Week 6 - The Goodbye

The reality of the end of our adventure was slowly touching each and every one of us. It was time for our camping trip. One group had gone up North the week before and we were to go down South back to Tampolove. These camping trips were designed so that we could finish Science Dives further down along the coast, trips that were too far to do from Andava. We left early morning on one of our dive boats and stopped at our first site – Kimboro. What a beautiful dive site – shoals upon shoals of sweepers and soldierfish, a blue-spotted ray, a moray eel, a male sling-jaw wrasse and countless amounts of fish. We finished our fish belts with surprising speed and accuracy and then explored the reef and took in the beauty. I cannot begin to tell you how much I love diving. The swell was unbelievable and poor Sally was as white as a sheet from sea-sickness. We then descended for our second dive, finished our data collection, surfaced and then head back to Tampolove. We carried a portable compressor to the compound where we hung our gear to dry and filled our cylinders. We got to stay in actual cabins that night – but this small luxury in those temperatures was unbearable with the cabin reaching 38°C that evening. The next morning, we left for our final science dive of the expedition at Bic’s Cave. This was a very flat, young reef with a great variety of fish. This is where I joined the prestigious hydroid group – what an achievement! Being stung by a hydroid feels a bit like a wasp sting – sharp and itchy. After our 2 dives there, having explored the mini cave system, gone through swim-through’s and collected our data, we made our way back to Andava. Our next day we did recreational dives to Lost and Valley where all of us dived together and went where we wanted  in our buddy pairs – here we found each and every elusive PIT stake that we struggled to find on our science dives – Murphy always prevails.  Dolphins swam with the boats on the way to the dive sites, what a perfect diving day to end our expedition on.

Our final lunch was with the Women’s Association. The cooked us a wonderful meal and sang for us – wishing us success and happiness on our journey’s through life.  Needless to say, some of us – nay most of us shed a few tears knowing that this amazing experience was coming to an end. Our final part night was quiet and relaxed because nobody wanted to make the journey home with a hangover. It was a night of exchanging photo’s and contact details. The next morning, we rose early and packed our 4x4’s and head off for Toliara, back to civilisation – a freshwater swimming pool and airconditioning. It was a quiet trip, most of us reflecting on the past seven weeks. It was a two night stay in Toliara before Kim, Trevor, Steve, Charlie and I flew to Antananarivo. Leaving Toliara was filled with love and tears and promises. Kim and I buried our faces in our pillows and hugged one another as we left our memories. The flight to Tana was largely uneventful. We left Charlie, Steve and Trevor there and Kim and I made our way to Johannesburg. We left each other at customs.

I was completely overwhelmed by being back in the hustle and bustle of Johannesburg. People weren’t as friendly and the crowds were overbearing. Life in Madagascar was far simpler. I cried, a lot when I arrived home, unable to put into words what I had experienced and what I had left behind. What can I possibly say about this trip that will accurately convey what it really meant to me? The people I met and the experiences I have had have all been completely life-changing and have added a little something to the person I now know as Courtney. Thank you to the people that had made this adventure and for all the love and memories – always special and never forgotten.

Signing out – until the next big adventure!

Week 5 - Zanga's, Cockroaches and Baobabs

This week was certainly an eventful week. It was the last week to fit everything in before we were to start the long trek home. This was the week of our family stays in a rather pleasant little village –Tampolove. Here we were assigned to family homes where we could practice our extensive Malagasy vocabulary (all we had learnt up to this point was general greetings, how to count and how to order beer). The families we were to spend the evening with were families that had sea cucumber pens that we part of Zanga Matt’s project. We were to go at low tide (which was around 12 pm) to weigh the larger sea cucumbers and to count the juveniles and see which ones had survived. After a 1h30 pirogue journey to Tampolove, we were shown to Zanga Matt’s compound. Here we had some lunch and were then led to our respective families. I was to stay with a family of 6 – the mother’s name was Nathalie. After stumbling through extremely broken Malagasy and eventually resorting to sign language we had then been called to go with Zanga Matt to the mangroves.

Matt had the idea of rehabilitating the mangroves in that area and so we set out in search of seeds to plant. We walked through the mangroves, collecting as many seeds as possible and then made our way to the site for planting. We then just shoved the seeds into the mud in rows. Zanga Matt has since left there and we have yet to find out whether it was even minimally successful. We returned from the mangroves and then made our way to our houses for the evening. Nathalie had started preparing supper while we had been out and lo-and-behold rice and fish for supper! We sat awkwardly and smiled at one another and I then handed over my Malagasy notes to Nathalie who had been trying to learn English and so used my notes to supplement hers.

The kids and I counted in English and when it was bed time, they showed me to my room. I was fortunate – I had a proper bed and mattress, this room however was a home for a horde of cockroaches...needless to say, I decided that I would not be sleeping there. Having heard that Lauren’s host had taken a rather strong liking to her (an an inappropriate fashion) we decided that we would visit the local bar with our families. Here we ordered coke and rum and danced while we waited for the tide to move out. 

Midnight came and we made our way out to the cucumber pens. In the pens not only did we find zanga’s (which was a given) but an unlucky seahorse, a box fish and a squid (which unfortunately became supper). Nick and I were sent to count the juvenile pens and I will honestly say that this gave me the heeby-jeebies. They feel funny in your hands and even more revolting under your feet. We were sticking our hands deep into the mud and did not know what we were going to be picking up. Now I am not a squeamish person but I was unsettled beyond words – so once that pen was done, I watched with great interest.

Once this whole project had been finished we headed back to the compound and the general consensus was that none of us would be sleeping at our designated houses – me with my cockroach infestation; Nick with his crazy-eyed mass murderer (-looking) house father and Lauren with her overtly friendly host – we thought that it would be safer on the floor of the compound. We then decided that perhaps it was best not to sleep and sat and stayed awake until 4am, knowing that we would be leaving at first light. This was our only hope. I vigil ended when we started falling asleep and a drunk Malagasy gentleman decided that he preferred Justin Bieber blaring from his cellphone over our music that we had running through a stereo system. We woke up 4 hours later when the tide had come in and get set to go on our way. The pirogue trip back was trying to say the least. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction to get us back to Andava at any great rate of knots. Luckily we were equipped with a rowing machine (known as Patrick) and made it back...in 5 hours. We then arrived back to the knowledge that we would be setting up traps for reptile monitoring.

Now this reptile monitoring was commissioned by a chap in the UK – I use chap in place of idiot because this study was useless. He wanted to determine the presence of reptiles in a degraded area compared to one that was untouched – in theory this is a great study, provided you’re willing to work for the results and have enough comparable data for it to be of any relevance. Setting up one reptile monitoring point in a degraded area and one in a non-degraded area does not count as sufficient data for any study. Let me explain the traps to you – they consisted of 20 buckets buried placed in a hole so that the lip of the bucket was indistinguishable from the ground. The buckets were placed 1m apparent following a random path. Now between buckets there were sticks which we then thread a plastic sheet (20m in length) through from one end to the other. The theory is – is that reptiles would hit the plastic sheet and then turn left or right and ultimately end up in a bucket. This method worked extremely well for spiders and scorpions and other insects, not so much for reptiles. The traps were checked twice a day –first thing in the morning to get anything out that had fallen in overnight. We would then leave long sticks in so that specimens that had fallen in during the day could get out without baking in the sun. We ran this study for 10 days and as far as I remember found 2 reptiles.

So now – back to the water, where we out to be! We did a Science Dive at Mah. As far as I remember it took my breath away but I will absolutely have to get back to you on this one. Party night this night was a Pirate / Superheroes theme. Nick fashioned cutlasses and swords out of sticks, coconuts and a machete. We also carried a plank around for people that committed party fails.

On our day off, we headed off to the Baobabs which took an hour by Zebu Cart. 4 of us squeezed into a 1 x 1m box cart and where taken to the baobabs. We plodded past the Italian Hospital and past the airstrip. Well...was I rendered speechless when we arrived? What magnificent beings. Looking up at this beast was so humbling and I genuinely felt at peace. They blew my mind. It has always been a dream to see Baobabs and here they were. We walked through all of them, each having a story or a name and we left at sunset. What an image and what an astounding memory. My love for these trees has only grown.

And so it became like home

Week 3:

Week 3! By this stage we had become accustomed to the way of life around Andavadoaka. This meant that although the fun and nonsense continued, we had a routine and we stuck to it. This week, we were blessed with a Night Dive. A night dive in Andava meant that we had to get up at stupid o’clock (3am to be precise) so that we could surface at sunrise. We prepared all our gear the night before and launched at 4am. Night diving is not one of my favourite pastimes as you cannot enjoy the whole coral reef and are limited by your torch light but it definitely gave a different perspective to something we saw every day. Small little white bait, all the urchins out from under the coral and the squid hunting by torch light was not something you see every day. It was magnificent and we were silenced as we surfaced at sunrise. We returned to half moon beach, had breakfast and prepared for out 11am dive. What a beautiful life.

This week was the final rescue scenario for those of them completing their rescue diver course. I was roped into playing a final victim and was left to float in half moon bay. I was constantly on the lookout for ninja jellyfish which stalked me while I pretended to play dead. Luckily I was rescued by Nick and dragged to the beach, sand finding its way into every possible unnatural location and was treated as an unconscious victim. I was successfully revived and watched on as they tried to revive my buddy. He did not make it. All in all, the guys passed and did a splendid job... now to tackle that sand.

This week we said goodbye to Jen and Sean. This farewell was at Bic’s where we’d put money together to buy some goat....yummy – red meat. We barbequed the goat (the word Braai didn’t quite catch on – I certainly did try) and after several bottles of rum and extremely full tummies, we stumbled our way back to our cabins. As far as I can remember, it was a rather unpleasant hangover but they all are aren’t they?

Week 4:

Now I know that it has been a while since I wrote about this particular adventure, and it almost certainly has been a long time since I last left there, so please forgive my memory loss and lack of detail.

 We started official science dives this week which meant we got to dive further sites, and this data was captured for actual research purposes and thus the pressure was on. We dived Nosy Fasy which was a reef not far from Nosy Hao. Unfortunately this reef was the source of waves in the area so we were subjected to unbelievable surge. Imagine trying to red every 20cm on a tape while being dragged 10m forward and 9m backwards. It was fun and exhausting but we got the job done and all the data that we needed. The visibility this week on the dives was particularly low which was attributed to storms around the coast of Africa. Our next day of Science diving was done at Nearshore Andava and what a disaster! The stakes were so badly numbered so we all did invisible PITs and this disaster was followed by the news that Nick had lost his slate with all the data on...this meant that NS Andava had to be redone, another day.

This party night involved bed-sheets which is surprisingly convenient for those bonfires on the beach and for conveniently falling asleep on because we were “oh so tired”. Nick the ultimate costume maker in the middle of nowhere, fashioned head bands out of palm fronds and used conch shells to call the winds for improved sailing? This party night was one night to be remembered, or not, and will go down in the history books.

This day off saw Nick and I head into the village to go see Jacks. He was going to show us how he painted his pictures. He got white material which was ironed and then melted wax onto it to make a canvass. He would then get what paints he could and would copy pictures from the fish books or anything else that you wanted onto his blank canvass. It’s amazing what people can do without all this fancy stuff we take for granted.

The Good, The Bad and the Debauchery!

With the start of week 2 comes the challenges. Our first challenge was that of speed PIT’s. Me and my dive buddy Nick (later to be known to ourselves as the ‘Dream Team’) were first up. We’d managed to pass our out- and in-water tests and completed our individual training PIT’s. As we were the first 2 that had reached this point, we were paired together to do speed PIT’s. Little did we know how daunting this challenge would be. A speed PIT involves doing 3 single PIT’s in a 45 minute dive. As easy as it may sound, it becomes a real challenge when you spend 15 minutes searching for a dive site that you were certain was in ‘that direction’, swimming behind a small motorboat underwater and gulping down half a tank of air (Nick, not me – I don’t breath underwater), then finally searching for the mythical stakes. Our first one was a complete mess and me (and Nick) being the perfectionists we are – got angry because we didn’t manage it as we assumed we would. The next day we did our second speed PIT and just didn’t make it. We were given Carte Blanche the next diving day so we could gather our thoughts for our last and final attempt and finally on the third day of attempting our speed PIT’s, we nailed it. At the end of the expedition we could do 6 single PITs and a fish belt each between the two of us. As we had now completed the first step of science training – we were told to start learning and identifying 150 species of fish.

During this week I had brought myself a hammock from the Women’s Association. It truly was the most magnificent gift I could give myself in Andavadoaka. It was expertly strung up on the porch but Georgie’s capable hands. This is where I would observe the inhabitants of Hut 1 (Georgie, Sally, Hannah) with their Instructor (Kim) do their afternoon exercise routine while Lauren barked orders and selected music appropriate to such routines. This is where my dives were logged and a large amount of thinking took place while staring over half moon beach. I made some important realisations in that hammock. I realised that this was to be my life – that diving, whether it be for conservation or teaching reasons, was going to be a major component. I also realised that I was bitten by the travel bug, and that this was only the first stop. I knew then that the man I would marry would be met on my journeys and would have the same passions as I do. I also realised that in my lifetime, I would make Madagascar my home.

We started official Malagasy lessons this week and although I will not go into depth with regard to these – I will say that I would love to speak Malagasy fluently. It is such a beautifully confused language.This is a challenge I have set myself for when I go to live in that country. What a strange, emotive language and also so simply structured.

Right, so this week we were to go to Lamboura (a little village down south) for Spider Tortoise monitoring. It was a 2 hour pirogue ride down there. This was not a highlight of my expedition because as a scholar in field surveying, I did not see much worth in it. We arrived in Lamboura and were welcomed by experiences that would need several adjustments. We stayed in the president’s compound. There were 2 double beds and a piece of concrete. Sally, Georgie, Hannah and I eventually opted to all share one of them (with Sal using a chair as an extension – darn giant), while Trev slept snugly in his own and Sean and Goff and our pirogue sailors slept outside on the sails. Having arrived there early in the morning we spent the day trying to organise our sleeping configurations and escaping the heat. It was unbearably hot compared to home (as we lovingly referred to Andavadoaka) so we remained motionless until it was time to go and survey. In this time, we were told that the toilets were a 15 minute walk away, which was exactly the same distance away as the boundary of the Spiny Forest. Putting 2 and 2 together, we opted for forcing our bowels to hold out for 2 days until we got home. There was a traditional Malagasy toilet in the corner of our yard. Let me describe a traditional Malagasy toilet – a piece of concrete, with a teeny tiny drainage hole... note to self, beware the splash back!!! After getting over this small shock we were told it was time to go and monitor. The survey took us into the Spiny Forest. We walked for approximately an hour before reaching our GPS points. The survey consisted of walking in a straight line for 100m searching for spider tortoises in your transect. We only surveyed 6 areas which to me seemed like a rather small sample size and not really a proper indication of a population BUT I humoured them anyway...while cursing under my breath. 36 degrees Celcius at 4 pm – it was hot. We were also being eaten alive by mosquitos despite, what we thought, our very carefully planned repellent application. We completed 2 sites out that side and made our way back to the compound at dark. Because it is against Malagasy culture on the smaller villages to prance around in your bikinis, we waited until it was dark and went and lay in the shallow water to have a bit of a rinse. This was in the mouth of the bay, so images of bull sharks were racing through my mind – this I mentioned to the girls and I am certain it was around that time we decided to exit the water. The next day was the same story – although it involved a trip across the bay to the other side of Lamboura. We found a fair amount of tortoises here and spirits were lifted. I won’t be going into too much detail as it’s not something I remember clearly. I do however, recall that we found something like 42 tortoises which was higher than the previous count. Success!!!! We stayed again for another night and as the sun rose, we were on the pirogues and heading back for breakfast. Upon arrival at Half Moon Beach, we all thanked our higher powers, hugged the sand and were extremely grateful to be home. Breakfast was waiting and as they say hunger is the best chef...ever!

A crazy week culminated in what would be a party night that went down in the history books. Our cross dressing party night! We each selected a name from a hat, of a volunteer of the opposite sex, and these were to be our alter egos. Not only were we to dress like them, but to act like them too. Naturally the men did not need to be forced to put on dresses, as we are all well aware that they secretly enjoy this small pleasure. I cannot even begin to describe the debauchery that ensued. I will however award and Oscar to Lauren for the most brilliant impersonation of Nick, to Hannah for the best impersonation of Sean and to Sean, for the worst South African accent I have ever heard! Congratulations and may you continue to prosper!

Until next week...

Week 1 - Introduction to Life in Andavadoaka

Apologies in the delay for the next installment...the creative juices have not been flowing, even a little but I gave it a shot!

So as I may or may not have mentioned – we worked on a 6 day week. 5 days of diving and 1 day off – because according to some bizarre rules, you’re not allowed to dive every day. This is important when you understand that each week culminated in large quantities of food, rum and fuzzy memories, but that I’ll get to later.

A quick explanation on Andavadoaka – this is a little village on the South West coast of Madagascar. Madagascar has, and I stand to be corrected, 18 tribes that make up this country. We were in the Vezo tribe region. The Vezo people live off the sea – which is the reason for the presence of Blue Ventures. Through the years, destructive fishing practices have been employed and thus the destruction of the reef has been immense. There are less fish available to sustain the growing numbers and the people are feeling this decline. You will very rarely see turtles and sharks as these are fished for food. Blue Ventures have endeavoured to teach the people of Andavadoaka as well as the fishermen in the surrounding villages, sustainable fishing practices and this has been largely successful. This project has resulted in the birth of “Velondriake” which means “To live with sea”. This consists of 40 villages along the coast – 20 north of Andavadoaka and 20 South. We were there to survey the rehabilitation of the reef and see whether the work and teaching that Blue Ventures have put in, has had any impact.

In our first week, we had a fair amount of orientation to go through and of course our science training. As is customary in Andavadoaka, we were required to meet the Villagers elders “Nahodas” and introduce ourselves, request if we may stay in the village and await their blessing. As is also customary in Madagascar, every tradition is overseen by rum – white or black. I now find myself partial to this particular spirit to my own detriment. Before we made our way to Dadas, the local Epibar (what better place for a cultural meeting of importance), we had a crash course in Malagasy as we were required to introduce ourselves in Malagasy and say a little about ourselves. Armed with varying linguistic abilities, we made our way down to the village of Andavadoaka, all of us tingling with anticipation (fear?). We had to wait outside until all the Nahodas were seated in the little bar. We, the Vazaha (white people), then made our way in and the rest of the village watched the proceedings from outside. A speech from Bic our Malagasy Dive Manager was followed by each of our great speeches. This was followed by a long-winded speech from the President – he accepted us staying in the village, thanked us for the work we were participating in and blessed us. His speech was followed by the rest of the Nahodas. Once Bic had translated for us, we each had to pour our drinks and finish them. We all got up to shake the hands with the Nahodas and the meeting then culminated in a dance to Malagasy music – white people can’t dance... especially to this music, we do not have enough joints. Once this task was completed we made our way up for dinner: Beans with rice and fish (BWRAF for you divers), which we soon grew to love or rather accept.

Let me get into the science before I go in further. We were there as volunteers to complete surveys on the near shore sites as well as those sites further out. These surveys included the determination of the amount of soft coral versus hard coral (Benthic) on a reef by P.I.T.s; the presence of indicator invertebrates as well as the abundance of fish indicator species. We therefore had to learn 150 fish species, coral categories and indicator invertebrates. Once we had learnt these, we had to do out of water tests and once we had passed those, then we did in-water tests. Once we had satisfactorily passed, we could do science diving – which was incredibly intense and exciting. In our first week we learnt our corals, passed all our tests and began practicing P.I.T.s – when you could do 3 speed P.I.T.s in a buddy pair...you were ready for some Benthic Science diving. The feeling that once you have received the nod is equivalent to the feeling you get when you know you’re about to be involved in something important. Little did the BV staff know that they had a volunteer group that could give MENSA a run – we learnt pretty darn quickly.

Once a year, Blue Ventures invite the people of Andavadoaka up to the “Operation Centre” to see what they do. We are privileged to say that we could be involved in this special day. It started fairly early with the setting up of the projector to show ‘Voyage of the Vezo’ in Nosy Cao (our classroom). We also set up mock P.I.T.s and fish belts with Malagasy explanations. Safidy had set up a family planning stall and Zanga Matt had brought some sea cucumbers (more about this all later) for people to see. Naturally, the children from the village were the first up. We had Bic stationed by our dive gear rinsing barrels with tanks, regs and masks. The Malagasy kids are small enough to fit into the barrels, so we gave them masks and regs/octos and let them breath underwater...the LOVED it. The concept of a queue in Madagascar still has yet to be introduced but each kid in the mass around the barrels had a chance to experience the small delight of diving – even if it was warm turbid water. An announcement was made for the sandcastle competition taking place on the beach and a swarm of dirty, wet children rushed down to Half Moon Beach. After “judging” various turtles, hammerheads, blobs and castles we announced 4^th, 3^rd, 2^nd and 1^st – prizes were English books carefully selected on age and ability. After this rather difficult task, the kids were sent back up to Nosy Cao and were each given a sweetie – needless to say chaos ensued and some were brilliant enough to negotiate their way to the back of the queue (roughly termed) for a second treat. And now for the event that everyone had been waiting for: The Pirogue Race. Captains from villages near and far made their way down to Andavadoaka for this prestigious event. The race started at 3 pm from Andava beach. We, as Blue Ventures Volunteers, and vazaha were shared among the locals and put on a pirogue. The bigger lot of us were looked at rather disdainfully as we signified the loss of the race. Nick was told he was too big and nobody wanted him, but after much negotiating, he was placed on a pirogue with 3 children, the eldest who probably hadn’t even seen 15. I was with Patrick -who will always be known as my potential CK Model. He is beautiful and has the most engaging smile. After being on several pirogue trips with him – I now understand why he looks the way he does...he can paddle like a dream but his sailing isn’t so strong.  Reike – Roa – Telo (1, 2, 3 in Malagasy) and we’re off, all the way out to Nosy Fasy. This event was full of collisions (Thanks Charlie) and even a broken mast – Nick will forever be known as the vazaha who breaks pirogues. Kim came in first with the winning pirogue, I came in third to last and Nick came in stone cold last, being towed in by another pirogue – in fact, he was so last that we didn’t even wait for him on Andava beach, much to his disgust. This very exciting day was followed by a quiet evening, because the projector had exploded (thankfully) and the evening’s festivities couldn’t continue. All of us sun-kissed and windswept, made our way to supper – swooping on the wares like hungry animals, nothing like more beans and AWESOME rice. The rice is AWESOME because Nick endeavoured to say that every mealtime for 6 weeks – he did, even when the rice stopped being awesome.

And so party night arrives but before party night can be had – boat maintenance must occur. Boat maintenance involves removing our dive boats from the water (Tson tso and Madablu) and scrubbing them inside and out. This took place on Andava beach and was an EXTREMELY unpleasant experience. This owing to the fact that Andava beach is used as a local latrine for the children of Andavadoaka and you know that the grey sand you are picking up and standing in is a component of human faeces and other human waste material (including underwear) and of course the fish remains of last night’s dinner. And unfortunately for us, the wind was blowing in a direction that resulted in all the oceans seaweed (there was tons) being deposited on the beach – what a nice little incubator for all those unpleasant things. The boats, once cleaned, are then returned to the water and so with a sigh of relief, we run into our own private bah (Half Moon Beach) where the water is clean...and soak. After that...Party Night is upon us and so the preparations begin.

 Something that one must remember about Madagascar, is that everything...EVERYTHING revolves around rum. Slaughter a goat - don’t forget the rum; annoy the ancestors – placate with rum; its party night – lets drink LOTS of rum. So this was our first party night – as we were unaccustomed to this tradition we didn’t know what to expect. We arrive at the dinner table to see that all the staff had brought along their various vices. We had now learnt and from then forth, we brought our vices to the table and boy were there a lot of those. Our first party night was calm, all of us testing our boundaries and personal capacities for rum – these were to be pushed, to the extreme in some instances, but I shall not divulge that information...just yet. This rather tame (in comparison) evening culminated on Half moon Beach around a bonfire – with the Malagasy boys playing the guitar (until it broke, was repaired and then broke again) and trying to teach us songs. This party night, we had not discovered that Dadas delivered which was soon to be our downfall on subsequent party nights.

Although it was a tame night – all of us woke up feeling a little tender, donning sunglasses and litres of water we got ready for our trip to Nosy Hao. This is an island 1 km off of Coco Beach, 1 hour away by pirogue. Our pirogue captains stopped off a little reef where we could snorkel – what a beautiful reef! Goff (one of the Malagasy DMs) told us that this was his “brother’s secret reef”. We got stung by those invisible little jellyfish (I wanted to insert another word here but thought it inappropriate), everywhere and after tiring of that – we climbed out and beach on Nosy Hao. The pirogue sails were laid down underneath some trees where we all lay and relaxed, working on our hangovers and Charlie insisting for what wouldn’t be the last time – that we must keep her away from rum. All of us went for short walks around the island and were all told a little about the situation surrounding the locals on Nosy Hao. The island had been leased to a French businessman by the Malagasy government for a period of 99 years. He has started building a hotel on the island but unfortunately to the detriment of the local folk. He is paying locals 10 000 Ariary Ariary (R34.75) to move to the opposite end of the island or 35 000 Ar (R121.55) to move to the mainland. Some have moved, others haven’t – but it really is a sorry state of affairs. After we had had enough relaxing (if that is possible) we made our way back to Andavadoaka. This signalled the end of our first week with Blue Ventures – and what a fantastically busy and exciting week it was.