Madagascar - the journey there and the first couple of days.

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As I sit in Bole Airport after the first leg of our journey everything seems to be going OK. The 13 of us are all here, and so far no disasters.

FYI, we have 2 Jesses and 2 Ians. The Ians are simple Ian W ans Ian L. The two Jesses however, both have the same initial, so Jess who is a Dive Master will be known as Jess, and Jess who isn't a DM will be known as Jessica.

The flight was uneventful, and for me in Cloud 9, the Ethiopian Air business class, very comfortable, with good food, fizzy champagne and a nice big screen to look at. I hear it was less comfortable in the back, and that breakfast was served at about 3am. There are a few weary faces in the group!

We found a restaurant in the airport, the traditional Ethiopian 'New London Café, serving St George beer, and with a large screen showing a West Ham United match. We discovered that despite the staff speaking very good English, there was definitely a language barrier. DM Jess ordered French Toast and received French Fries with tomato ketchup. Greg ordered a black American and received an espresso strong enough to support an upright spoon. Luckily, when not-DM Jess ordered 'one more water' meaning another litre bottle, but received a cup of warm water she was able to come to the rescue and dilute the coffee to a drinkable strength.

The journey from Bole to Nosy Be was uneventful, but once we arrived total chaos ensued in the visa and passport departments! I managed to get through fairly quickly, with only a 10-15 minute wait, but then I had around another 20 minutes or so to wait for the rest of the group to join me. I didn’t waste my time though, I found Gee (pronounced with a hard g) our tour guide for the first week, and reassured him the rest of the group was indeed behind me.

The luggage porters at the airport were quite insistent. However hard one tried to tell them you could manage thank you very much, they took your luggage to the mini-buses, assisted loading it, then returned to demand a tip; it was impossible to refuse. A little off putting to put it mildly!

The drive from the airport was along well tarmacked roads, through rural villages with a lot of deprivation. Basic wooden buildings, some very ramshackle, with families sitting outside them. No electricity. Lots of children. A few mangy dogs and skinny chickens running around. Women working in the rice fields. There were also a few driveways leading up to beautiful brick houses with views over the Indian Ocean. Such diversity in such a small area.

The Vanila Hotel where we were based for our first night was fantastic. A luxury hotel on the sea shore with 2 pools and many many staff. It was I did of course jump in the sea within a few minutes of arriving; fabulous!

We had a great evening with more alcohol than was absolutely necessary, but hey ho, we were on the first night of our holiday. Some needed encouragement to retire to bed, but eventually we all settled down for the night.

We were woken on our first full day by the cocks crowing at around 04:30. Up at 05:00 for a swim. The water was cooler than last evening, but certainly not cold. A few of us got in, one or two needed to swim to help with their hangovers – not me, I may add!

We left the hotel to travel to Hellville Harbour where we got a fast boat to Ankify Port on mainland Madagascar. Once Gee had sorted out the argument between him and the luggage porters we decanted into four 4x4s and headed off towards Ankarana East National Park. The drive was along a road that had tarmac in places, pot holes in many places, and was unsurfaced in other places. We passed through villages and towns. There was a selection of privation, with some wooden shacks similar to the ones we saw yesterday, seemingly abandoned when they became too ramshackle to live in and a few brick houses, mainly in and on the outskirts of towns rather than in rural settings. In the towns there was electricity. In villages there was no mains electricity, but some of the wooden houses had solar panels.

There were lots of Zebu (pronounced Seebu), wandering along the roads with their owners or grazing in the grasslands next to the road. Zebu are cattle from India which many families own, and which are used as meat across the country.

Gee explained that the villages were led by a Shaman / Head who was commonly educated and literate. If someone wanted to move into the village they would talk to him (always a him) and he would agree or not whether they could build a home. Homes tend to have 3 wooden buildings – one for the adults, one for the children and the third being the kitchen. The cooking however, usually takes place outside.

Most families have around 5 children, and in villages the women usually give birth at home with a Sage Femme – wise woman. Gee wasn’t sure what sort of training the women have, but told us that ‘lots of women die having babies’.

We ate Zebu meat, rice and vegetables for lunch. Zebu meat is quite delicious, and rice is eaten by the Malagsies for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The National Park covers over 18000 hectares. We walked a tiny teeny part of it to an area where in the rainy season 3 rivers meet, causing a whirlpool which has carved out a huge casm, taking the river underground to the Mozambique Straight. The river beds were completely dry and there was no water in the casm. We saw a tree around 15m off the river bed which had a log stuck in that could only have been put there by surging water. We walked along a path many meters above the casm that in the rainy season would be under water. Mind blowing! Sadly the park is closed in the rainy season, so I won’t have the opportunity to check! We were lucky enough to spot a couple of nocturnal lemurs napping in their trees, as well as chameleons and geckos.

We.also viewed.some grey tsingy - rock formations. More on tsingy later.

We then had another 2 hour drive to our hotel for the next 2 nights. What an experience that was! To begin with the road was much the same as the morning drive. After about an hour we stopped to visit a spice plantation. We tasted raw chocolate pods - sweet on the outside and bitter inside; it's the inside that is roasted to make chocolate, and we were each given a roasted coco bean, which is 100% dark chocolate - delicious! We tried turmeric and ginger straight from the ground and we were shown vanilla growing. My highlight however was the cinnamon straight from the tree. Now I like the cinnamon we get in the UK, but compared to freshly cut cinnamon the taste is 'meh'. The fresh cinnamon was a clean, zingy, sweet taste, and I loved it! I'm going to be looking for cinnamon trees in the UK when I return home.

After about another hour drive we turned right onto a dirt track with a sign saying we had 17km to go to our destination. I honestly can’t describe the drive well enough for you understand what it was like. It was like off-roading on steroids! I have huge admiration for the drivers getting the cars along the track, up and down slopes filled with boulders, along ruts that must have been at least a metre deep, through river crossings. By this time it was dark, and the red dust thrown up from the car in front was like a pea-soup fog. I honestly thought we wouldn’t (couldn’t!) make it but eventually all 4 cars pulled up next to each other, and we were welcomed to the Black Lemur Lodge. It was a bit disconcerting to find out that the way out is the reverse of the way in.

We were welcomed, fed and watered. During dinner there was a slight issue when one of Sean's chair legs disappeared through a hole in the floor, and he ended up sitting in his chair at 90 degrees to the rest of us. The look of bewilderment on his face was unforgettable!

After a few bevvies we retired to our respective rooms for the night.

It was dark when we arrived, so we had no concept of what the landscape around us was like. Arriving at the dining room for breakfast the next morning was definitely a ‘wow’ moment as we saw the tree filled valley spreading in front of us, leading to the mountains on the horizon. An absolutely beautiful view!

Thankfully the table had been moved slightly to avoid any more issues with chair legs disappearing through the floor.

No cars today. Just a hike through primary forest to see Black Lemurs and have a swim in a natural pool. I say just. It was quite a challenging hike at times up and down steep uneven paths with plenty of tree roots to trip over. It was an amazing experience though! We saw several black lemurs (so cute!) , a couple of nocturnal lemurs (even cuter!) , gecko, several different species of birds including Sun Birds, Fly Catchers, Crested Drongo, Madagascar Bird of Paradise, and a chameleon.

We were all hot and sweaty when we arrived at the pool, and my goodness, the swim was very welcome! The water was cool and refreshing, although some peeps who weren’t acclimatised to cool water swimming did comment that it was in fact quite cold. On the surface of the lake were little blue beetles around ½cm long zooming around; we were unable to identify them, but they were quite cute and there were probably a couple of hundred of them.

Our picnic lunch was rice, Zebu meat and vegetables with pineapple for pudding. A few peeps have commented that they eating more healthily here that an home – I must admit that I probably am, but it’s tempered by the alcohol!

There was an ant nest next to the pool, and we spent a long time being fascinated by the ants taking some of our left overs and spills to their nest. One spent a while trying to move a piece of carrot about 3 times its own size, it did really well moving it about 60cm, but then seemed to abandon it. Nope, it had popped home to get reinforcements and within a few minutes there were 6 ants carrying the carrot, along with 4 carrying a scrap of Zebu meat, and many single ants carrying bits of rice and smaller scraps of vegetables down to the nest. Incredible to watch.

We were also visited by more birds and a couple of small red dragonflies. A large blue dragonfly was patrolling his territory, and was flying around for most of the time we were there. A few butterflies were fluttering by.

We had plenty of time to relax by the pool, but eventually it was time to start the 90ish minute hike back to the Lodge. Our amazing guides from the local village of Anjahakely managed to spot another couple of lemurs for us on the journey.

We arrived back hot and sweaty and bought our guides and Gee a beer. We did of course tip the guides as well, and goodness me, they deserved it! They do this hike at least once a week with the tourists visiting the lodge, carrying the picnic, spotting the wild life, hiking through difficult territory and all while wearing flip flops!

Ironically, when I headed back to my room there were 2 black lemurs and a nocturnal lemur hanging out in the trees right next to the door!

Dinner this evening consisted of a lot of soup. There was a veggie soup as one of the starters, as a main there was chicken in a watery sauce which looked and tasted like soup. Pudding choices included fruit salad in juice, which was in effect a fruit.soup.

A couple of peeps had 3 soup courses. This is now known as soup gate!

I went to bed quite early, others didn't and there were a few hangovers this morning!

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