Having completed my Golden Fifty blogs and trilogy of car tales, it is time to dust down the Magic Flying Carpet and take off somewhere warm and exotic again. Boris has taken the brakes off social isolation a little, so perhaps one can dream again about future travels.
My scarf is blue green silk with an abstract pattern quietly saying I am the sea. It is fitting it is small, as I am writing today about very tiny creatures. The scarf is now tied around my head to keep my hair tidy and we are ready for lift off on my very special carpet. We are going back to Sri Lanka.
It’s handy getting to places by this method of travel, no hassle at airports, Covid testing, no setting off alarms with my hip replacements, just a gentle manoevre to miss the palm trees on arrival at Bentota Beach. We are going to visit the original sea turtle sanctuary very near here and play a part in giving some tiny creatures a chance to survive. Twenty five years ago, my family released six baby turtles in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. The journey over the beach from birth on land to sea is very precarious for these tiny babies. It would be nice to think at least one survived and is now of considerable size. When we visited all these years ago, this was truly a sanctuary and conservation project. We released the turtles at a cool time of evening, not a sea eagle in sight and they had the best chance of survival. Sadly, in 2004 the tsunami hit Bentota badly and I fear the sanctuary was wiped out. These days I understand there are more commercial hatcheries all over the island. We visited in happier times.
You will see from the family photo, Grandpa forgot about the waves coming in and ended up with one soggy shoe, but we had three happy grandchildren.
The eldest granddaughter Amber is now a mother herself and her son sent me this card he made last week to accompany a gift of cheese nibbles and a bottle of fizz to help me through isolation. His turtle made of felt pieces reminded me of a happy day long ago.
My necklace came from Portugal, but that’s another story.
Busy Bee, Scarf Face!
Blog 51.