Day 95: Nosy Be, Madagascar

Lemur

The stop in Madagascar would be our last opportunity to snorkel for a while, maybe the last of the trip. It was also to be our last tender port, so to avoid burning a half day waiting for tender tickets, we booked an excursion and left with a group. When we arrived to the pier, we had to wait for all of the other groups to board their boats, and it seemed that there was only room for one or two at a time, and there were a lot of people waiting. It w add hot AF, so they moved us under a tent, which was sweltering as well. We opened up the back of the tent to let a breeze through and were able to cool off enough endure the wait. We were to go to two islands: Nosy Tanikely and Nosy Komba. Nosy means island, and Komba means Lemur. The former is an uninhabited national park where there is snorkeling, and the other is much larger and inhabited with fishing villages on the coast and farming villages in the highlands, where they grow coffee, vanilla and tropical fruit.

The snorkeling was really good, much better than what we found in the Seychelles. We spotted turtles and giant clams. There were a large variety of healthy corals and anemones, with all kinds of reef fish: angels, butterfly, moorish idols, clownfish, wrasses, grouper, and colorful damselfish. They gave us a couple of hours, which was nice. Next, we boarded the boat and headed to Nosy Komba.

We climbed off the boat and had to wade through thigh deep water to reach the shore. We went to a restaurant for family style local food that was very good! I drank a local beer which was decent. After lunch, Jessica was worried about the mosquitoes and malaria, so opted to wait in the boat instead of walking through the jungle. I thought I would dose up on deet, but now the boat was further out, so we waded on to chest deep water to get to the boat. I left my cash on the boat, as well as the deet, and decided to risk it. I didn’t see any mosquitoes in the jungle, and am glad I went. We saw a bunch of Lemurs, which would come down from the trees for a banana snack when called! They would also sit on your shoulder to eat a snack out of you hand! The males were black and the females brown. We also saw the giant tortoises, regular tortoises, boas and chameleons. On the way to the Lemurs, there were a ton of vendors. They all had mostly the same stuff for sale, but there was some cool art and wood carvings. I just don’t have any room for many souvenirs, otherwise I would have gotten some things.

Dancers

We didn’t see any of Nosy Be, but what we did see was a treat. We were treated to a beautiful sunset as we prepared for the guest talent show:

We had fun playing 2 minutes of Tom Petty’s American Girl, and it’s been fun having people approach us days after the show saying they enjoyed it. We had a blast!