Great pictures of the fruit bats earlier - we saw a lot of them in Sri Lanka. When I worked in Ghana, there was a colony of them that roosted in trees on a big roundabout near where I lived. I could never remember the name of the roundabout and if I was a bit lost or needed to explain to a taxi driver where I lived, once I said "Bat Roundabout," everyone knew what I meant.
Terry, I have been enjoying your posts & pictures, very much, but keeping up with you two, is like trying to make a snowball in an avalanche!
Here are a few pics of our last train journey back to Colombo, it was an old train and no reserved seats, so you needed to arrive early and make a quick dash to get a seat, or it would mean standing for two and a half hours. Lisa managed to get two together on the sea side of a carriage while I struggled with suitcases lol. The train was packed and on arrival which was on time unusual for Sri Lanka, the station was packed and people jumped off the train while it was still moving. I didn't risk that with a couple of suitcases Our carriage before it filled up completely The clergy always get special seats The view from the carriage window, it's a coastal route so the views were gorgeous. Arrival to a chaotic Colombo station Outside waiting for our taxi
We did finally come across the fishermen on sticks you mentioned @Lara Moss , while in the south of the island, but they are no longer a big feature, a few fish for an hour in the early morning, and the rest of the day they pose for tourists for a few rupees as these did.
Do they call them fish sticks? That's one on the strangest things I have ever seen. Thanks @Terry Page , for more fascinating scenes!
Lol, Ruby! Also the strangest thing I've ever seen, looks so uncomfortable! I think white people are spoiled! Every time I pass a field of some crop here in CA. I see Mexicans bent over all day long picking the crop. I hurt just looking at them, I really don't know how they do it. Most look middle age.
It's called Stilt fishing Ruby The approach looks prehistoric, a common misconception. “It’s some 70 years old…so it’s not really ancient,” says photographer Florian Müller, who photographed the stilt fisherman himself in 2010. “Still, it’s a beautiful way that the people adapted to their situation.” The practice started during World War II when food shortages and overcrowded fishing spots prompted some clever men to try fishing on the water. At first they used the wreckage of capsized ships and downed aircraft, then began erecting their stilts in coral reefs. Two generations of fishermen have eked out this physically demanding existence at dawn and dusk along a 30-kilometer stretch of southern shore between the towns of Unawatuna and Weligama. “It’s more or less impossible if you don’t know what you’re doing,” Müller says. The meager returns these fishermen pull from the sea are dwindling and may well disappear entirely. The tsunami that devastated much of the Indian Ocean coastline forever altered the Sri Lankan shoreline and reduced access to fish using this method. Fishing stops entirely during the annual monsoons, so nowadays it often makes financial sense for fisherman to rent their stilts to people who pose as fishermen for tourists.
Think Ruby was making a joke, Terry. Don't you have fish sticks in the UK? At least I read it as a joke, if it's not Ruby....sorry.