The Great Escape!

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!

Lunch with Serge and Fred

Dinner at ours with Fergus and Zelda

Zeldas first play on the quad!

Beach party!

The cook in action

Delicious kebabs!

Cocktails on the beach - David and Bob

Zelda and I with our pina coladas!

Fergus, Christian and his girlfriend

The worlds cutest puppy! Inja is way too big now!

Sunset on another fabulous day!

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.