Group D: Aili, Andy and Vanessa 
Today, we started our morning with a delicious breakfast followed by art and sketching.

We did an art and sketching activity in the morning at 9am to practice our sketching and observational skills like many 19th century naturalists who did not have mobile phones; we also labeled our drawings.  We sketched flowers, leaves and coconuts including shape depth form and colour. Victoria selected a toad to draw.

Around 10 am, we load our suitcases and bags on the bus and started a new trip to a next destination:  Dr. Dilini Abeyrama’s house.

On our drive we stopped at a beautiful wetland named Tissa Lake, where we saw a massive colony of Indian flying foxes aka fruit bats!! (many 1000). There were so many …. After admiring them for a while and taking some pictures, we resumed our journey.

We got to our destination soon after. The students and Steve all had the pleasure of visiting with Dilini and her family. This was her first time back home in almost 4 years, which made the reunion with her family even more special.

The students also got a tour of her backyard and garden which includes many fruit veggies and spices and more that we would dream of having in Canada. Including two species of coconuts, wood apple, guava, cinnamon, avocado and more!

We all got to spend some quality time taking a break and drinking some king coconut water and eating the coconut jelly inside!

We departed and by 4:00 PM had arrived at the Kalametiya bird sanctuary specializing in bird watching and ecotourism. We went out on lagoon boats through the mangroves guided by Priyanka, Kumare, Pasindu, Sanka, Sameera, Chamie, and Mahinda. We climbed up on the rocks and it was a spectacular view. There were so many bird species and some of the most interesting were white-throated kingfishers, painted stork, red-vented bulbul, flame-backed woodpecker, and blue-faced malkoha. Our guides were so kind and made us water lily necklaces and lilli pad hats with the water Hyacinth’s at the top (except for Steve’s hat which had a mangrove blossom)! We took a break and had some bananas and Kokiss cookies.

It was a day of trying new things and coming home to familiar things!

We arrived at our hostel (234 Weligama) in Mirissa on the south coast of Sri Lanka at 8 PM and met Dr. Gary Allport (Bird Life International) and his son Jude (who has a passion for snakes). We ate dinner dinner with haste took some showers and finished our night off looking through the telescope on the beach. We saw the moon and Jupiter! Sweet dreams from Weligama Bay!