The Great Escape!: Fergus and Zelda

Well its been a while since I last updated, but we've been uber busy with Davids folks here, so here's just a little filler of the week before they arrived. I shall be writing and posting about all the cool things and places we went over the 3.5 weeks we spent with Bev and Brian SOON!

So the night we uploaded the last blog, we had consumed far too many rums during the process and so decided to go for dinner while we were out. We perused the menu at one of the touristy restaurants and found the prices way out of our not working budget! So luckily we bumped into our young friend Frederic, and we asked him to suggest to us a good local restaurant, called a Gargote.

He joined us for dinner in Dares salaam, and boy was it good! Fred and I had plates of pasta in tomato sauce, and David ordered a bunch of Zebu kebabs which were so tasty, and came with bread that is a mix between indian and arabic breads! He also spotted some Zebu liver and that was absolutely delicious! A really good meal that ended up costing us, for three people, EUR2 / R20 / Dhs10! And we were absolutely fine the next day ... apart from some minor rum after effects! Fred even came round for lunch and we got Serge to join us and had fish and chips in the garden!

That Sunday David went off to play cricket as usual and I decided to get stuck into the veggie patch. Not much had happened in it as the soil isn't all that good being across the road from the beach, so Serge and David had got me some good soil from a building site across the main road where they had dug a foundation and were giving us the soil for free, and Serge had also found me some bags of 'kaka Zebu' which he
also managed to get for free! It was good dry composted cow manure fertiliser! It was a relief as I think I was starting to be tracked for using the internet to research home fertiliser recipes!

I spent 3 hard hours in the veg garden digging over the existing patch, mixing in the two new soils, watering, digging, mixing, as well as removing all the stone edging and cutting the grass and replacing the edging. I cut the grass with kitchen scissors as I have nothing else! It was good hard, work - but I suddenly realised David hadn't returned from cricket! So as I was filthy dirty, hot and sweaty, Inja and I headed down to the beach for a cooling, cleaning swim. We walked down the beach first to see where David was and found him at Manga Be with Bob and Fergus and Zelda, drinking beer!! As you should be!

Fergus and Zelda we had just met through Bob, but are also friends / business associates with Ross - all from South Africa. Fergus has been coming to Mada for nearly 20 years, but more recently, over the past 4 years him and Zelda have run, owned and managed a fishing and holiday spot on one of the far islands Kalakajoro. They are the kind of people you just click with immediately - have so many fun stories and
drink like we did in the good old days.
So my swim went out the window and we spent the rest of the day drinking beer and the Klipdrift Zelda pulled out of her bag, until Bob hauled us up to go and play a game of French boulles in the front car park! So much fun and a really good game to get to know for sure!

That Tuesday night we went round to theirs to plan for a mini fishing trip and dinner at ours on Wednesday night, and of course the usual ensued. People kept dropping in to say hi and have a few drinks, it as going one way - down and fast! Our saving grace was Cath calling! She had just landed back in Nosy Be and we said she should come stay at ours instead of going back to Nosy Komba in the dark!

Wednesday David took the boat out with Zelda and Fergus and I went into Hellvile to have a meeting about potentially taking over one of the companies Ross and Fergus had started setting up. Flip flops and shorts! Thats how meetings should be! It was interesting but seems to be for a 3 year minimum which isn't something we're looking at currently, especially as the mainland politics is up the pole right now and we are waiting to see what the elections bring, although they have already been delayed twice!

So they managed to catch sweet nothing while out playing on the boat but luckily we had loads of fish in the freezer we could pull out for dinner!
So Fergus and Zelda arrived with a huge potato salad and we started on the 'apertifs' that Nicole had given me the recipe for. Well, a fab night was had - dinner was divine with so many laughs and stories, plus a bottle of rum, red wine and a load of beers were sunk! Needless to say, Thursday was a write off, but we did manage to pack the leftovers up onto the quad and headed round to save all four of us with lunch at
theirs!

With our schedules having been so busy, we decided that as Friday was their last day, we should have a relax day and spend it on the beach at Manga Be. We took our toys - quad and SUP, and watched Fergus and Zelda scheming something. They got Bobs team to set up a beach braai for us! Man, was it awesome! Prawns and Zebu fillet kebabs, salads, chips mmmmm! We got a whole pineapple juiced and pulled out our bottle of Malibu and David did pina colada cocktails!

Fergus and Zelda were here to actually gather some of their things as they put a hold on the fishing business for a while so they can concentrate on other businesses they have back home, so
they were looking for some good homes for some of their things! One of them is a throwing fishing net! You use it to catch sardines and such in the shallows. So there we were, on the beach having lessons on how to throw this net. Its complicated as you have to even hold some of it in your teeth while you throw! Good fun though and we need to get it working soon!

Saturday morning we went to say our farewells and brought some coffee in flasks for the leavers - you'd swear it was Cristal champagne the way they loved it! Fergus bought some lovely warm chocolate croissants from the man who comes round every morning (glad he doesn't come round to ours!!) and so we said
our goodbyes to our new good friends. They sent us packing with huge goodie bags containing everything from marmite and rooibos tea to fishing lures, torches and sunblock!

Phew! What a fun week it was and a nice change from (back to?!) the norm! Amazing people and we are really looking forward to their next trip back to Nosy Be!

So this left us with just 3 days to finalise preparations for Davids parents arrival on the Tuesday (4th June) for 3 and a half weeks! Boy we needed those three days to recover, and we are so overexcited to have family arriving!