After the amazing beach hopping day with Carla I was ready to do some sightseeing again. Animal sightseeing! I booked a whale watching safari in Mirissa with Raja & the Whales, an often recommended company which stands for ethical whale watching, so they don’t chase the whales or anything like that – which was really important to me. And they delivered! Start was early around 6.30 am and after heading out for about an hour, the first blue whale was spotted. There were lots of other boats around though who were not respecting the rules of giving the whale space. So R&TW announced that we would leave and find our own whales. At first I was a bit skeptical – what if we had just left behind the only blue whale we would see today? But no time to worry much: A little later we had already found the next blue whale, and this time we were there all by ourselves. We watched the whale blowing out the water, coming up and down a couple of times, before diving down for the iconic fin picture.

Over the course of the morning we saw about 5 or 6 different blue whales, some very close. On top of that, R&TW spotted a group of hundreds of striped dolphins who were jumping out of the water and even spinning sometimes, like spinner dolphins! On the way back to the harbour, we were lucky enough to observe two huge mating turtles having their fun on the surface next to our boat. The ocean safari was a full success, but it was time to move on to Yala national park for a „normal“ safari.

I had originally planned to stay in Tissa, but changed my mind last minute and continued to Mataragama – closer to the national park I thought, so maybe better for an early start. Mistake! I spent an hour walking around Mataragama, not finding any hostel or seeing any other (western/safari) tourists. I would have found some cheap accommodation in the end, but then would have had to pay the jeep for the safari by myself since there was no one to share with. So in the end I had no choice but to head back to Tissa! There was a hostel there where I immediately met a group of Frenchies who asked me if I wanted to join their tour. Yay!

Next morning it was an even earlier start than for the whale watching: we got picked up at 4.30am and drove to the park entrance where we were one of the first jeeps to drive through the gate when it opened at 6am. We raced to a spot where apparently the jeeps before us spotted a leopard. Unfortunately by the time we were in a good spot, it had laid down in the bushes and you couldn’t really see it anymore. Some people claimed to see it, but come on… Leaves, or furry part of the leopard? I guess if you really believed in it, you saw it. Haha. We continued to drive through the park and saw some nice birds, 2 or 3 elephants, some deer, crocs,… Not much, when you’ve already done a safari in South Africa!

Was the 30€ worth it? Hmm difficult to say. Like this, no, but if we would have seen the leopard nicely, definitely. So it’s up to you if you wanna toss in 30€ and try your luck.