "preferred" room with superb Lagoon views, proximity to the old restaurant and prime position for monkey viewing is now the furthest room from the facilities!
Buckingham Place has continued to provide an excellent range of Sri Lankan, international and fusion food – and still very happy to provide “off menu” dishes on request. Most importantly, it has retained its huge emphasis on looking after its guests and it was good to see so many staff of whom we had fond memories from our previous visits. Comfortable rooms, good food and good facilities can be taken for granted but it really is the staff who make Buckingham Place special (other reviews have described the staff as “unobtrusively ubiquitous”). It remains our ultimate test and relaxation destination, but they can also arrange a very wide range of cultural, wildlife and other activities for those who prefer a more active stay.
If we have a reservation about Oceanfront, it is that people may rattle around in the expanded restaurant when numbers are lower in the off-peak periods (the hotel was effectively full during our stay). We know that Nick Buckingham has plans to extend his off-season programme of themed evenings and breaks, and we wish him every success with these. We would also urge travellers to consider Sri Lanka out of season - it doesn't always rain (and, if it does, it’s warm rain!).
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