Recently, the whole of secondary school had their WWW trips, I was on the Down South Trip. During this 5 day period, we visited several places and indulged in both physical and creative activities. On the first day of our trip, we went to Kahandamodara, which is one of the southernmost places in Sri Lanka. Here, we visited the beach and also went on night walks to spot creepy crawlies and take photos of them.

The second day was one of our more busy days. In the morning we visited a pilgrimage site known as Situlpawwa, it’s very close to Yala National Park. The parking lot itself had boar, deer, and elephants casually roaming around. The hike up was quite nice, there were several photo opportunities for both landscapes, animals and plants. I enjoyed it quite a lot. During our walk, we learnt a lot about the history of the site, including background on some of the kings who had come. I also learned how to pay proper respect to the Buddha statues by my friend, this ensures I won’t do anything disrespectful or potentially offensive without realising it. I made an effort to go to the very top, I was sweating, it was incredibly hot and dry that day. But, I’m glad I managed to make it, it was a very beautiful sight to see. We took the same route back down, here, I came across many monkeys, I attempted to take close up shots of them, but ended up irritating one of the monkeys, hopefully, I never have to encounter it again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After Situlpawwa, we made our way to Bundala National Park which is a park known mainly for its birds. Here, I got the opportunity to work on my bird photography and identification skills. We came across several painted storks, purples headed swamp hens, peacocks, kingfishers, and many more. We also saw crocodiles, monkeys and elephants. My guide happened to be VERY good at spotting and ID’ing birds, which I was very grateful for as it helped me learn a lot more technical ornithological terms. My jeep also stopped at the location where supposedly a very rare bird is to be, there is only one of this bird in Sri Lanka. Overall, I enjoyed our visit to Bundala, we visited at a nice time as well and managed to see the sunset. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Learning Outcomes: 

• LO1:  Identify your own strengths and develop areas for personal growth.
• LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process.
  • Initially I was having some issues with the camera I brought, it’s not mine so I wasn’t sure of some of the settings, the exposure was VERY high and I only learnt how to control the settings during our Bundala safari, it was at this point the colours on the picture started to look a little better.
• LO5: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively.
  • Working collaboratively is what helped me take some of the night photos, like ones of the centipede and the ones of the trees. This made my photos turn out a lot better.
• LO7: Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions.