Poop Beach babes

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From Toliara we took a 20ft fiberglass dinghy to the Manjaki hotel on a small isthmus from the mainland. This is a very nice place to visit because the village is small and you must be a rugged tourist to stay. The only way to get there is by boat or pirogue. A pirogue is a carved out sailing canoe with a single outrigger. They are all made of wood and very traditional. The hotel was on the beach with five dollar a night bungalows and three amazing meals a day. The meals were octupus, calamari, crab, or fish. With a side of fries, legumes, rice, or pasta. Each meal cost 3.50. We walked the beach and snorkelled the reef 50m from our bungalow. The reef had some exceptional snorkelling but there was obvious signs of over fishing and coral bleaching. We encountered an octopus on our snorkel that performed several of the most amazing animal tricks both of us had ever seen. It changed colors at rapid speeds, it dug under ground in zero seconds flat, it imitated a clam by crawling into an empty shell and closing it around it. When I pulled the shell apart the octupus laid in one side and turned the color of a clam and it looked exactly like one. It even inked us. We took a pirogue to a freshwater sinkhole and snorkelled with freshwater tropical fish. The sink hole dropped to about 20 feet and was crystal clear. One of the mornings we went fishing with two of the villagers, I think Ari was embarassing them with her paddling ferocisty. After dropping the nets in the water we paddle around slapping the water to try and scare the fish into the net. We caught one. I snorkelled along side the boat as we pulled up the net, whenever it got caught on the coral I dove down and freed it. While snorkelling I spotted two beautiful lionfish. I pointed them out to Ari and the fisherman. Being a very rare and beautiful fish we were thrilled to see them. The fisherman on the other hand grabbed his spear dove down and scewered them both. We both were sad to see them killed. Anchored just off the reef was a South African man who just had sold all his possesions and set off on his around the world adventure. His name was Gregg, he invited us on his boat and we had fresh coconut. Gregg looks like Santa Claus and his nickname to all the villagers is Papa Noel. He is quite the god to the villagers. He is always drinking rum and very cheeky. This was his first stop on his journey from South Africa. He told us he planned to only stay for a couple days but it had already been two and a half weeks. He plans to leave Wednesday the 26th. After our two relaxing days in the quiet fishing village we caught the boat to Anakao where we hoped to do some good diving. Anakao is a much larger village with several bungalow hotels. It doesnt have any streets and the plumbing is the beach. It is very common to walk the beach and see peoples poo poo body surfing in the waves. At the far end of the village is a nice tourist hotel where we spent most of our time, they had good food and a very friendly owner. Plus the beach was cleaner. We did two dives that were awesome, the first dive had some large caves to swim through and lots of fish. The visibility was like 30m. We saw a Morey eel and a nice sting ray; I tried the steve irwin but it swam away before I could pet it. The second dive had less fish and better vis but some amazing geographical features that were fun to swim through. The hotel had a couple lemurs that would crawl all over us. We were going to do some more diving but the divemasters were hard to talk to and pretty lazy so figured we would leave anakao and go farther North to hopefully even better diving.
Until Next time...

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Comments

[Sol]

tiens!
Love hearing of your adventures! Sounds like you two are seeing some amazing things and encountering some interesting beings (humans and animals alike) :) I hope you enjoyed your own Thanksgiving while on your trek - look forward to reading about your coming experiences in Africa! -Sol

[James]

your trip is so cool ugh
papa noel = ernest hemingway