La Gringa y Su Esposo: Sinharaja National Park

March 3, 2019

After the safari we headed on to Deniyaya for a hike through the Sinharaja Rainforest. We read that it was possible to save a few thousand LKR by arranging transportation, food, and tour guide ourselves, but we took the easy road and arranged through our homestay for 6800 LKR. We could choose between a 6:00 am hike along a road through hills for bird watching or a later hike through the forest proper. We chose the rain forest, a warm and humid 4 hour hike where we saw a few reptiles and several large insects, including a slow struggle between a half foot centipede and a crab. We’re still not sure who was eating who, Tim suspected the centipede would emerge victorious with its venom. Many of the reviews talked about how many leeches were in the park, and I was nervous. Leeches gross me out. But dry season is Dec-Apr, so we only saw one leech the entire time, and even then only because our guide found it on a log and pointed it out to us. It was much smaller (and faster) than I was expecting, but still gross. There was a swimming hole near a waterfall where we took a dip and and ate lunch, then we hurried back to beat some imminent rain. If we had more time it would have been fun to try both hike options, the mixed species feeding flock of birds was supposed to be very colorful.

There wasn’t much information online about this park, so here’s some detail for future travelers who find this through internet search. Dry season is Dec-April, it’s rainy the rest of the year. We stayed near town and it was nearly a 1 hour tuktuk ride to the park entrance. The places near the park entrance looked pretty cool. There were three hike options on offer (all same price): 1) lowlands/rainforest proper, 10km round trip, starts at 8:30, and expect to see insects, snakes, and waterfalls. 2) highlands, starts at 8:30 and expect to see cloud forest and maybe some birds. 3) bird watching hike, starts at 6am and follows a road through the forest. We think the road was a bit higher, like canopy level, to give better bird views. When we got to the gate entrance at 8:30 there were no guides there (glad we had pre-arranged one), and our guide did not seem to pay any entrance fees. All the guides we saw were in uniform, though there were two styles, polo shirt with logo and a khaki shirt with logo. Our guide was of the polo variety and seemed good enough, though his english was limited. He was also our tuk tuk driver in the morning, so I think maybe less official.