Monday, March 27, 2023 - Colombo, Sri Lanka

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March 27 – Colombo, Sri Lanka – Day 3 

Today’s tour is to a tea plantation. We’ve heard great things about this tour from friends that took the tour over the last two days. 

We are in a mini-van today that is definitely made for the smaller bodies of the Sri Lankans. We are back to a guide whose English is barely recognizable. We started out with him showing us everything we’d already seen in the included tour, but finally we headed out of the city towards the tea plantation. The guide had never been to the plantation, nor had the driver. The guide was relying on written notes trying to explain about the tea and the harvesting and processing. 

We had been told by the ship that photos would not be allowed inside the factory, but our guide encouraged us to take as many photos as we wanted. Once on the plantation, we were also given a demonstration of how latex is harvested from the rubber trees. This particular plantation grows tea, rubber trees, and palm oil palms.

The tea are the smaller bushes. What look like dead trees are alive and will grow again. These taller trees provide filtered sunlight for the tea.

These are rubber trees.

Below are terraces that have been planted with a creeper that will put nitrogen back into the soil. After a year with the creeper, new tea plants will be put in.

HA = hectare.

2.5 acres to a hectare.

Milking a rubber tree for latex. The tree will last about 30 years.

Rubber trees and fallow tea fields.

Demonstration of picking tea.

Just the tips of each branch are pulled off. About 3-5 leaves.

The light green leaves are what get harvested.

Slightly dried green leaves are rolled in this machine.

What comes out of the machine is then

Put on these tables about 2" thick and here they ferment and become black tea.

This is all Orange Pekoe.

Different color bin indicates different quality of tea.

Green tea is the 1 leaf at the tip and is dried, but not rolled or fermented.

Just the countryside in the region of the tea plantation.

After touring the factory, we were taken to the Superintendent’s Bungalow for tea and cake. But the driver got lost between the factory and the Bungalow and had to backtrack on a one-lane dirt road. 

The plantation itself was very interesting and we could see women in the tea plants harvesting as we left. The terrain in the hills where the tea grows was quite beautiful. As we got to the port area, our driver was taking us through a portion of the port that we had not seen in the last two days of tours. We believe he was trying to deliver us to a different cruise ship that was docked all the way across the harbor from us. Another 15 minutes of driving through the port and we made it back to our Viking home. Needless to say, neither the guide nor the driver received a tip from us. That was one of our more “interesting” excursions.