Day 9: Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary

Today we started off with the 18th birthday of Will! He had a special treat today as we went to the chimpansee sanctuary. The sanctuary was a little away as we had to go to the rainforest. Going up the mountain was interesting as the road was very bumpy and steep. The last bit was so steep that we had to walk up until we arrived at the sanctuary. We did the tour through the sanctuary and we were taught all about the individual chimpanzees and how the sanctuary works. We first passed the babies, they were all enclosed and were getting used to life at the sanctuary. Then the older ones, they were 4-8 years old. We saw them get fed potatoes and they were pretty good at catching! They were all huddling together hugging each other and picking flees. Then we got to the teenage chimpanzees and they were a lot bigger and stronger. Their sanctuary was more like the wild and they got fed less times a day than the smaller ones. We also saw them get fed, and the leader got the most potatoes. There was one with a baby! We then moved on to the biggest sanctuary with the oldest chimpanzees and you couldn’t really see all of them so well as they were up in the trees and they had a sanctuary that was 7 acres big. We were lucky though as they were also almost being fed so we got to see a few of them quite well. Written by Hannah

After lunch, we had a short break and then, unbeknownst to him, we had a surprise in the form of a birthday cake for Will. After this, it was back to the minibus for a quick trip to our final concert of the trip. This concert featured a few local choirs, and some solo organ pieces, aswell as Hannah singing with Adelaide accompanying and Revekka, Gabe, Myself and Morgan playing some hymns. Before we left, we received a gift of some jewellery each from Ballanta and then it was back to Papaya for dinner. We ended the night with another cake from the owner of the hotel to wrap up the final full day here. Written by Guy