Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, Sri Lanka
Today we drove to Pinnawala, the elephant Orphanage. This orphanage is the home to about 60 elephants including babies found abandoned in the wild. We weren't in time for the bottle feeding - would have had to leave the hotel about 5:30am - just a little too early! But, we did arrive in time for the elephants parading from the Orphanage down to the river. They are taken to the river twice a day for a bath.
Elephants are so fascinating. There are elephants with babies...two pregnant elephants...a humongous Bull. These are all Asian elephants. We stayed about an hour watching them but it was hotter than blazes. The usual temperature is in the 90's and extremely humid. Part of the entertainment for the ex-Marine is watching my extremely curly hair start to resemble a giant SOS pad!
There are loads of tourists here...rightfully so. The official tourist shop sells paper items made from Elephant Dung - one of the more unsual souvenirs we've seen in our travels. There was a book for children made from Elephant Dung along with illustrations of how "Elephant Poop" is turned into paper. How cute!
