The Great Escape!: September 2013

Tuesday, 10 September 2013

Moms visit to Nosy Be!

Moms visit was absolutely divine. We spent lots of time suntanning, walking on the beach and exploring the area so mom could see it all and take it in in its entirety.

We went to Andilana for a day trip and saw our friends Loic and Nelly who own Blue Vision Diving. Spent a few hours lying on the beach and soaking up the sunshine. We did a snorkeling trip to Tanikely and made a good long day of it, only thing is that every afternoon the wind picks up making the sea a little rough - our boat trip back was so bouncy that mom and I had bruised bums the next day and our entire bodies were stiff from bracing against the movement!

We did a car trip up Mount Passot and took Inja with us. He was hilarious - second time ever in a car and he just chiled out with his chin resting on the window sill and his little paw paws on the arm rest! On the way back down the mountain our car was accosted by two cheeky litle lemurs! Never seen them there before but they raced to the car and jumped all over it - looking for bananas we assume but were out of luck with us.

Mom even endured a quad ride into Hellville, but preferred the taxi brusse service, even though the one we got into swayed from side to side the entire journey home!

We did the long walk from Palm Beach to Madirokely for sundowners and a bit of the action at Tatie Chris! Loved the people watching and the antics that goes on, its seriously a must do on the Nosy Be list. We carried on up the beach to Ambataloaka and hit Boabab for dinner where I had the worlds largest burger! It was amazing!

We hit the Tana market that came to town, and the Artisans markets too, which was good for me as I've not really done any shopping here, so it was good to get to places I"d not yet seen but had wanted to.

All too soon moms visit was over and we were saying goodbye and crossing fingers that the Air Mada delays weren't too bad and wouldn't include an over nighter in Tana. Luckily the delays were there but not the over nighter! It was the first goodbye in 15 years that wasn't too bad knowing we'd see each other again in less than 8 weeks!

Two days after mom left and Davids Madagascar dream came true!! Ryan had put him in touch with another South African, also called David, who had come out to Mada to work in a spear fishing charter company, Orca Diving. Unfortunately and very sadly, the owner Craig Scott passed away from Cerebral malaria 3 days after David had arrived to work with him, so David had been taking the clients out who had booked and trying to keep tings going in the wake of Craigs death.

So now David was free, had another month on his visa and just needed someone to go spearing with! So he moved into one of the bngalows across from us, his friend Luke hopped on a plan to come and play, and the boys have been sorting out some spearing trips. The only problem being, that when you put three chilled out fun living guys together in an awesomely chilled place like Mada, sometimes beer wins!!! So they have gone on one all day trip, and had a couple of shorter and shore entries, and all I can say is, in that over a week, we've only had two fish to eat, had a few veggie meals and had to even resort to pork sausages!!!

The competition board is up and David Kitching is laughing all the way at the 'whipper snappers' as he calls them, as he is in the lead, not only having caught the most fish to date, but also having sold 3 which puts him in lead with the cash earnings too! (at this point I can let you know that a total of 5 fish have only been speared in over a week, between 3 guys!)

So this week, yet another spearo joins the crew - Allen who is part of the team at the Rob Allen Dive Factory (not the Allen in Rob Allen!). I think the older more mature influence of Allen may actually turn the tables to more spearing trips, less beer drinking! I also think that due to the younger boys bodies rejecting lifestyle (and Lukes girlfriend Casey's arrival also on Tuesday) will mean that I better start getting inventive with fish recipes, and preparing womb service for a massive fish dinner influx! Fingers crossed at least - I was planning on this Kitching being a genius with all the brain food from fish!

One of the sad things with us leaving is that, as with all things, its taken time to make friends and meet people, and in the last couple of months we have really started to make good friends - and now we are leaving - its so typical. We went for dinner at Nelly and Loics - and Nelly is leaving this month to go back to France and have her baby, but they will be returning to the dive centre of course. But if we weren't leaving, they had asked us to manage their dive centre for the 3 plus months while they were away! That was totally our plan when coming here - to be able to help and cover for people in exactly thay kind of way!

Yesterday we had a braai / BBQ at ours with Bob, Stefan, his dad and an old friend of theirs, along with Luke and David and Edith who is the FnB manageress from Sakatia Lodge, who has been here for 7 years. Its so great to have other women in the fold as its mostly all men here! Again - such a pity all this is happening so late, but we are at least glad we are getting the chance to make new and good friends and as we set out to do - make the most of the last few weeks we have.

The countdown is going way too fast, and now with less than 6 weeks to go, I'm starting to get a speed wobble. The weather is perfect, the sea water warming up, the company entertaining .... what more could we ask for as we do our final countdown ...? OK - maybe a few more fish to eat!!!

Fish cakes and salad for lunch

Lovin the Zebu

The new additions to Serges garden

The stalls at Andilana

Two monkeys

The Zebu getting their weekly Sunday morning bath

Pizza day!

Madirokely and a Durban yacht

The hooligans at Tatie Chris

Family portrait on top of Mount Passot

Gorgeous views at the top

Inja chilling on his ride

The Lemurs

Beach day at Nosy Tanikely

The view from the lighthouse on Nosy Tanikely, Nosy Komba in the background

The little shop Pascals next door to Serge's place - great for cold beer and eggs!

Where are the Kitchings???

So where have we been? Its been a little crazy round the Kitching world. Cath and Ryan arrived back from work and travels and invited us to go and spend 3 nights with them on Nosy Komba. The boys were planning on going fishing, south to Caster Banks 120km's away, and us girls were planning on doing little more than chilling out! Oh how tough life in the islands is! Cath was actually just recovering from a bout of Typhoid, which seems to be doing the rounds here, and me ... well I was just up for another mid week mini break! This making a person business is tiring!

David and Ryan didn't have a spectacualrly successful fishing trip - Ryan was more keen on getting some awesome filming in, but the weather was dull and cold and the fish decided to not be around, they were searching for Marlin and other sword fish. David still loved it though as it was all a new experience for him. Especially as on their first stop to check out a site, Antoinin and David were in the water - still on the surface, and Antoinin lifts his head and shouts - HAMMERHEADS! Literally 6 meters away was a school of 15 hammerhead sharks swimming past! You don't get much more exciting than that .... well OK you do ... when you look down and see two 3 meter Zambezi sharks checking you out from below!

Well I didn't get to do toooo much relaxing because we were due for the first important 12 week scan, and we couldn't get it done locally on Nosy Be, so would have had to fly to Tana / Diego or even Reunion. Looking at the prices, it seemed to make more and more sense for us to rather fly to South Africa - where we are planning on having the baby - and having the scan there, and at the same time being able to meet the doctor and do some of the neccesasary formailities.
So mom and my cousin Lauren (who has her own travel agency) helped us get it all organised, and we arrived back from Ryan and Caths on Thursday afternoon and flew to South Africa on Saturday morning ... well that was the plan, however Air Madagascar decided they liked us here so much that instead of leaving Tana at 10am on Saturday morning, they cancelled our plane at 8pm (yes, after we had sat around the airport since 9am) and put a load of us up for the night in local hotels! Grrrrr.

We finally arrived in JHB and Mom and Dad picked us up and we stayed at my cousins Leigh and George. Much excitement for David and I as Leigh and George had prepared a delicious meal with all things we hadn't had in 5 months - like creamed spinach, delicious fat South African steaks, ice cream and much more. I can see this little stint in SA being a kg adder!!

We drove back from JHB which was great for us to have a good catch up with mom and dad and to start acclimatising to the South African winter ... brrrrr. 10 degrees during the day! A far cry from our usual mid 20 - 30's!

So this wasn't a holiday return - it was a working excursion. We have decided to move back to South Africa to have the baby and stay for a year or so, probably more if we can find a way to support it! We just thought it makes the world of sense to have our families around us for support - both sets of our parents, Davids brothers family, and my cousin Lauren and family live in a triangle of 5 kms apart from each other! Its also great that we can provide all our friends in SA with a laugh as they are all over the tough days with little babies and are just starting to get thier lives back (as they put it) and are now laughing at us as we just start this new adventure!! Thanks guys!

So while we were 'home' we thought it made sense to do a bit of house hunting. Get an idea of prices and whats out there. We started with very specific requirements of what we wanted and what we were going to spend, and the day we left we put an offer in for a gorgeous house that was nothing in our specifications and way above our initial price! Oh well .... its worth it! So the offer was accepted and now we have to try and do all the legalities and financials from the island. This should prove interesting and challenging. The first challenge was having to race to a lawyer on the way to the airport to get a Power of Attorney for Davids dad drawn up to act on our behalf for any signatures etc!

Our trip home was crazy as always and awesome to see everyone - even a special treat of seeing Geoff, Laura and little Dylan from Dubai who were in SA the same time! Just seeing everyone and spending time with our families brought it home (no pun intended) all the more of the good decision we have made to go back and share this next stage in our lives in the place we grew up. It was even more special that we got to take all four grandparents into the scan with us and they got to see the active little baby rolling around and stretching its little arms to say hi! We have missed out on a lot of family over the last 15 years not being in South Africa,
but we have had an incredible time and done so much in the UK, Dubai and now Madagascar. We hope that we can stay strong and bring what we have learned and picked up to continue a more simple way of life, keeping healthy and staying open minded!

So now we are back in Mada for the last two months of our island paradise adventure. Mom has come back with us for 10 days to see what its all about, and I can see she uderstands exactly why we have done it. She is so relaxed and loving the sunshine, amazing healthy food and divine Madagascar shopping!!! hahaha, I mean people!
Once mom goes it will be chaos trying to do admin and organising from the country of Mora Mora (easy easy / slowly slowly) as we try and get Inja sent to South Africa, along with another container of the little bit of stuff we still have, as we will need every scrap to fill the house we are buying!

Well Davids gone off to get some fish for dinner - yesterday he gave the guys at the hotel building site an 8kg fish, which they were totally STOKED with! They have seen him walk past for nearly 6 months with fish of all sizes and shapes and finally it was their turn to get one!
We made a decision to make sure we make the absolute most of the last couple of months left here and to make sure we finish doing all the things we set out to do in March when we arrived. So watch this space, I have a feeling its going to be jam packed!