Farewell Musandam!

Last weekend we went up to the Musandam in Oman, via Dibba on the East Coast of the UAE. Friends had organised for 15 of us to overnight on a Dhow with a night dive on the Friday night, and 3 dives on Saturday.
I'm usually not a fan of night diving, but this was spectacular! The phosphorescence made the boat waves look illuminous green, and as we pulled up under an overhang in a dive spot called The Caves, a crocodile fish leaped up and over the water making sparks of green in the pitch darkness!

The next morning we were up early (an hour later than planned due to the post dinner antics!) and we hit the water. As we came up from our first dive, the other group were whooping and were totally over excited as they'd seen a whale shark! It was even one of the divers FIRST dives as a certified diver! Our friend Alex, who is an uber instructor

extroadinaire, and pretty much taught most of us to dive or has certified some of us at one time or another, had decided to sit that dive out! Bahahaha!

 The next dive we did, an hour an a half away just before lunch time, David, Kelly and I were hanging out looking under overhangs at some huge bat fish when I heard Kelly ting ting ting on her tank ... non stop! I turned to see if she was OK and this MAHUSIVE shadow loomed past us. A stunning 5 + meter whale shark had come to see us off! We were about 15m down and the three of us swam to catch up again and watch this majestic creature glide past us with a whole school of hanger ons ... !

An amazing experience ... oh - and Alex missed this dive too!!!

Thank you for that amazing farewell Musandam!

Location, Location, Location!!!

Madagascar 

Madagascar is the massive island off the east coast of Africa, separated from Africa by the Mozambique Channel. It is well known that Madagascar is ruled by a cute lemur called King Maurice.

Nosy Be

Nosy Be is an island about 35km from coast to coast, Ironically named "Big Island" when translated from the local Malagasy language. It is located in an archipelago on the North West tip of Madagascar.

The Local Area - Hell-Ville town and Ambatoloaka

The main town of Nosy Be is called Hell-Ville for reasons unknown to me. There is a landing strip and a little terminal building that passes for an International Airport! The area that we will first move to is the south west corner near the village of Ambatoloaka overlooking Crater Bay (Port de Cratere)

I love it when a plan comes together!

We're at our happiest and best when we're either camping on the beach, 

snorkelling and scuba diving. 

or cooking up a storm being creative in the kitchen - just for us, or for our friends and family.

Its the best way to forget the stresses of daily life and just enjoy what nature and the world has to give us.

One night we were sitting in our lounge just looking around at all our 'stuff' - 5 laptops (3 personal and 2 for work), 4 smart phones (personal and work), an iPad, a Play Station, 50" plasma TV ..... and we asked ourselves ... What do we need all this 'stuff' for?  

We buy it because we can .... its what everyone else has too!

But what if we changed how we lived our lives and went from this technology age, back to a simpler way of life? 

This got us thinking into an alternative way of living. I'd had an allotment in the UK, we grew vegetables in pots in our garden in Dubai, David spear fishes and selects the best and biggest fish which we use to either feed us and a group of our friends, or to use for days in different dishes from just plain fillets, to fish cakes or curries, and then use the left overs to make fish stock.

What if we took these basic skills that we love using and put them to good use?

Can we survive a downscale from a pretty privileged lifestyle that we have earned through a lot of hard work and excellent education, to a subsistence lifestyle in a country with intermittent or sometimes completely lacking supply of electricity and no running water at times?

We think we can.......

We're about to embark on our adventure to Nosy Be, Madagascar!

Daydream!

So while we are pulling this adventure together, we have to tie up our current lives - quit our jobs, give notice on our rented home, decide what to take - what do we really need? - what to store and how on earth we are going to sort our banking out for the year or so we are away! Some parts are fun, some are just pure frustration ..... but on my desk at work, I've stuck a few things that keep me going .......

David's already started the boasts on Facebook as we get geared up with things we're going to need on a 35km big island, when we need to travel and explore further than a few km's ....

and maybe we can use this to charge our batteries for our torches! Keeping it green where we can .....