Taxi from Colombo to Yala National Park

A morning in Colombo and an afternoon at a safari lodge is a transaction that sounds straightforward until the arithmetic arrives. Yala National Park sits 305 kilometres away, a drive of about five and a quarter hours when all goes well, and almost nothing about that arrival time — between two and three in the afternoon — aligns with what a visitor actually wants when they reach the lodge. Safaris leave at first light. A car arriving at half past two puts a passenger in the position of checking in, changing out of travel clothes, and settling into an unfamiliar room, all in order to sit a car alarm for four-thirty in the morning. Nobody sleeps well in that pattern and almost everyone tries it anyway, because the alternative is leaving Colombo earlier than feels reasonable or accepting that the journey has eaten the safari day.

The transfer itself is undemanding. The road is good, the route is logical, the landscape changes gradually from city to plain to dry zone, and there are places to stop. What wears on a passenger is not the driving but the shape of it: a long, slow afternoon that delivers you into a schedule rather than out of one. The decision to take this route, and the decision of when to take it, determines far more about the visit than the road distance does. A traveller who leaves without having answered those questions ends up in a lodge bedroom watching the clock at dawn, and that is not the experience the park sells.

The distance, the time, and what arrives between them

Yala lies 305 kilometres south and east of Colombo, along the coast and across the dry plain, and a vehicle covers that in about 315 minutes in ordinary conditions — five hours and a quarter as a door-to-door figure from the city centre to a lodge near the park boundary. That is a realistic rather than a hopeful estimate, and it holds up remarkably well because the route is not congested outside its first and final sections.

• Distance: 305 kilometres, principally along the coastal road and then inland toward Tissamaharama.
• Time: About 315 minutes, or five and a quarter hours, between Colombo city centre and a lodge in the Yala area.
• The shape: An urban exit from Colombo, a long, uneventful coastal run through the south, and a final section through smaller towns and roads approaching the park.
• What the arrival time will do to your evening: Unless the drive begins early or the lodge is close to the highway, the afternoon arrival will collide with a pre-dawn start and leave no good option except to accept a short night.

What this journey does not include is worth noting as clearly as what it does. The figure assumes no stops, or only brief ones, and no delays from weather. A stop for petrol, a meal, and a change of position somewhere in the middle — which is sensible on a journey of this length — adds a working hour. A broken-down truck on a narrow section or a weather closure costs time that does not show in the schedule until it arrives. For a transfer to a safari, where the morning departure happens at a set hour regardless of delays, that missing hour can be the difference between reaching the lodge in time to rest and arriving to check in against the clock.

Leaving Colombo: the first hundred kilometres

The journey begins by breaking out of the capital, which is where almost every long drive on the island starts or ends, and the escape from Colombo city proper is always the slowest part. The Southern Expressway entrance sits on the edge of the city, and once a vehicle is committed to it, the road begins to matter more than the location. Galle Road running south handles much of the traffic, with Marine Drive offering an alternative for drivers trying to avoid congestion, though both routes eventually feed into unpredictable delays depending on the hour.

The time of departure from Colombo is the single largest variable in how the journey unfolds. A midday departure encounters lighter traffic than an early-morning or late-afternoon start. A car leaving at ten in the morning moves steadily through the suburbs and reaches the expressway entrance without the school run complicating things. A car leaving at five or six faces competing traffic and construction delays. For the driver, and for the passenger watching the clock, the pick-up point matters less than the precise timing of departure and the district from which the journey starts — give the hotel name and the specific road rather than a landmark, as the main thoroughfares change names and directions frequently.

Once onto the Southern Expressway itself, the character changes entirely. This is a divided, limited-access road with no settlements crossing it, no junctions to manage, and traffic flowing at a genuine pace. It is fast, uneventful, and exactly what a journey of this length needs at its beginning. Petrol stations and restaurants are available in service areas, though they require pulling off well in advance; a vehicle that tries to stop suddenly pays a price.

A driver planning to stop for food and fuel should do it while the expressway section is available, rather than deferring the choice to the smaller roads further south. Once the expressway gives way to the coast road proper, the service options are smaller, more widely spaced, and less predictable. A traveller committed to reaching Yala in afternoon light has increasingly little flexibility about timing once the main highway ends.

The southern coast road: five hours through changing landscape

The coast road is the main highway through the southern province and it has the character of a provincial trunk route: slower than the expressway, busier than the back roads, and steady for most of its length. Towns arrive and pass. The landscape is green near Colombo and gradually dries out as the south-west recedes and the dry zone begins to assert itself. The road surface is reliable, the line is logical, and there is nothing about the drive that will surprise anybody who has driven a long way in Sri Lanka before.

The advantage of this road, for a transfer to Yala, is that it is the most direct line to the park and it is timed, in the regional planning, for afternoon arrivals. It is not a quick road and it is not meant to be. It is a patient road, and a traveller on it should settle into the same patience. Fighting this route — rushing the driver, watching the clock, trying to eke out a few minutes from the schedule — costs more in stress than any time gained is worth.

Matara, roughly halfway through the journey, is where the landscape begins to change more obviously. The coastal influence starts to fade and the dry zone becomes visible in the vegetation and the colour of the ground. The road narrows past Matara and becomes less of an expressway and more of a working highway, with towns and villages closer together and more junctions to navigate.

The final section toward Tissamaharama and the park is the least predictable part of the drive, not because of congestion but because of the many small roads, junctions and turns that lead toward the park's western gate. This is where a driver's knowledge of the area becomes valuable. Tissamaharama is the town where the final approach to the park begins, and the lodges are spread along the roads outside the park boundary, often a considerable distance apart. A lodge near the town is very different from one toward the park itself in terms of journey time from Colombo, and this distinction should be settled in the booking before the car has left the city.

Why the afternoon arrival is the rule rather than an exception

The 315-minute journey time exists because the route is timed for afternoon arrivals. This is not an accident or a scheduling misfortune. It is deliberate. Safari operations run at dawn because that is when animals move and the light is beautiful. They run in late afternoon for the same reasons. They do not run in the middle of the day. Therefore, a visitor arriving in the afternoon has the evening to settle into the lodge, eat, and sleep, ready for the pre-dawn start. A visitor arriving in the morning has to kill the whole day waiting for the afternoon safari slot, or accept missing the day's activity and doing the morning safari the day after arrival.

The afternoon slot, in consequence, is where most visitors actually arrive and where the lodge schedules are built. It is not a compromise. It is the shape the system has found to work, and working with the shape rather than against it makes the entire trip easier.

There is one alternative and it should be considered before the booking is made. That alternative is to spend the night somewhere between Colombo and Yala — Ella, Udawalawe, or one of the other towns along or near the main routes — and proceed to Yala with more time built into the morning. That adds a night to the trip and it changes the equation, which is why it is not the common choice, but it is worth knowing it exists.

The arrival time and what it costs in sleep

An afternoon arrival at a safari lodge triggers a schedule that runs backwards from the safari departure. Safaris leave at dawn — usually around five or five-thirty in the morning — which means the vehicle is at the lodge gate ready to go at that hour. A passenger arriving at two or three in the afternoon, checking in, unpacking, and eating dinner will do well to be in bed by ten o'clock. Seven hours of sleep is respectable but not generous after a five-hour drive from the city.

That schedule is not as punishing as it sounds, for one specific reason: most people arriving on a mid-morning or midday flight are already jet-lagged. A traveller arriving on a long-haul flight is likely to be waking absurdly early anyway for the first few days, and being asked to be up at four-thirty in order to leave at five is less of a hardship than it appears. The body has already been on an unfamiliar clock for days.

But there is a catch, and it is a real one. The drive itself is tiring, not because it is physically demanding — it is not — but because five hours of road noise and attention-shifting, even in a climate-controlled car, depletes the energy a traveller has to spend. A passenger who has slept on an aircraft and then spent five hours in a car is not at their sharpest at five in the morning, no matter what the body clock says. The first safari morning after an arrival drive is harder than a safari morning after a full night's rest in a stationary place.

That is worth knowing before the itinerary is planned, because it changes the conversation about which activities to attempt on the first day. A visitor arriving in the afternoon and leaving again before dawn is not ideally placed for a full-day safari or strenuous activity. A morning on vehicles in the park is entirely reasonable. A full day of it is ambitious. An evening activity after the afternoon arrival, beyond checking in and eating, is usually asking more of the body than is sensible.

The lodges, and why distance from the highway matters

Yala is not a single destination but a region. The park boundary is where the protected area starts, but the lodges are not at the boundary; they are in the towns and along the roads in the approach area, and they are often a considerable distance apart. Some sit very close to the main route through Tissamaharama, and the drive from there adds only minutes to the total journey. Others are several kilometres down side roads, and the final section is winding and slow.

This distinction, which can seem small on a map, becomes significant after a five-hour drive. A lodge very near the main highway adds only a few minutes to the total journey. A lodge further inland might add another thirty or forty minutes of slower driving. For a traveller trying to reach the lodge in afternoon light and get some rest before a four-thirty start, that difference is not trivial.

It is also relevant to what happens the other way. A safari jeep will deliver a passenger back to the lodge after the morning or afternoon drive, but it will not be the same vehicle that brought them from Colombo. The park uses its own jeeps. A car needs to be arranged for the onward journey from Yala, either to the airport, to another destination, or back to Colombo. A lodge that is close to the main road makes this easier. A lodge that is isolated makes it slightly more complicated, which is fine if the passenger is staying multiple nights but more cumbersome if Yala is a single-night stop.

The nature of the journey, and what it is not

There is no honest way to sell this road as scenically remarkable. It is a working highway through agricultural land that transitions to semi-arid scrub. There are no passes, no gorges, no dramatic coastline revealed at intervals. The south coast is not steep. The land is not varied in the way the hill country is varied. A passenger looking for photographs will search a long time for an obvious one, and any page that promises scenery on this route is selling something.

What the route actually offers is stability. This is the one drive on a Sri Lankan journey where nothing unexpected happens, the road does not demand constant attention, and sleep is available for the passenger who wants it. After a long flight and in advance of a four-thirty wake-up call, that availability of uninterrupted rest is more valuable than any postcard view. The middle of this journey is the place where it is entirely reasonable to sleep, to read, or to stare out the window in a daze, and none of those activities will cost anything in what is being missed.

What to have, what to prepare, and what to leave in Colombo

A journey of five hours in tropical heat, in a car, requires thought that is not exciting but is practical. The difference between comfort and quiet misery is made before the car pulls away from the hotel.

• Water: Drink steadily, before thirst. A cool car conceals how much fluid the body is losing, because nobody notices perspiring in air conditioning. Headaches blamed on the transfer usually belong to water that was not drunk during it, compounded by a flight that had already dehydrated the body. More water than seems necessary is the right amount.
• Sunglasses and sun cream: If stopping to walk or eat outdoors, the sun in the southern coast is bright and not forgiving. Apply cream before the journey and reapply at any stop where the passenger will be outside.
• Light layers: The car itself is cool. Stepping out of it into mid-afternoon heat is a shock to the system. Wearing layers and removing them as needed avoids the sudden thermodynamic argument between air conditioning and outdoor heat.
• A good book or entertainment: The middle of this drive is the place where a book or podcast is worth its weight. This is not a drive that demands conversation or attention. It invites disengagement.
• Comfortable clothes and easy footwear: Hours in a vehicle reward looseness. Tight trousers and formal shoes are exhausting in a way they would not be on foot. Comfort here is not extravagance.
• Charging cables: Five hours is enough time to run a phone battery down, and the road is long enough that having charge is useful rather than optional.
• A change of clothes in an accessible bag: A five-hour drive in tropical conditions produces perspiration. Stepping out of the car into a lodge smelling of the journey, when a shower is available, is the first thing to fix. Bring a change of clothes that can be reached without unpacking everything.

The stop, and where to make it

A sensible journey of five hours includes a stop. Where to make it matters more than it might seem, because the options narrow as the drive progresses and the towns get smaller. The timing of the stop also affects the experience: stopping too early means sitting in traffic near the city, stopping too late means rushing through the second half of the drive.

The expressway section near Colombo has proper service areas and restaurants with controlled parking and amenities designed for travellers. If a stop is going to be made for a proper meal, it should happen there. Once past the expressway and into the coastal road section, the stops are attached to towns and villages, which means getting off the main road and parking somewhere less obvious. They are perfectly fine but they are less controlled and less comfortable than a purpose-built stop, and they require navigating local roads to find them. A stop made early, with options available and the road still fresh, is better than a stop made late out of necessity when fatigue has started to accumulate.

Timing the stop intelligently means reaching it at an hour when food is available and the place is not at a meal rush. A stop at two in the afternoon, between lunch and dinner in Sri Lankan time, produces a very different experience from a stop at one o'clock when every restaurant is at a peak. That is a small detail but it is the difference between a refreshing break and fifteen minutes of waiting.

The stop also provides a natural moment to change position, to walk a few steps, and to reset the body for the second half of the journey. A car that has been moving for three hours is not the place to ask the body to sit still for another two and a half. A fifty-minute stop where the passenger gets out, walks, sits somewhere other than the car, and then resumes, makes the second half considerably easier.

The evening at the lodge, and what it is reasonable to attempt

An arrival at two or three in the afternoon at a safari lodge implies an evening that is already half over. Check-in, unpacking, a shower to clear the drive, and dinner will fill the hours until dark. The lodge is often quiet at this hour, with staff managing other arrivals and departures, so a passenger should not expect an extended orientation or a guided walk around the grounds. An evening safari or a walk around the lodge area is possible but it is ambitious after the journey, and it should only be attempted if the passenger is genuinely rested and interested, and the lodge can arrange it without disrupting the standard departure schedule for the next morning.

The more important evening decision is the one made over dinner: confirming the morning safari departure time, understanding where the lodge vehicle will meet the safari jeep, and settling any logistics that might otherwise surface at four o'clock when the alarm goes off. A lodge staff member should walk through these details clearly, and the passenger should ask without hesitation if anything is unclear. A wrong turn or a misunderstood meeting point at dawn is what ruins a morning safari, not the drive the day before.

Then sleep. An early night is not a failure to make the most of the visit. It is preparing the body for the thing the visit was actually booked for, which is a drive in the park at the hour when animals move and the light is golden. That drive will demand attention, balance, and a clear head. Those arrive from sleep, not from attempting to experience the lodge grounds in the remaining daylight.

The morning departure, and the practicalities of pre-dawn arrival

A safari jeep will arrive at the lodge between four-thirty and five in the morning. This is not negotiable. Safaris leave at dawn, and the vehicle collects passengers in a standard order at a standard time. Being ready and waiting, rather than asking the driver to wait while getting dressed, is what costs nothing and buys civility on both sides.

That means the alarm needs to sound at four o'clock or earlier, depending on how much time the passenger needs to shower, dress, and have some coffee. A lodge that will provide breakfast in a room, or coffee and a biscuit before departure, is a significant convenience that is worth asking about at dinner. A lodge that requires a passenger to find and sit in the dining room at three-forty-five in the morning is not being difficult, but it is asking more than is necessary.

The safari drive itself is not the subject of this page, but the handoff is. A passenger who has been delivered to the lodge by one car, slept in a bed at the lodge, and is now getting into a different vehicle should have clear instructions from the lodge staff about where to wait, what to bring, and what the lodge vehicle is doing with the luggage in the meantime. Luggage usually stays at the lodge — the safari does not require it — and the passenger takes only what is needed for the morning: water, a camera, sun cream, and light layers.

Coming to Yala from elsewhere: the via-Ella option

There is an alternative to the direct drive from Colombo, and it suits some travellers better than others.

Ella is a hill town on the routes toward the central highlands, and it is 115 kilometres and about 180 minutes from Yala. A journey that starts in Colombo, breaks overnight in Ella or Kandy, and continues to Yala the next morning distributes the driving and arrives at the lodge with the passenger better rested. It also places Yala in the middle of a route rather than at the end of a long drive after a flight.

This option is particularly valuable if the trip includes other destinations that are served by the hill roads — Ella itself, Sigiriya, the cave temples of Dambulla — because it makes Yala the next leg rather than a detour. For a traveller who has landed at the airport on a long-haul flight and is heading somewhere in the highlands, pushing all the way to Yala in the same afternoon and then trying to reverse later is inefficient. Visiting the highlands first and coming down to Yala with a rested body and a clear head is a better sequence.

The reverse: returning to Colombo from Yala

A fair number of journeys end with this transfer reversed, and it behaves slightly differently in that direction.

The return to Colombo is the same 305 kilometres and about 315 minutes, and it is primarily a return because the roads are identical. What is different is the state of the traveller. An outbound journey begins after a flight, in order to reach a lodge before dark. A return journey begins after days at the park or around the lodge, in the daylight, and the drive is not part of an imminent deadline.

A return drive should still begin early if the flight home is the next thing on the list, because the coastal road has its slow sections and a traveller should not be pressed for time. But an early start is less urgent when there is no lodge check-in involved and the drive is simply transportation rather than a leg of an itinerary where timing decides everything.

The onward journeys: where the trip goes from Yala

Yala is not the end of most journeys, and the onward options are worth considering before the return leg is booked.

• Back to the airport — 317 kilometres and about 330 minutes. If the flight home is waiting, this is a direct line from the lodge to the departure gate.
• East and north to Ella — 115 kilometres and about 180 minutes. The hill country and the highlands are a complete change of landscape, altitude and temperature, which makes this a sensible next move if several days remain.
• West to Colombo — 305 kilometres and about 315 minutes. The same route in reverse, used by passengers returning to the city for onward connections or to stay near the coast.
• North-west to Negombo — 325 kilometres and about 335 minutes. The northern coastal town, useful if the flight home is a late departure or if the trip ends with beach days before the flight.

Each of these onward routes changes the shape of what remains, and that shape should inform when and how the Yala leg is booked. A traveller who knows they are going to Ella after Yala has a different optimal arrival time than a traveller heading directly to the airport. These details belong in the booking conversation before the first car is even confirmed.

Timing alternatives: the early start and the overnight option

The standard approach — leave Colombo at mid-morning, arrive Yala in the afternoon, sleep, leave before dawn — works because it is built into how the lodges and safari operations schedule themselves. But there are variations that suit different travellers.

An early departure from Colombo, leaving at six or seven in the morning, produces a mid-to-late morning arrival at the lodge. This compresses the afternoon and makes the evening very short, which is only sensible if the passenger is planning to rest completely and is genuinely not interested in any lodge activity. But it removes the question of what to do with an evening. Breakfast in Colombo and lunch at the lodge, then bed, then safari, is a shape that some travellers prefer.

The opposite approach is leaving later, at midday or early afternoon, arriving closer to dusk, and catching the light at the lodge or in the immediate surroundings. This buys evening time but it compresses the night into fewer hours before the four-thirty start. It works only for travellers who genuinely do not need much sleep or who are not concerned about arriving at the safari slightly tired.

The third alternative is the overnight departure: leaving Colombo in the evening, driving through the night, and arriving in the early morning in time to rest for a few hours before the mid-morning or midday safari. This works for night drivers and it turns Yala into a next-day experience rather than a same-day arrival. It is not common because most visitors are already managing jet lag and do not want to spend their first nights in a car, but it suits some travellers who can sleep in vehicles and who want the first thing at the lodge to be a proper night's sleep rather than an early arrival.

The booking: what to say, and when

Three different products cover the shape of this trip, and choosing the right one prevents confusion at the crucial moments.

A straight one-way transfer from Colombo to a lodge — drop off and the journey ends — is a one-way taxi booking. That is correct if the passenger has arranged everything at the lodge end and does not need the car to wait or to be coordinated with anything else.

The return journey from the lodge back to Colombo, the airport, or another onward destination is a separate one-way booking. These should be coordinated so that the driver and lodge both know when the departure is expected, but they are logistically independent.

A multi-day booking that covers the entire journey — airport to lodge, days on the ground with the same car available, and then onward — is different from two separate one-way transfers, because it keeps the same driver and vehicle throughout. This is useful for a traveller who might want the car available for a mid-day need or who does not want to renegotiate transport after arrival.

When making any of these bookings, four pieces of information solve most problems:

• The lodge name and the specific road or area where it is located. Lodges are spread out and several can have similar-sounding names. Being specific prevents the driver arriving at the wrong place.
• The flight number, if this is part of an airport transfer. A driver can track a flight and adjust for delays. A time-based booking that the aircraft did not cooperate with is not the driver's fault and it is not easily fixed.
• What time the safari is booked for. The lodge needs to know when the safari driver will collect the passenger in the morning, so it can ensure the vehicle is waiting at the right time. A missed coordination here is the easiest way to ruin a morning.
• The return journey time, if the booking includes it. Does the car need to arrive at the airport at a specific time? Does it need to arrive at another lodge by a certain hour? Forward planning avoids a panicked phone call on the morning of departure.

Giving the lodge staff the driver's phone number and ensuring they have yours creates a line of communication if anything changes. A flight delay, a early safari time, a change of departure — these can all be managed with a simple phone call if the information is already on both ends.

The arrival at Yala, and what distinguishes a smooth one from a panicked one

A well-coordinated transfer ends with the vehicle arriving at the lodge gate at the expected time, the passenger stepping out with their overnight bag, and the driver and lodge staff shaking hands on a job completed. A poorly coordinated one ends with confusion about which road leads to which lodge, a late arrival in poor light, and a passenger checking in while the sun is setting and nobody is very certain what happens next.

The difference is made by information, not by the road or the vehicle. A driver who knows where the lodge is, how to find it, and what time the passenger is expected will find it. A driver working from a vague description and a passenger who is not certain which lodge they have booked will do so anyway, but later and with more stress.

That is why the booking information — the lodge name, the road it is on, the phone number if needed — is not administrative overhead. It is the difference between a transfer that feels accomplished and one that feels slightly combative, and the traveller notices that difference in how the evening unfolds.

Practicalities: weather, support, and route planning

Seasonal weather and how it affects the drive

The south coast and the dry zone south-east of Colombo have seasonal weather patterns that affect the drive, though less dramatically than they affect activities in the park itself. The south-west monsoon, which runs roughly from May to September, brings rain to the south coast and transforms the landscape into vivid green, fed by the daily downpours. The road is not closed and it does not become impassable, but it becomes wetter and slower. A drive that is 315 minutes in dry conditions might take twenty or thirty minutes longer if the road surface is wet and the visibility is reduced by spray from other vehicles. The dry season, from December to April, produces excellent visibility and quick driving, with the landscape drying out and the light becoming sharper and clearer. The inter-monsoon periods, March-to-April and October-to-November, are in between, with variable weather but lighter traffic and often the best driving conditions overall. None of this is a reason to cancel the journey, but it is information worth having when booking the transfer time and planning the lodge arrival hour.

Phone signal and roadside support

The south coast road is a main route and it is reasonably well-served with phone coverage, petrol stations, and roadside help. This is not a remote drive. A vehicle with a breakdown will not be stranded for hours, and a passenger needing to make a phone call or send a message can usually do so without traveling far.

Roadside assistance is valuable on a long drive for peace of mind more than for likelihood. A journey of 305 kilometres is long enough that a mechanical failure becomes a real problem if the car cannot be repaired quickly. Booking a transfer with a driver who has access to roadside support — through a taxi service with insurance, or through a driver who has arranged their own — is marginally better than booking a car from an unknown driver with no backup arrangement.

It is also worth asking the driver, at the start of the journey, about their plan for the route: which roads they will use, where they plan to stop, approximately when they expect to arrive. A driver who can explain their route is demonstrating that they have thought about it, and a driver who plans to reach a specific town at a specific time is more likely to arrive punctually than one who is flying without a plan.

Is this route right for this trip?

Not every traveller should do this route on this schedule, even if Yala is a genuine destination they want to see. This route is right if the traveller is planning to spend at least two nights at Yala, because that distributes the travel and makes better use of the time spent getting there. It is right if the onward journey from Yala is planned, because it places Yala in the middle of a journey rather than at the end of a dead-end drive. It is right if the traveller has slept reasonably well the night before and is not already jet-lagged and exhausted, because a five-hour drive into a four-thirty start is genuinely demanding.

This route is not right if the traveller is planning to spend only one night at Yala before moving on, because the travel time compresses the actual time on the ground. It is not ideal if anyone in the party finds long drives difficult or tiring. The alternative, for a traveller with limited time or who is already tired, is to break the journey overnight in a hill town or other intermediate stop, arriving at Yala in the second day of the journey with more rest accumulated.

The transfer: what it is and what it is not

The drive from Colombo to Yala is straightforward but the schedule it creates is not. The transfer is not difficult, but it is long, and it delivers a passenger into a timetable rather than out of one. A traveller who understands this, who builds an itinerary around it rather than against it, and who accepts the constraint of the afternoon arrival while benefiting from the early-morning start will have a better visit than one who fights the schedule and hopes for a miracle.

The journey itself is a minor part of why anyone takes this route. What matters is the morning in the park, the animals, the light, and the shape of the days that follow. The 305 kilometres and the five and a quarter hours are the price of entry to that, not the experience itself. The transfer is long but it is not difficult, and it is undemanding once the decision about timing is made. Pay the price clearly and consciously, understanding what the afternoon arrival will cost and what the early start will demand, and the experience will be better for it.