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!

David and Biko on Nosy Komba

The boys loading onto the boat for a days fishing

Their haul

Ryan giving a fish cleaning demo to his staff ... again!

Freeeeezing in Tana airport

The Fords strapping Dylan to David for some practise time!

Umhloti Beach

The boys

Crayfish feast thanks to Geoff

Gabi at her ballet concert, the bunny second from left!

Fifi in her dance - kneeling on the left

Our beautiful nieces with Greg and Clem (mom and dad)

Happy Days!

You notice the change in season here in many ways ... the first being the change in the produce available in the market. Lettuce and cucumber becomming available was the best change so far, and the worst was the disappearance of avo's! You have to learn to cook seasonally and to change your habits with the changing season and availability of produce. We get so used to living in places that have constant availability shipped in from around the world, meaning you are never without. This has been a refreshing reminder of how things actually are!

Other signs that winter is here is that we are waking up later in the mornings. The sun comes up about an hour later than before so we're snuggling down for that little bit longer, and its not so hot, so we aren't jumping up and racing to the sea for a swim, either early in the morning or during the day! We still dress in shorts and no shirts during the day, but I comfortably pull on a long sleeved t shirt at night!

Our showers are FREEEEEZING! With no hot water its been fine during the hotter months, but its become a little too chilly now (and we're becomming a little too soft I think). We are really glad that we brought our camping solar shower bag with us - its become a new daily chore - fill it up and stick it on the table in the sun in the garden each morning - but remember to bring it in at 3pm and put it in a cooler box, otherwise it looses its heat by 6pm shower time!!

So the pace of life picked up a bit after the parents left and Ross had a bunch of clients out here - around 30! We were asked to organise three client trips to Ankarana on the mainland - the same trip we had just done, so it was easy going and helped bring in a little income - to cover the cost of the Diego hospital bill at least! So that kept us busy for a few days, meeting and organising people, drivers, accommodation etc.

We also had to try and repair the kayak, the company had said they will pay us out (the boat cost us around EUR900), but you can't buy them here, or any other kayaks for that matter! When the bulldozer crushed it, not only did it squish the plastic and push it out of shape, but all the through holes burst meaning the boat was totally sinkable. It was a bit of a challenge finding some stuff that we needed and with a bit of ingenuity (see cutting up a life jacket to make dense foam plugs) and Davids perservering, we managed to repair it to a state that at least Lucien (the boat guardian) can paddle to and from the boat each night. We then have had to get an invoice from the kayak suppliers, download pictures, write a formal case letter and get that to the company at faults offices. Not all that easy without internet. I'm glad we brought the printer with us at least!

Making friends here isn't the easiest thing, not only due to language barrier, but because we came here not to sit in bars and socialise, but to live more simply, and this kind of choice limits the opportunity to meet people, but being David and I, we have still managed! So we invited some friends over for a South African style fish braai (bbq) one afternoon. It was really cool with Serena and Manuel from Manta Diving and Sylvia and Rolo from Forever Dive. Serena and Manuel brought their gorgeous Rhodesian Ridgeback Zion with them as he and Inja love going mental together. We had a very cool afternoon and after they left David and I did have to laugh that we moved here, a French country, are learning French and the first friends we invite round are Italian! Typical!

Some more of Ross' guests came out and we went to meet a young South African couple, Callan and Carryn. We took them to Tatie Chris on the Sunday night which was pretty cool - we'd not been for a while and the boys got more than a little tipsy on rum, it was pretty funny. Especially the call we got at midnight from Callan explaining that when they had returned their hired scooter in the afternoon they accidentally handed thier hotel room key in with the bike key! Brilliant! We gave them a few key French words to convey the words Key and Lost to the hotel staff so they could at least explain why they needed a spare key at midnight!! It was great to chat and catch up on the world outside in English with South Africans, it was so easy going!

I between all this, we have been looking at the possibility of buying some land here, its a small investment but something that may be used in the years to come for a holiday home, or to sell in many more years to come to realise a small return on a very small investment. So we've been looking at different pieces of land and working out prices for buying, transfers, designing a small 
little house and getting a price to build, time frames, risks .... is it worth it?! It been fun chatting to the locals working for the company that are selling the land, of course I have them write down everything in MY notebook and sign their names so we have an audit trail of what was agreed and by whom! Some things never go away!

Well tourist season started here on 15 July and its definitely picked up a bit, although we've been lucky in the preceedng weeks with Ross's clients coming through. 
One of the other couples we have recently met, Loic and Nelly, finished setting up their new dive centre in the beginning of this year, and 10 days before they opened Nelly discovered she was pregnant! There is definitely something in the water here! So she of course hasn't been able to dive at all and Loic has been having to try and do it all on his own, but the best part is that us girls are stoked to not be alone in being here and pregnant! She is now 5 months so its even better for me to have someone going through it first who can tell me everything!

We had two snorkeling trps to Tanikely too. The one was a older Fench guy with his very young Malagash companion. It was her first time on a boat and she didn't know how to swim. This could be interesting. I finally got to use my Dive Master skills! We set off early in the moring and the weather was a bit didgy - cold and grey and overcast. Not too thrilling to want to jump into the water at 8am! But luckily by the time we got there the sun had come out and it was sparkling and looking good. We put a life jacket onto the girl and slowly got her into the water and wowser - I was so impressed. Not one moment of panic, her face in the water using the mask and snorkell, holding my hand and using me for support - lucky I had my wet suit on as it gave me extra bouyancy! But she was so cool. We had a couple of swallowed water moments and coughing but never panic and she was determined. So we spent an hour and a half snorkelling around and we even saw a 1.5m shark (guitar fish)! We then took the boat around to the beach and they went into the reserve on the land - the whole of Nosy Tanikely is a reserve. I laid back on the beach and was catching some sun when Sylvia and Rolo came over, they too had clients at Tanikely. I thought for a moment - not a bad day at the office this is! Back on the boat and around to another side for another hour or so of snorkelling, where we saw Henry and Deny from Mohamed and Ross's houseboat! Seriously feel like locals now! After the snokrkelling, e sat on the boat for a bit and ate the lovely freshly baked scones with jam I'd brought along, and then headed back to Palm Beach!
A couple of days later we had another set of clients - the first two wanted to go back and a young American lady wanted to go along. David went on his own this time, as we had planned with some of our other friends to have a beach BBQ that afternoon, so I stayed home to prep a few things and sent David along with a batch of yummy banana bread muffins! We like to keep our clients happy! So that was a nice busy couple of days work which ended well with a cool beach BBQ. here our friend Stefan introduced us to a young Belgium guy called Francois Xavier (FX for short!). While chatting we said we wanted to do a day trip to Nosy Sakatia as we weren't too familiar with it at all and lots of clients were keen to do a day trip there, so we needed to do a scout about. So Stefan and FX said they knew it well so we planned to go on Wednesday. FX told us that his dad was busy building a new resort on the island and that we should stay the night and make a couple of days out of it. He would get all the food sorted and then we'd just split the costs. We were expecting to be almost camping and nothing had prepared us for what was really there!

Oh how spoilt are we! FX arrives at ours with all the supplies and a chef to do our meals! We load up and head over to the island. We pull into he bay where the resort is and wow! Its amazing. Fully completed, with 8 bungalows, tortoises, beautiful gardens with fruit and veg growing all over, 5 staff on site and four of us with this amazing place all to ourselves!

David and I dumped our stuff in our bungalow and went for a snorkell, he picked up a couple of small fish for the staff while we were out there. We had beautiful hot showers, courtesy of the amazingly huge solar panel that runs everything during the day, plus stores about 2 hours of running on battery before having to use the generator once dark.

The chef prepared us a delicious meal of zebu filet with lemon grass, veg and mash and for desert, creme brulet and bananas caremalised in orange juice and ginger! Mmmmmm.
The boys then got stuck in to their rums and beers and I called it a night by 9:30pm, where as they continued hahahaha! I felt fatastic at breakfast the next morning, them.... not so much!
Breakfast was all freshly baked (pastry made from scratch) pastries - pain au chocolat, croissants, brioche and jam filled pastries, with fresh fruit and papaya from the garden! Oh my, delicious!
After breakfast we fed the tortoises left over papaya and bananas and then FX gave David and I a tour of the grounds and gardens. Stefan went back to bed hahaha!

For lunch we had decided we'd walk over the island to Sakatia Lodge, a South African run resort on the other side of the island, where we wanted to make contact and get familiar. It was a pretty cool walk, hilly with great views and the boys were pretty relieved to get to the restaurant to sit down and refuel! Stefan had stayed in bed!

Lunch was delicious but not spectacular - smoked fish and melon to start, grilled fish, coconut rice and salad with different sauces for main and a chilled chocolate mousse cake for dessert. The reason for the details ... .when the bill came it cost us EUR20 each!!! Yikes! We weren't expecting that AT ALL and didn't even have enough cash with us - lucky they know FX and we could send some money back with his staff later! So that was a bit of a let down, but as we said, we've not done anything expensive while we have been here so it was quite nice to have a change and find out for ourselves ... bu next time definitely the gargote next door!

So we went back and packed up and headed home across the choppy afternoon sea.We could only leave after 3pm with the high tide as the resort is in its own private bay but at low tide its too low to move the boat in / out and at the moment its spring tides. It was unreal how the whole bay totally emptied out and we were walking on sand where the previous high tide it was 4m deep! 

So that was the end of a very nice mid week break! Things on the client / tourist side for us are pretty quiet again - we will just wait and see what comes along from Bob or Ross, and continue making the most of this gorgeous winter weather - hot sunny days and cool relaxing evenings.

Our guardian at Serge's place and his family!

Beach BBQ with Stefan, FX and Bob

The view from our bungalow at Ocean Beach

Having a ber with all the staff at FX's place, Ocean Beach

Amazing breakfast!! mmmm

Low, low tide

Jackfruit