Wildcoast Tented Lodge
Yala National Park, Sri Lanka
We have had this children’s picture book for as long as I can remember, called, “Along a Long Road,” by Frank Viva. It’s the most wonderful, graphically illustrated book about a man who rides his bicycle all along a seaside town. The cadence of the book is as smooth as a we wish life could be, and the twists and turns and bumps in the road, both literal and figurative as his wife becomes pregnant and a baby joins their lives, are gently reminiscent of my own life. Even the part about riding a bicycle “Along a long road, going fast.” This past year has been a long road, with so many bumps along the way, mostly going slow, but somehow also, looking back it seems to have vanished like a big ship vanishing on the horizon.
This past year, we’ve remained some of the few guests on the island. An opportunity to experience Sri Lanka in a moment of pause. Even the animals seemed to wonder where everyone had gone. At the top of my list of places to stay when we came to Sri Lanka, was Wildcoast Tented lodge. We had stayed with Relais & Chateaux on a romantic get away to the backwaters in Kerala (which I wrote about here) and planned to wait for the perfect weekend to sneak away from the kids. Except that the perfect moment never materialized. Instead we became our own family travel bubble and anywhere that Paul and I went, the kids came, too. Accommodation prices were slashed about the island and we took advantage of the opportunity to travel safely within the island while we could.
The drive to Yala was just about four hours from Colombo, the last few kilometers the road turned from pavement to dusty earth and Paul navigated our tiny - very much built for the city- car around pot holes the filled with foraging warthogs. I’m sure after a lifetime, elephant crossing signs get old, but I still tap into childlike joy every time I see them. We were welcomed with the new and stringent safety measures and offered a wood apple popsicle to cool off with. Pebbled paths led throughout the property and hidden just off the path to our tent, like any campground. Camouflaged into the terra was a chrysalis-like canvas tent where we would stay connected by a small footbridge, to a smaller pod for the kids.
Waking early, we loaded up in a safari jeep and wound around the park as the mist lifted, encountering first a leopard, elephants bathing in the mud and the most fabulous birds. We stopped for a breakfast snack packed by the hotel before winding our way back out of the park as the villages awoke and the wind whipped through our hair in the open jeep.
After breakfast back at the lodge, we spent the afternoon by the pool. The kids swam happily about the salt water and I snuck away to a hidden mound of earth that held the spa in the afternoons for an incredible massage. I nearly got lost in a post massage induced haze as I wound my way back to our tent. Thankfully I did not encounter the neighborhood elephant that we were told comes and sleeps on the pathways some afternoons. I may have been tempted to nap with him.
In the evening, we’d join the few other guests from neighboring tents for sundowners just this side of the surf. The kids lounged on beanbag chairs amidst the boulders and ate an elephants share of dainty hors d’oeuvres. Dinners were served on the edge of the swimming pool in the warm glow of a community dining lodge overlooking the sea, while giant squirrels played in the rafters. On our final night we ate crab curry on the front lawn, just steps from the sea, lit only by lantern and starlight.
