The Great Escape!: March 2013

Wow! Its really slow with wifi trying to upload pics and the blog, hence the delay. So the below is an account from the first 2 weeks here .... and we're just about to complete our third!

Its long and I have tried to put pics in where they upload!!

We'll try just keep posting small things on FB too!

As I sit here and type I can hear the usual tease of the afternoon ... distant rublimg thunder. The tease is we are dying for it to rain

- its SO FREAKIN HOT!!! Poor David has seriously been melting! We wait til 5 everyday in the hopes we may get some rain!

Luckily March is the hottest month so it should start cooling off soon.

Coming from Dubai you say - oh, you must be used to it. AC yes ....

Apart from the heat, we awake each day to perfect blue skies and sunshine. David said the colour of the sky is really where they get the name sky blue from!

One rooster starts crowing at 4am .... oblivious to the real break of day!

So what have we been up to? Its tempting to put a day by day, hour by hour log - just to make you really jealous, but that would get tedious for us all!

So we'll mention some of the highlights:

Arriving at Nosy Be airport with no idea if Mohammed - Ross (our temporary landlord)'s business partner was going to fetch us or not. Standing waiting for baggage, we were offered a taxi and declined saying our friend was fetching us. The guy could clearly see we were a little concerned as our 'friend'wasn't there yet. He asked his name ... he says -

Mohammed with the boat called salama djema? Yes! Thats the one. 2 mins later I"m handed a cell phone and Mohammed is on the other end, on his way - the plane was on time, never happens!!

The start of realising we're on a small island!

On the way to Ross's place we asked to stop in Hellville to pick up some supplies and change some euro's to Ariary - the local currency. We stopped at a stall across the road from the bank in the centre of town and we told we get the best exchange rate from 'mama money'! With the cops standing on the corner watching we waved to a lady sitting under a beach umbrella with her handbag, who hopped into the car and quite happily exchanged EUR 1000 with us - which came out to be Ar 2, 800, 000! Loadsa money!!!

Up, UP UP to Ross's house. I had on my 8kg back pack, a 5 litre box of wine in one hand and a small box of supplies in the other .... I could NOT make it up the stairs.

I left the supplies - not the wine of course. Lovely Nena, the house guardian then carried all our stuff up - thats 85kg's in total! At least he broke a sweat by the end.

Oh - and Niks and Ry - the head torches have been Legen ... wait for it - DARY! So useful and used every night! Even the night we had our first dinner party, the guys were anxious to get back before sunset as one of the kids is almost totally blind. We said don't worry - we have a solution and when we walked down the hill, we put a head lamp on his head and he could see like it was day light!

So no running water at Ross's place ... or electricity. We had a gas cooker, one frying pan and two kettles. We boiled any pasta, veg, potatoes etc in the one kettle, and used the other to boil the lake water out the barrel for washing dishes, cleaning teeth and for coffee in the mornings.

To shower or flush the loo we'd hook a bucket of water from the barrel and keep it in the bathroom. There was a makeshift shower, so we'd sit on a little stool and let it drizzle over our heads, catching the run off in a small tub on the floor which we'd use to chuck down the loo to flush it.

Saved Nena having to lug 25kg barrels of water up those stairs all too often. Shame - he was so concerned every night that we used candles and our head torches instead of using the solar lights for a few hours every night! He couldn't get why we'd be happy to sit in the dark when we had working lights!

We did have a little friend Boubelle, nena's little dog to keep us company at least! He was so sweet and if we were out at night when it got dark, he'd wait at the bottom of the path for us and walk us home!

The town of Ambataloaka (am - bat - aloo - ka) was so much more than we were expecting!! It had a row of small stalls and restaurants, including an awesome pharmacy and a few small hotel / b and b's.

The beach is amazing there, with the coral and fish life making you feel like you're swimming in an aquarium. The water temp is, as Wendy would describe it, in your skin! Its neither hot nor cold, just perfect. Even at 7am! Bliss! The spearfishng isn't all that good close in, although we've had four days with fish for protein, Davids really keen to buy our boat so we can go further out to find the real fish!

I got the garden going, recycling water bottles to make seedling trays, along with two washed up calabash pods from the beach. So far two tomoatoe plants have sprouted, yay!

On Sunday we were going househunting with Mohammed. We were sitting down the hill in town waiting for him to fetch us, and we noticed how dressed up everyone was. Really - Sunday Best!

It was so sweet. Obviously Sundays here are still a special day. And then Mohammed told us why! After we'd done house hunting, he was going to go and watch the local bare fisted boxing in the town Dzamandzar, and after that was heading to Tatie Chris. Everyone goes to Tatie Chris on a Sunday from 4pm.

In our ignorance we tried to figure out the meaning of this word ... maybe it was some religious thing ... Mohammed had said everyone heads to the one place on the beach every Sunday.

4pm, we were strolling down the beach in the direction we were told, we caught up with one of the vendors we had chatted to a few times, Homar (French so don't say the H!). Funny how we leave Dubai and the first two guys we meet are Muslim!

So get close to tatie chris and realise - its the name of a bar! A pumping, packed bar.

Outside on the beach young guys are practising their flick flacks and summer saults, families are sitting on the beach picnicking, others are playing volley ball, a DJ is turning out the tunes and its absolutely festive. And this is EVERY Sunday! The whole town, young and old, spend Sunday afternoon til closing at Tatie Chris. Food vendors are cooking and selling chicken or fish with

coleslaw. We bought two chicken legs - Oh my! Free range is certainly different! Huge and lots of meat, tougher texture but way more flavour.

One morning David met up with one of the youngster pirogue fisherman, Roberto who is 19, to go spear fishing together. Roberto used my fins and mask and one of Davids spare guns. The boys splashed about for ages close to shore and only got a few very small fish - still bigger than Roberto's hand line fishing usually gets. Then we all jumped into his pirogue, with another friend of his, Fred, who is 12, and paddled out to another reef further out.

After four hours Fred and I were BORED and I was nuked by the sun. David was over no big fish so the three of us swam back to shore and Roberto stayed out collecting urchins which he could sell for some good money.

I stupidly stood on an urchin close to shore, the bastard stuck 5 spears in my foot and it was incredible how the locals helped!

As I sat down and Fred saw whats was going on, he said - papaya! and Hit!! Hmmmmm. Off he scampered. Along came an old man who was selling oysters, he saw what was going on and started to try and explain something to me - I said, papaya and actioned to hit, and told him the small boy had gone to get it. He said yes yes! (all in French by the way!)

Fred returned with a small unripe papaya, the old man tapped it with a knife in a few spots until this milky substance came out of the skin, which he dripped over all the spikes in my foot.

Then he takes a rod like seed from the mangroves thats washed up and literally whacks the spikes in my foot and toes!! Four were ok, one was so flipping sore I actually cried.

Fred scampers off again and comes back with some rolls for us to distract me!

Now this kid, doesn't go to school, only makes a tiny bit of money a day from selling small little fish he catches in Robertos pirogue is buying food and sharing it with us! So humbling.

These rolls were delish! Made out of doughnut batter and stuffed with shredded cucumber and carrot with some fierce chilli (pilli pilli).

So Mohammed found us this cool little cottage in Palm Beach. Its a row back from the beach, so about a 2 minute walk, and there are 6 houses on the property. Four little cottages like ours, all clustered together, which are mostly empty majority of the time, one larger house which Sers, the landlord lives in, and one three bed house, that is used occasionally by his brother who owns the place

and lives in France. Its perfect - secure, great people, the right size for us, and means when people come over, you can stay in one of the spare holiday cottages across from us!

The property backs onto rice paddies and is just so peaceful and quiet and green and luscious. The garden is stunning and tropical, with papaya and bananas growing with brightly coloured Hibiscus bushes. Divine.

Sers was also happy for us to put a vegetable garden in and we want to make a little private courtyard off our front deck so when our shipment arrives we can set up our little 'back yard' with all our things and have a bit of privacy.

I love the afternoons here as around 3pm everyday Sers herds his ducks out of their pen and you hear them quack quack quack as they waddle in a straight line from the back garden to near us and then they start foraging and swimming in the little stream out back. So cute.

There's also a dog here we call Scaredy Dog, for obvious reasons, 2 cats and some chickens. And on some days a baby Zebu (cow) comes and grazes in the front garden!

Next door also has a puppy which we're trying to steal ... I mean adopt .... and look after during the day when they're not there!!!

T he other night we had a bit of rain - finally! David and I sat on the grass in the garden with the rain falling down cooling us, drinking beer! Perfection!

On Saturday, Ross - our first landlord who is in town for a couple of weeks, invited us to go with him, Mohammed and Bob the manager from Manga Be (a little resort down the road from us) to go and check out one of his camps based in Lokobi, a nature reserve on the tip of Nosy Be, directly across from the small island Nosy Komba where we stayed with Cath before (Geoffs sister).

Ross suggested that David and I used one of his kayaks and paddle back to Hellville, so we did! We had a bit of a problem steering, and it was pretty windy, but all in all we managed to paddle the 5 or so km's!!

The worst thing though, was that we had Davids spear fishing bag strapped to the back using a weight belt, and sometime during our paddle it slipped off and we lost it.

We spent over an hour searching with no luck. So not only is it the gear - around EUR 700 worth of it, but our source of protein from catching fish.

Last night we walked over to Tatie Chris - Sunday! We met up with Ross and he got chatting about David losing his bag - we'd told his boat crew staff wehn we arrived back from the paddle. Ross said he has a friend who could help, as there is a diving research centre

on Lokobi who like practising searching for things, so we could get them involved and they would probably search for free! So thats the plan, we've been in touch and probably tomorrow (Tuesday) we will take a crew of people out and do a number of searches and hopefully retrieve the gear.

On the walk home in the dark from Tatie Chris we saw a little brown snake - our second of the day! I spotted a 1.5m snake in Sers garden while I was doing the washing, and its living in the bamboo pile next to our cottage!

Awesome! Sers just brought us a mahusive papaya! He is so lovely! So glad we moved here!

So today we are going to build our screen for our courtyard / backyard, and plant some more pots. As well as the two tomato plants that have germinated, we now also have 6 radishes! Wohoo!

Off to forage for poles and leaves to make the screen.

Will keep you posted on the spearfishing gear and our next adventures....... A Bientot! See you later.

OK - start of week 3!!!

We didn't manage to find Davids gear, after 3 hours with 4 of us searching. maybe it will still turn up. On one of our walks we found another dive centre and met the owner, a lovely French lady Sylvia who has lived here for 15 years!
We got chatting to her and she had a pair of free diving fins that happened to be Davids size, which she sold to us for EUR 25! Result! She also lent David mask, snorkell and a weight belt until our shipment arrives! So so nice of her!

We snorkell and swim a LOT! The locals think we're a bit mad as we swim out to all the little islands off Nosy Be - Nosy Tanga and Nosy sakatia so far. Means we spend 4 - 5 hours a day in the water. We have fins so it makes it easier. No big fish close in, but sized enough for a couple of meals for us whcih is what we need, and the coral is amazing ......!
My stupid 'waterproof'new camera got wet ... yes! Ridic ... these things never work, - but we have some amazing pics on it and I will try and get some of them uploaded soon.

Just lost Jirama (electricity) so there goes wifi.

Start of week 4!!

We are sitting in Oasis cafe with Ryan and Cath! Finally they have returned and its good to see them.

I"m going to upload this now before it fails once more!