Women and Power Tour Sri Lanka in style: The last days of the Conference and Galle

Thurdsay 16th October

Meditation and yoga started the day for some brave souls.
It was back to business and more conference presentations. Thelma discussed the thick and thin of life whilst Elaine was focused on risk taking - will we or won't we? Sue I. hit a few chords with the challenges of micromanagement and stories of survival. Anne and Sue H. talked us through some topics we all find challenging - wills, protecting our assets and advance care planning. All very thought provoking, and the discussion made much richer by the personal stories shared.

We lunched at Fortaleza: pate, mezze platter and coconut panacotta for me. Not exactly traditional fare but delicious. And the ginger lime fizzes cooled us down beautifully.

Next was the cool white buildings of the Galle fort spa. Following a talk by Juliet about the medicinal properties of cinnamon and lots of other herbs chaos ensued. Some of us checked out the wares of the Ozzie Swim shop manufactured in Sri Lanka but sold in Noosa. Then we all had the pleasure of a foot massage or some reflexology. With smiles on our faces and our feet smelling sweet we descended upon the Fort jewelery shops. There was much advice given about selection from an endless array of options...and much justification about the money spent! Including that we were generously investing in the future of Sri Lanka!

As we wandered around there was no chance of getting lost as the Fort only has five streets and lots of lanes.

One of the magnificent old colonial buildings was our location for dinner: Amangalla.
Huge rooms with high ceilings and heavy wooden furniture reminded us of the history of the area. Another beautiful dinner including twice backed cheese souffle, beetroot and feta salad and chocolate flan.
Home to bed to collapse!

Friday 17th October

Sadly the last day of the Conference had finally rolled around. Deb got us started discussing back pain in all it's glory. The mind body dichotomy seemed to feature in many stories.
Then Kerryn and I collaborated to present a session on - wait for it! - collaboration. As there had been minimal creative arts involved in the conference we thought we would test everyone's capacity for creativity and collaboration by getting each small group to build towers using only marshmallows and skewers - all I can say about that is VERY interesting!!

There had been a lot of interest expressed in social media including blogs, twitter, Facebook and more so we spent an hour trying to get our heads aroundso many options. Then, following a discussion about the future of the conference, Jenny officially closed it. Mind you, she did feel that she had to ask whether we wanted another one! How silly!

After lunch a group set off to learn more about the joys of the famous Ceylon tea - here's a report from Sue H.:

Handungoda Tea Estate is where we met Herman .He showed us the tea estates - tea is from a form of camellias , introduced by the British
The estate is well known for the white virgin tea which is picked by girls in latex gloves, face masks, hats and lab coats. They never touch it with bare hands, and small embroidery type scissors are used to cut the tea bush leaves. Why ? Was inspired by an old legend and the fact that leaves and flowers
We had oolong tea on the verandah of Hermans house , then black tea sweetened with cinnamon. Beautiful tropical gardens, flowers, birds etc. Then down to the tea processing area at original machines, some over 145 years old . We saw cinnamon being harvested from the cinnamon branches . elderly men carefully peeled layers of bark . We then went to the retail shop. There were about 20 teas to taste..meanwhile it rained and rained and has continued since!

Some had been picked using tiny scissors so the tea wouldn't take on the smell of the person who picked it.

The rest of us, who will be seeing endless tea plantations later in the trip, chose to do a bit more pampering: facials, manicures and pedicures were the order of the day. We experienced the silkiness of cocoa beans paste being spread over our faces: smelt delicious and made our skin shine!

For the final Conference dinner everyone put on their gladrags, including those with superb saris. There were apparently some challenges in remembering how to drape the 7 metres of fabric so they didn't look like a mummy. Thanks to Prashani, one of our local guides, they all looked very glamorous.

It seems that every night the restaurants are more fabulous than the night before. Despite the continuous monsoonal rain we sat on huge verandahs at an even larger and more stunning colonial dwelling called the Sun House. The rain poured down into deep blue tiled drains that ran through a lovely garden with lights in the trees. Stunning SL food was provided with the usual endless array of curries: pineapple, pork, beef, chicken, beetroot, dhal, spinach and even a curry made entirely of garlic! It was very sweet and delicious, although we thought everyone needed to eat it to avoid anyone being overwhelmed by garlic breath.