The early bird catches the worm

I've always been an early riser, so when we were told to get to see a national park we had our eye on we had to leave at 5am, there was a mini groan but only a mini one. So we had dinner at our guesthouse ( Zion View in Ella), had an early night and before daylight we were up. Zion view packed us a lovely little brekkie and we waited with our guard dog Alsatian friend Toby for our driver. Only we waited. And waited. And waited........30 minutes stood in the dark when you are half asleep feels like hours. Finally our driver arrives and off we set.

We had a bit of a deadline - the park we were going to - Worlds End has an amazing plateau ( with a scary 880m drop)  which if you time it right lets you see villages down below tea plantations, forest. If you time it wrong however you get a view of cloud and not a lot else. So off we went - only our driver didn't get the time urgency. Or even if he did I'm not sure what his diesel van could have done about it. The gears seemed to flummox him, tuk tuk's overtook him and we didn't see the speedometer clock more than 40 km/ hour even on a dual carriageway.

Suffice to say we saw a cloud forest, but hey we enjoyed the nice leisurely drive home....and laughed about it later on, our man was on Sri Lanka time.......He more than made up for it by showing us some wildlife on the way home in the form of some cheeky monkeys scurrying across the road.