A change of scenery

Cocktail of the Month:

2 shots rum - light or dark
Two cheeks of a lime (sliced off centre so you don't get the seeds)
Sqeeze the juice and drop the lime cheeks in he glass
3 - 4 blocks of ice
Fill with pineaple Fanta
Voila!

After our first three days back at 'work', we needed to take a break and get over our damn flu.
We celebrated our third wedding anniversary and went out for lunch to celebrate. We took our own rum in a water bottle and drank cocktails all afternoon while feasting on delicious seafood and a steak for David. You have probably realised that we eat seafood pretty much everyday, but I still ordered it. We knew it would taste great just to eat food caught, prepared and cooked by someone else for a change! And Inja was stoked to get the bone from the Zebu steak David had. He still pulls it out for a chew 3 weeks later!

You can definitely tell Autumn is kicking in. There's a distinct difference in the sea temperature - its actually refreshingly cool now and after a couple of hours in the water it starts to feel a bit nippy. I believe the water temperature is now around 29 degrees celcius!! Ha ha ha. 
The mornings are fresh and breezey and we aren't feeling drained by the end of the day from sweating and overheating. Its perfection - as if we needed it to get any better!

David played cricket with the guys from Manga Be one Sunday morning which was good fun. He got given a bubblegum lolli pop afterwards, along with the other kids who played - hilarious! 
Even funnier is that all those not involved in the game just carry on with what they are doing with absolutely no acknowledgment that there's a cricket game in progress on that part of the beach. The lady fruit vendors just stroll on through the middle of the game, as does the guy on his bicycle. Behind the cricket game are ladies wading in the water with nets, catching fish - everyone else is oblivious. The players of course are totally into it, with everyone wanting to bowl and no one wanting to field - at one stage David asked to be translated and asked if 5 of the 6 bowlers could please come into the field and help field! He was the only one in the out field (or waters edge)! The players ages range from about 6 to 60!

The middle of May is time for CARNIVAL in Nosy Be. Known locally as Dunea. We still have no real idea what its all about, but we had a great day at the opening procession watching all the floats and associated dancers make their way through the streets of Hellville. Everyone came out to see it, the streets were lined and 3 or 4 people deep. On the way to town streams of people were walking towards Hellville and the kids were all wearing brightly colured hats and masks, some store bought, some looked like they were made at home or in school. Such a festive atmosphere. Apparently bands come from Reunion and Mayotte islands and play in the evenings at the festival and people set up food stalls and it gets rather rowdy. We didn't make the other evenings, but the night of the opening parade we stayed in town and had a few cocktails in Nandipo, one of the bars. Of course we took our own rum and ordered bottles of Pineapple Fanta!
While we were there we heard a very rare thing - English was being spoken all around us! There was a group of Brits there who work for this research group who carry out research around the nature eserves on land and in the sea round Nosy Be. 

Kids just out of school or varsity pay to come for a couple of weeks or a few months, and it all sounds pretty basic! No electricity, a long drop for a toilet, rice and beans for dinner every night - but they are taught to dive and do information gathering and pretty much have a very cool time. We were rather surprised to hear about their eating habits though, considering they live on an island and have local cooks, why isn't anyone catching and providing fish to eat? It all seemed a bit bizarre and when we started asking lots of questions we felt they got a bit cagey hahaha! Oh well, I"m sure we will find out more when we are not so 'rummed' up and over excited to be talking crap in English in a bar after a few too many drinks!! 

Our friends Ryan and Cath were heading to South Africa for a couple of weeks and asked if we would like to stay at theirs for a few nights - for us to have a little get away and for them to have someone spending a few nights looking after their German Shepard Biko and African Grey parrot Rei. We intially said we could do 2 nights, but then thought we could do longer if we took Inja with us. He is so small and easy to take everywhere we go. So the morning we were leaving, we heard that it was the Nosy Be Motor Cross Champs. It happens once a year, and is the only MX event all year, but guys fly in from the other islands - Comoros,Seychelles, Reunion and even France! Some bring their own bikes, some hire when here, but again, the whole of Nosy Be turns out for it and it was a pretty well organised race day!
We didn't stay to the end as we wanted to get on our way to Nosy Komba, but while there, we did over hear a conversation with a very South African accent, and met another fellow South African, Veronica, who has been sailing around the area for the past 18 years and now her and her 11 year old daughter have been living here for the past 3 years. So another friend made!

We headed out to Nosy Komba with David stopping at a few points along the way to check out potential fishing spots where it showed as shallow areas on the marine Garmin. The sea was pretty rough - for Madagascar (like Dubai on a rough day!), so it wasn't too good for fishing, but he got us a nice Mackeral which we could have for breakfast. He also would have stayed longer in the water, but poor Inja doesn't fare too well in rough seas and had started throwing up, poor thing. While I was washing puppy vomit off the boat, I still had a thought - I'd rather be in the middle of the ocean, with the sunshine and wind on my face washing puppy vomit off the deck of the boat than sitting at work!!!  And I really liked my job before!

We had an amazing few days on Komba, although it did again cement to us that we are much happier on a larger island. I kind of got cabin fever, only being able to walk the 200m to the stony small 'beach' to escape the house by water! You just can't get on a bike and go for a ride or walk for a k or two up the beach. We tried to walk to one of the main villages on Komba (the local vassers joke and call it the Capital of Komba) Ampangorine, so we packed up some water, put sun block on and got ready to go, walked about 100m and landed up at someones back door! And that was as far as we could go. We could try and traverse the rocks along the water line, but mountain climbing in flip flops at high tide is too risky - you don't want a major injury here to put you out of day to day life for a bit, so we were very frustrated and felt totally stuck!
So still wanting to do something different, we took to Ryan and Caths pirogue. We took my SUP paddle and the pirogue paddle which was so useless we likened it to using a hot knife through butter! Lucky we had the SUP paddle as the pirogue had so many leaks, the water was pissing in from all over, so one of us paddled and the other just bailed water!! We were already frustrated and annoyed for not being able to walk anywhere and felt cramped in, and now we could bearly paddle far as the pirogue would sink!! So we pulled up on a little patch of beach and thought we could go for a snorkell, but the locals whose beach it was wanted to charge us for someone to guard our boat - basically - if we didn't give them money, they'd steal our stuff! So by now we'd 
totally had enough and just got back into the pirogue and paddled it home.
We grabbed our usual snorkelling and spearing gear and just went for a normal swim, swam out the frustrations and let the beauty of nature calm us - oh - and David caught us a nice 6kg Travelli while we were out there, so we had some food for the next few meals too, for us and for the dogs!

Nosy Komba is seariously stunning - covered in lush green foliage and wrapped with coral and white sands, this little spot of heaven is amazing for a holiday! Cath and Ryans land lady Nicle who lives along the property in the most amazing self designed house, has been living there for over 10 years now. She's got it all sussed and is pretty happy with her way of life. She is so lovely and invited us for drinks and snacks at hers on our last night - and even gave us the recipe for her local aperetif that she served us. She has a little Maki - the local name for a Lemur, which she rescued as it was being sold by villagers on the mainland. He's very sweet but she leaves him to pretty much do his own thing as is their wild nature - she just has to clean up the damages he leaves in his wake. In her words, he's a hurricane and she is spot on with that description!! David and I were standing on the edge of the porch looking at the sea and checking our boat was OK and the next thing I felt this weight hit my shoulders and neck and then nothing again. He'd used me as a surface to spring on and round on his flight around the house - hilarious. David was so jealous!!

The one day we took the boat out and then just played in the middle of the ocean. No one and nothing around for miles, we could tan our white bits, play our music and surf behind the boat on the SUP with not a care in the world! It was awesome!

It was pretty cool to have a few days away somewhere different and helping out Ryan and Cath and their lovely animals is always a pleasure, but it was great to return to our little cottage after 4 nights away. That afternoon we went for a long walk up the beach with Inja and it felt great to stretch the legs again!

Well you've probably realised that David finally managed to get me to have a go spearfishing. He convinced me by saying I should just come help him spear a little fish for puppy dinner as we had nothing in the fridge for Inja. So we swam out from our place as there is some beautiful coral around 500m from shore. He loaded the gun for me and said off you go! I'd been watching him enough to have a general idea. I swam around for a bit, getting distracted watching all the reef fish and the beautiful coral. We met up again and both had our masks in the water looking down, David says - there - there's a small rubber lips, go get it! I dived down, pointed, shot and POW! I had speared my first fish, first shot! OK, it was small, but they are harder to hit (of course!), and that was the objective - we had pupy dinner!
I can say though, that I fired a few more times and missed the rest - I was trying for Trevellis and Bomfrits but they move so damn fast! I totally annhialated my hips trying to load the gun though - I could do the one longer elastic, but not the smaller one. Seriously, both my hips looked like they had done a round or two with Mike Tyson! To load you have to put the butt of the gun on your hip bone and then pull these elastics back to hooks right near the butt of the gun (the gun I was using is 1m long!), sometimes you miss and then gun richotes out and bam! David makes it look SO easy!
It was only a few days ago I was thinking - Hello hip bones, nice to see you again, its been a while, - but now I'm thinking that extra padding could have come in handy!

We are really looking forward to June as Davids parents are coming for 3 weeks from the 4th. We have SO much to show them (and have asked them to bring us SO much stuff that we can't get here!), but for their first week we are spending the time on one of Ross's tours on the houseboat island hopping! Its going to be divine! 
Then they will get to have a real tatse of our new lives in this beautiful, facinating, diverse place we now call home. 

Snorkelling at Nosy Komba

On our pirogue adventure

The view of Komba from the pirogue

More snorkelling

Sheri Daye watch out - I"m going to be the next female world champ!

David with the 6kg Trevelli

Amazing jellies at Nosy Tanikely

Puppy and fishing - this was a day he wasn't sea sick!

Yay - my second fish ever!

And my fourth! Now I"m a professional lol!!

Inja being so good watching the beach cricket

David in action

Travelling island style - Ryan and Caths awesome land lady

Inja and Ray get acquainted. Ray won!

This was amazing - the day started off overcast and the line appeared as the day cleared, stunning pics!

Beautiful Nosy Komba

A taxi from Hellville to the mainland

So many different boating styles needed for Komba

Travel by SUP

David paddled out to find some fishing spots and these guys  paddled along with him - one kid wasn't more than 5!

SUPping for supper!

Inja making friends

Biko having a swim with David

Dishing out the fish

These kids had so much fun on my SUP

and put us to shame with their natural easy balance skills!

Backflips off the SUP

Body boarding island style

David with Shishi, Nicoles Maki

Enjoying cocktails with the daily sunset show!

In my jim jams taking the dogs for a walk on the stoney beach at low tide

Trying to coerce Inja into the rock pools!

This guy was out the kitchen window

The boys!

Where we ate our meals 

And chilled out for sundowners

Ray having fun!

Joining in with her water for sundowners

And some ylang ylang flowers

Tough job house sitting (and very well placed wine carton!)

Shells are very easy dog toys!

The big fish! Loko Be!

My champion fishing - lunch was divine!

Davids 11kg beauty!

Back to school IS cool!

We got tricked into going back to work! So it wasn't so much as kicking and screaming, and it worked out pretty well actually! After just on 3 months of not working, Ross had a plan!
He invited us for drinks on Friday night to Manga Be, to chat about the new set up. Drinks were with a few of his clients who'd been out for a fishing trip that day and had caught a 20kg sail fish which they were having cooked for dinner.

Over beers, Ross started telling his clients about a quad island tour that we wanted to start doing, and said we should do it - tomorrow! We would give them a price and then it as on! We weren't so sure, having only been round the island once on our quad ourselves, no idea on prices to hire another quad and all the rest of it, but, knowing we'd be able to pull it off, and being given the opportunity to have a trial run with our costs covered, we said OK! This was at 9pm, usually bed time for us!

So the next morning we were up at 5:30am to start planning - deciding on a route, working out fuel costs, baking scones so we had some nice food ..... and Ross arrived at 7am and was able to sample the scones hot from the bbq! Yes - I don't have an oven so bake in the gas BBQ! He'd brought me the baking powder to enable me to bake the scones so deserved at least one!

Ross also mentioned that the day after the quad tour - we should take the clients to Russian Bay, about 30km across the sea to the main land, where he has another camp, and also so we can fish and site see for the day - again for us to experience it and for the clients to just pay for the costs and get the day out fishing too!
We reluctantly agreed .... and then started running around to prepare for both excursions!
We were lucky that our first clients, Piet and Sieni, from Mossel Bay in South Africa, were absolutely lovely and knew what the whole adventure was about, and that they were going to be our guinnea pigs!

We gathered all the prices, made a breakdown of costs which they were happy with - so it was on! So we picked up the other quad and went to collect our first clients at 1pm.
We hit the road, stopping along the way for pics of gorgeous viewpoints and to point out some of the things we knew about areas on the island. We made our way to Mount Passot - the highest accessible point on Nosy Be. We'd not been up there yet, so it was another bonus for us too.
The views on the way up are absolutely breath taking. We stopped at the second low lake we could find. People have been telling us these lakes have crocodiles, Bob even told us he's seen one a few years back that was around 10ft long!
We explored a little around the lake where David pointed out a small snake, some big lizards and chameleons and on the walk back up to the quads, he glanced back at the lake and saw the head of a croc, just skimming the surface of the lake! So cool! So we got to show our clients and see confirmation for ourselves that there really are crocs in there! So no, we won't be taking our paddle boat there!

Up and up Mount Passot we went until the summit. There's a little walk up and then ... wow. You feel like you're on top of the world. You have 360 degree views of the island and can see the inland lakes and the sea as if the lakes were infinity pools edging onto the sea. The sun was sparkling off the water and it was just magical. Wowser, we live here now!!

There are some vendors at the top here with some curios - table cloths, oils, carvings - and Piet was able to pick up an arty wooden carving of a sail fish - just like the one he'd caught the day before!

By this stage we were pretty thirsty, so we ventured back down the pass, stopping at a view spot about half way and cracking open the beers! We toasted to our first day back at work hahaha! Not a bad start!

We carried on round the island making our way to the private beach spot we'd found earlier. Its a pretty cool route to get to it, as access is off the main road, on a road that looks like it hasn't been driven on for 5 years - over grown with tall plants down the middle of the dirt track. You get to a mangrove area, where someone has abandoned building a stone bridge, and we just plough through the mud, down a sandy track and onto this vast expanse of beach, thats got one house far in the distance and thats it!

Here we set up the picnic and went for a swim to cool off. David made us some rum cocktails and we watched the sun start sliding out of the sky.
We didn't want to be out in the dark, so we packed up, went to one last view point and took some maximum romatica sunset shots of Piet and Sieni before hammering it back to Palm Beach. We drove for about 10 mins in the dark so will have to make sure we work the timing better on our next trip.

Piet and Sienie thoroughly enjoyed themselves and over a beer we chatted about the plan for the 6am departure for Russian Bay on the boat the next day.

So home we went and spent a couple of hours getting everything prepped for the boat trip - food, fuel (luckily we'd picked up the 80 litres of fuel in the morning when we'd been preparing for the quad tour, as that evening we went to fill the quads up and the petrol station was out of fuel - only to be getting more on Monday!)
So up again at 5am to load the boat. Piet and Sieni were awesome and had walked down to where our boat is moored and helped us load up. 6:15am and we were off.The sun was behind us, glinting off the water, the air was warm and as we hit 20 km's per hour I thought - second day of work isn't starting of too badly!

The blurry lumps of land in the distance soon came clear and green quicker than I thought and Russian Bay was in sight! As we started coming into the channel, Piet chucked a rod in the water and we slowed to trolling pace. As we got into the huge bay and turned left, Piet got a bite! How exciting! He pulled in a 6kg Trevally (karrang) - what he was after, so he was chuffed.

It was time for coffee and I realised I'd left the cups drying on the washing rack at home - but never fear, as we say in Afrikaans - a boer maak 'n plan! So I used the orange partition containers from the first aid kit as cups!!

We drove around the bay a bit trying to find Ross' camp but had no idea where it was really, so found a nice idyllic looking beach - white sands, crystal clear turqoise water and plam trees, to pull up on for breakfast.

Once satiated, back on the boat for the competition to start. David was going to spear fish against Piets rod fishing! We dropped David in the water and pulled away so Piet could troll and literally 30 seconds later David goes Whoooo! He's got a trevally / kerrang only slightly smaller than Piets first catch! Its totally ON!

We troll and dive for a bit but its quite shallow so we decide to move to another spot. Next spot and Davids in - I can feel Piet tense up every time David dives down .... pow! Davids got another one ..... Piets now behind .....

Next spot .... David gets a Green Job Fish .... Piets starting to give up and dives in to cool off!

We go to one last spot and David gets a Spanish Makerel / Couta / Tsar - about 6.5kg's! We've now been out for almost 8 hours so decide to head back in. We had said that if we got any fish, we'd do a bbq at ours tonight, so the bbq was definitely on!
When we went to drop off Piet and Sieni, David ran in to see if their resort wanted to buy any of the fish, and he sold the Spanish Makerel! So an even better and more successful end to our first fishing / sight seeing boat trip!

We had no veg in the house, so I quickly jumped on the quad and zoomed over to Dzamandzar to get some fresh supplies for dinner. We did a quick unpack, tidy, fish fillet, sort and prepare for dinner, and then Jirama went off! Luckily Ross had brought David the lights he wanted to run off a 12v battery, so we rigged those up along with plenty candles and were ready for our first client dinner!

We did battered fish fingers with wasabi mayonnaise and Davids Grandpa's secret sweet chilli sauce for dips, and then the Green Job Fish just simply bbq'd with coleslaw and a three bean salad for accompaniments. We were so chuffed when they told us this was the best meal they'd had all holiday! You don't get much more of a compliment than that!
We ended the meal with our potent home made caramel / vanilla vodka shots and capped off a fantastic second working day!

The next morning we sauntered over to let Piet have a try of spear fishing - he's hunted most animals using a gun - but not yet fish! Unfortunately my mask was too small and was leaking too badly, but definitely one for next time!

I can honestly say it was so much fun, as Piet and Sieni are such lovely easy going fun people. They gave us the confidence to launch into this new venture, and before we could even catch our breath, Bob had us booked with 4 guys for a fishing experience excursion for Wednesday morning!

It was another good morning with us learning a bit more about the sea and spots for fishing, as well as what people are after and some more French, as the four were French guys! Unfortunately the sea was upside down, with swells pumping through from a cyclone off the South African coast causing the havoc, which meant we couldn't really anchor and stop or snorkell anywhere as everyone as feeling more than a little sea sick - but we still managed 5 hours of going around and trolling and enjoying being out in the sunshine - and being paid for it, of course!

In typical life fashion though, David and I have both spent the first 5 working days with flu! For two months we have been absolutely 100% healthy, but as soon as we couldn't mope in bed as we had commitments to honour, we both got sick! So in usual fashion as we all do, we had to just get up, carry on and keep working!

Our next step now is to make sure we get legal and set up our own small cc business operation, so our visas and legal entities are all in order, and most importantly our public liabilty and other insurances.

Ross has a lot of clients coming through over the next few weeks for island hoping tours, tours to the mainland and for some of the excusrsions we will be leading, so we have a lot of planning and organising to do over the next few weeks so we can make sure the guests are transported, collected and organised while in Mada.
Davids parents are also coming to stay with us for 3 weeks in June and we are so excited to be able to show them our new adventure up close and personal! We will then go on the houseboat island hopping tour with Ross's company - Madagascar Island Safari's, where the 4 of us will have a liveaboard boat to ourselves, with crew to navigate and cook, and us to map our own route to see all the islands and stop for snorkelling, spearing and exploring as we choose!

So now we're off to plan our first mainland excursion to Ankarana, so that we've done it and have met all the contacts and set things up ready for the clients at the end of June. We will hire a motorbike (so we don't wear down our quad) and ride to Hellville port, get on a ferry to Ankify and then travel 250km's north to a camp where we will stay and hike from to explore the fauna and flora in all their natural beauty.

Piet and Sieni ready for their adventure 

On our travels

One of the lakes on Mount Passot

Infinity lakes over the sea

Toasting our first day back!

Our picnic spot

Romantic sunset shots!

Happy boys!

Davids first commercial fish - SOLD! Paid for our anniversary lunch!