The Vanilla Isle (part 5)

The Vanilla Isle (Part 5)

The next day we drove to Toamisina, a city on the coast which is the largest port in Madagascar.  It was sunny and warm, and we spent the day negotiating pot holes, overtaking huge cumbersome trucks and stopping to take photos.  

You can see the extent of the deforestation in this photo.

But the villagers are always smiling!

Drinking young coconut water is a safe and tasty way to quench a thirst.

Generally the scenery was stunning!

The day was quite uneventful really.  In the evening Jean wanted to take us our for a drink out in Toamisina and we ended up getting pulled into drinking with some pretty insistent prostitutes.  Not wanting ‘to seem rude’ I think was mostly the reason we ended up having a drink with them (or rather, buying a drink for them) whilst they plied us with their ‘wares’.  It’s the second time we’ve seen this in Madagascar, and the second time I thought it was a sad thing to see.  Both of them went for a feel of the family jewels, and both of them discovered our money belts blocking the way!  For the best I felt. It was really hard to get away without being rude.  She kept wanting to show me how well she could smoke my cigar.  Jean was apologetic afterwards.  I viewed it as an experience really, but not one that did anything for me.  The woman with Ro was far more insistent, which was a bit more difficult for him.  I think she took a real shine to him.  Not so much fun at the time, but a good story to tell afterwards!

The next day it was blowing a gale and raining heavily.  We nicknamed the weather as Tropical Storm Deev, after a friend at home who has the unerring ability to create a monsoon out of a rainshower.  We set off up the coast towards the Vanilla country.  Slow going as the road was in an appalling state in places.  Kids try to charge you for repairing the road, although you see them in the distance larking about and only when they see you coming do they actually start doing any work.  Regular road check points, although as soon as they see us they usually wave us through.  If you want to smuggle anything in Madagascar, make sure you look like a tourist.

Our final stop before the ferry crossing to Isle Sainte Marie was in Fenerieve Est, which is one of the main towns for Vanilla and Clove production.  We were keen to buy some genuine Madagascan Vanilla from the source as a souvenir, but bizarrely you couldn’t find it in the market and Jean ended up talking to a guy who knew a guy and before we knew it we were off into the suburbs of the town, eventually meeting this guy who looked like he belonged in a gangster movie.  

But we procured our Vanilla, at a very favourable price!  It smells amazing :)

Vanilla is actually a vine which grows up other plants.  I did not know this.  Now I do.  We found a charming little bed and breakfast place overlooking the sea run by a Malagasy lady who was married to a Slovenian man.  She had her own wood fired pizza oven!

The view from our room was gorgeous, however the weather forecast was bad and Tropical Storm Deev quickly started delivering a biblical quantity of rain along with some pretty stormy looking seas.

The next morning we were due to get up early and get the ferry over to Isle Sainte Marie.  But it was not to be.  Tropical Storm Deev had caused the canceling of the ferry for at least the next two days, which meant there was no prospect of us being able to get over in time before we had to fly back.  We were disappointed, although the prospect of getting a refund on the flight was welcome as we have been chomping through our cash with alarming speed.  So we decided to stay in our little cabin for an extra night.  A passing man told us that a little island just off the coast had lemurs on it, and the locals would paddle us over there for a small fee.  I was very doubtful that there were lemurs, as the island was only about 2 hectares total, but it was something to do.

The boats are not exactly high spec, but they did the job.  You can see the island in the background.

The only thing we found, slightly as expected, were enormous spiders.

Not much else.  It was an outing!  

We discovered some dominoes at the bed and breakfast place and played three rounds of.  Ro won them all so is now very keen on the game.  We had some gorgeous fish for dinner.  I ordered it, and about 10 minutes later a man turned up from the village with his catch of fresh fish, which the owner bought and then went and cooked for us!  Yum!

The upshot of the bad weather is that we had to drive back to Antananarivo.  Quite disappointing really but we’d had a pretty fantastic time so neither of us have had our spirits dampened.  We headed back to Toamisina, had lunch, and then spent the night at Feon’ny ala, where we had stayed when we went lemur watching.  This time it was wet and foggy, which made us grateful that the time we had gone lemur watching was so hot and sunny.

The next day, on the way back to Antananarivo, we stopped off at a small animal park in the hills, and we saw more lemurs, chameleons and other indigenous fauna.  The chameleons in particular were pretty cool, mostly because the guide would feed them live grasshoppers whilst we watched at they would eye them up greedily before flicking their long, sticky tongues out snaring the unfortunate grasshoppers and gobbling them up.  Yummy.

Some crazy looking geckos with amazing, marble like eyes...

And a particularly psychedelic grasshopper - luckily this guy is not for the chameleons!

So now we’re back in Tana and I'm writing this in bed the night before we fly back to South Africa.  I'm sad to leave Madagascar.  It is truly a wonderful, inspiring, colourful, beautiful and magical place.  But it'll be good to get back to somewhere with proper roads, a telephone system that works and scaffolding that doesn't look like it belongs in the middle ages.

I hope, if you are reading this, that you have enjoyed it and that you are all safe and well and happy.  Signing off...xxx

And publishing this in Cape Town...we're not in Tana anymore! xxx