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Bundala National Park sits on Sri Lanka's southern coast, a stretch of dry scrubland, lagoons and salt pans that was the country's first Ramsar wetland and is recognised by UNESCO as a biosphere reserve and by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area. This tour takes you there for a three-hour jeep safari, collecting you from your hotel in Beruwala and returning you the same evening, with an air-conditioned vehicle and an English-speaking chauffeur for the whole journey.
The park's lagoons and woodland support a striking range of birdlife, and this is really a trip for anyone curious about what gathers at the water's edge. Painted storks stand in loose groups on the grass beside the shallows, purple swamphens pick their way through lily-covered ponds on oversized red feet, and darters perch on bare branches with their wings held open to dry, or cluster in trees with beaks parted against the sky. Hornbills move through the tree canopy, easy to spot by their heavy yellow-and-black casqued bills. Greater flamingos arrive by the thousand when migration is at its peak, part of a bird population that runs to nearly 200 species.
Beyond the birds, Bundala has a quieter reputation for crocodiles: it is the one park in Sri Lanka where both the mugger and the estuarine species can be seen. Small herds of elephants move through the scrub, and the park is also home to deer, wild boar, jackals and other mammals that favour this low country dry zone habitat of lagoons, marsh and coastal dune. Several of Sri Lanka's marine turtle species come ashore along this coastline to nest, adding another layer to a park that rewards patient, close observation rather than a single headline sighting.
On the day, your chauffeur collects you from your hotel in Beruwala at 11am and drives you down to Bundala, arriving at around 1:30pm. You transfer into a safari jeep at the park for the three-hour game drive, then return to your own vehicle for the journey back, reaching Beruwala by around 7pm. Park entrance tickets, transport and the driver's service are included as specified; food, drinks and gratuities are not.
