After, Jay found and asked a 3-wheel driver how much it'd cost to go to the main temple. We liked the price and it was only 2-kilometers from downtown. This place was the first of three times that Buddha visited Sri Lanka. The initial visit was to prevent a war from occurring.
The driver was very young but knowledgeable, so we ended up hiring him to take us more than 14 kilometres to the Sri Lankan aboriginal village too. The 'original' people are darker and have very wild hair. They speak a dialect of Singhala that requires an interpreter. These people were, until very recently, subsistence hunters. Now that they've agreed not to hunt, they count on tourists and crafts to subsist. I wanted to help and agreed to buy a deer-antler ring for $US 3.50. The problem was that we only had a SR 1000 bill ($US10) and no change. Even the village store did not have that kind of cash on hand! We had to travel quite some distance to a shop in a neighbouring village to get change.
I felt a little ill this afternoon, but still managed to walk to an enormous reservoir from which our hotel was named.
Tomorrow, we'll head back towards Minuwangoda. The first part of the trip should be exciting as it's almost directly up into the mountains. There are supposed to be 18 switchbacks as one gains elevation quickly. It's the road that will bring us to Kandy again.