Another half an hour’s ride through little towns, over rivers and through the jungle brings us to the Madu River. Here we will see lots of wildlife and visit a cinnamon island to see how they grow and cultivate cinnamon.
We each get a bottle of water for our ride, and good thing too, because we’ll need it. It is sweltering out here – hot and about 1000% humidity. The boat we are in has no roof, so it’s sunscreen and hat time for certain.
We all clamber into the little boat (some clamber easier than others) and set off among the mangroves. We actually go right through this neat little mangrove cove, as Prabarth narrates our journey.
Out in the open water, we pass by shrimp farms and view all the little islands and fishing villages that make up this scenic river basin.
We crawl out of the boat at Cinnamon Island and walk up these treacherous stairs to see the cinnamon demonstration. Its really neat how they strip the cinnamon of it’s bark, then use a special tool to cut the sticks. They then sort of attach the sticks to each other in a long row and dry them for a week to 10 days to get the stick version of the spice we use all the time. The guy demonstrating the technique for us actually holds the stick between his toes for leverage while he peels the bark. Wild!
Back on the boat, we retrace our steps, along the way finding a couple of water lizards, a beautiful blue kingfisher and an iridescent blue jelly fish – none of which you can really see well in the photos.
Back on land, we thankfully climb into the air conditioned bus heading for our last stop: Fort Galle.
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