Horton Plains

Horton Plains is a park where you can go hiking, see the World's End and go for a dip in a wonderful waterfall. We went there on March 28th. We left early in the morning to beat the hot afternoon sun and the crowds. It is a beatiful park. It reminded me of Saskatchewan a lot. There are not many places in Sri Lanka that are without the jungle, Horton Plains is one of them. Because most of us have a resident visa we got in for 27 Rs. For tourists it was just over 1500Rs. It is incredible the difference in price. Tourists have to pay sooo much more. This picture is of the foreigners bathroom door. It made me laugh. I guess if they have to pay that much they should get their own bathroom.

This is the entrance gate where we start our journey. We started out early in the morning to beat the heat. The afternoon sun here is very strong and hot.

The first part of the hike was easy because there is a fairly wide trail to follow. Soon after we had started we came across the biggest catapillar I had ever seen. The foot in the picture is Rebecca's. She wears a size big...I can't remember exactly, something like an eight and a half I think. So the point is that it is not a child's foot!

These are some of the amazing rock formations along the path. The rock is granite but there is also a lot of quartz in the area. The path was often full of small sparkly pebbles. It was really neat. The granite had been worn smooth by the rain and being walked on for so long. In many places it was smooth bumps like you see in the picture below.

So no one told me that there were two World's Ends. There was a Mini World's End and a Greater World's End. When we were there the sky was clear and so was the valley below. Sometimes there is a mist in the valley that rises up the mountain until it looks like you are standing at the edge of the world, were it flat. I was kind of sad that we didn't get to see that. Maybe we can go another time.

This is R-L: Murray, Kyle, Blossom and Jackie at Mini World's End.

We then reached Greater World's End...I came, I conquered. It was an amazing view from up there. I noticed that there was another trail leading further up the mountain so I decided to follow it.

Murray followed me and we both went up to the very peak of the mountain. It was incredibly hot up there but an even better view of the towns below. This is our victory picture.

Nice sweat eh?

So you are probably wondering why they call it Horton Plains? Well here's the plains.

This little stream reminded me so much of Saskatchewan. When I look at it I get homesick. You'd never know that I took that picture in Sri Lanka. It was really trippy walking around looking at the plains, feeling the wind blowing gently. I almost felt like I was home.

The next stop on the trail was Baker Falls. This is where the trail became a little harder. Rebecca didn't come down to the falls because she was carrying Micah in the carrier and she didn't want to risk falling with him. It took me a long time because I was having a little sun stroke from climbing to the peak of the mountain before. Once I got down to the falls I felt better because it was cooler. We put our feet in the water, it was freezing cold.

The falls were very beautiful.


Esther and Blossom chilling on the rocks. Murray disappeared for a while (not unusual) so I thought that I would go look for him because he often has found something cool. Well I noticed a group of Sri Lankans looking down the rest of the falls so I went to check it out. Well I found Murray. He was at the bottom swimming and apparently the people watching found it entertaining to see a white man swimming in his underwear! Murray is the speck at the bottom of the falls inbetween the rocks.

This is all of us on the way home. We were pretty tired. We had been hiking for 5 hours. It was great fun though. I'd like to go back to Baker Falls to hang out and maybe see if we could see World's End with the mist. That would rock.