There are two campgrounds at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and ranger Phil, who lives in the house with hybrid energy supply to be photographed, is at the one near the ocean.
This is reached using an unpaved, winding, often steep road going through the centuries old forest.
It was decided to move the Fuso Szulc to that area to have more easy access to the house.
Guided by Ranger Phil in his State Park 4x4 Dodge truck equipped with red and green flashing lights and two long rifles.
This was the caravanserai negotiating the challenging road.
Ranger Phil stopping all oncoming traffic and ordering them to the side of the narrow road to facilitate the Fuso Szulc easy driving of the difficult road.
Eventually, almost at ocean level, the booth for the park entrance was reached where Park ranger Monique was met.
Monique’s mother is from Sri Lanka and within minutes the desire and love for Ceylon tea was shared.
And past experiences of visits to the island of Sri Lanka.
Remembering the experience when staying in a hotel in the town of Anuradhapura on the island of Sri Lanka, there was a knock on the door.
Opening the door there were three viciously looking men and two of them were armed with automatic weapons.
They were security police and the order was to get the luggage ready and to come along to Colombo, the capital of the island.
Also the driver and his car with who the journey until then had been made on the beautiful island were ordered to come.
A difficult situation because in the luggage were documents that could endanger the freedom and wellbeing of several Sri Lanka people.
Half way the long journey from Anuradhapura to Colombo the agents were asked if a stop could be made in a roadside hotel to take a shower and to put on clean clothes.
This was allowed and with the suitcase in the hotel room first it was tried to flush the documents down the toilet.
There were too many papers though and the toilet looked like getting blocked.
Therefore the documents were placed under the mattress expecting it to take awhile before they would be found.
It was deep into the night when the party arrived in Colombo.
The agents went straight to a large villa on the border of the city.
This was there headquarters and in one corridor they had prison cells where men in chains were held.
A most friendly man, who later claimed he had been trained by the CIA in the USA, explained they wanted to know the details of the journey.
What were the motives of the trip?
Who had been met and why.
But giving any information was refused.
The driver of the car was brought in.
The CIA-clone shouted at him and started to beat him up.
If the foreign visitor didn’t want to answer the questions his driver would pay the price.
Immediately it was made clear that questions would be answered.
No sense to rough up the innocent driver.
A deal was made that the next morning the Ambassador of the Netherlands would be informed of the arrest and after the interrogation could begin.
Fortunately the night didn’t need to be spend in the dungeons of the villa.
Being still a tourist officially without any evidence yet of the contrary a room in a nearby hotel was booked.
A comfortable room but outside the door a soldier with a machinegun was posted.
The next morning a man from the hotel brought breakfast and informed the guest was front-page news.
With him he had the national Sri Lanka newspaper and indeed on the front page was the headline news:
“Dutch national arrested on spying charges”.
It is a story too long for a blog to tell how it ended.
But it can be revealed that obviously the Sri Lanka authorities expelled the visitor as a “persona non grata”.
But the same authorities were unaware that all the pictures made, got safely out of the country as well.
Included a nice shot of the CIA-clone.
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