The Vanilla Isle (part 2)

THE VANILLA ISLE (PART 2)

Today we are off to Nosy Sakatia, which is an even more remote island off the already quite remote island of Nosy Be.  To get there you have to persuade someone to take you (there aren't any scheduled services).  This isn't a problem in itself, as every second person we met claimed to offer magical snorkelling/diving trips to this or that island.  The problem is more who to trust to actually get you there and back.  For better or worse we ended up succumbing to a trustworthy seeming chap who approached us near our hotel.  He promised, in dulcet tones, a taxi, a boat, snorkelling, lunch, more snorkelling and return by late afternoon.  Given that we had to give him half the money up front the day before, there was a quite a big degree of trust on our part, although Malagasy are famously trustworthy people.  It is 'fady' to be dishonest and I would say that my experience of the people bears this out.  They are charming and friendly and honest.  

And indeed he turned up the next day at the agreed time and we trotted off to the beach where his friend had the boat to take us across to Nosy Sakatia.  I guess it helps in a place like this to be fluent in the language, which in this instance would be Malagasy although everyone we knew spoke good French too.  My French is very rusty, although I've felt it returning a bit as I've been forced to use it.  It's been quite a good experience actually, but the spin off is that whilst I am happy to try and get by in faltering Francais, it by no means translates into a firm understanding on my part of what's actually being said, which probably underlay our experience.  The taxi driver handed us over to his friend with the boat, who dutifully ferried us over the water to Nosy Sakatia.  The problem came when he deposited us on the island and then got back on his boat and sped off.  I had thought he had said he was returning, which I think he did eventually, but an hour went past and there was no sign of anyone.  Eventually we decided that perhaps something had gone wrong, and headed around the bay towards the Sakatia Lodge, which is the one hotel on the island.  On the way we met a loquacious but completely unintelligible Malagasy man who stank of stale booze and who followed us around to the hotel.  When we got there we eventually met the owner of the place, a South African guy called Jose who spoke English, French, Italian and probably more besides.  He thought we'd probably been ripped off.  He offered to lend us snorkelling gear for free, which was really pretty good of him!  Snorkelling is awesome in warm water, better still with pretty fish and coral to look at, better still with an underwater camera to photograph it with.  

I think in actuality that the coral here is not terribly healthy.  It is such a delicate thing, and when you see a speedboat gun its 150hp motor and zoom straight over the patch of water where you know it is, and you imagine that happening time and time again, it is easy to understand why it degenerates.  Nevertheless we saw some stunning coral and the camera did itself proud.

I forget the name of this fish, but it lives in the anenome and will attack you if you get too near.  

Clouds of little fish mingle in the coral, often seeming to form colonies around particular crops.  They retreat inside if you get too near, and re-emerge when you move back.

Beautiful colours

We spent about two or three hours snorkelling before the tide started to come in and we thought we should probably head in.  We were both quite cold.  However as we returned to the shallows nature provided her own jacuzzi with water that was creeping in over the sun-baked sand and forming a natural hot bath.  It was by far and away the warmest sea I have ever been in.  I lay back in the shallows and felt like I was in a flotation tank, but with the sun warm on my chest.  Truly beautiful.  We had some lunch at the Sakatia Lodge and then spent the rest of the afternoon in the deck chairs by the beach.  Jose organised a boat to take us back to the beach where we came from on Nosy Be, and there we found our taxi dutifully waiting for us.  This made me think that they had not tried to rip us off, and it was more just a misunderstanding.  We chalked it up to experience.  Anyway we had had a brilliant day!