It depends on the wind - part two

Morondava
It's been a very Malagasy first week to our holidays.
We'd wanted to do some diving after the volunteers left, but the winds were way too strong to go diving.

In the end, we spend our remaining time in Andava packing up and handing over things to Axelle. We finally left Andava on Tuesday 12th August in one of Ilias's 4x4s. There was hardly anyone left on site to see us off, though all of the Coco beach staff did come down to wave goodbye. The first stop on our trip was Morombe - an extremely laid back town to the north of Andavadoaka. Laid back is an understatement in fact. It's possibly the deadest town I've ever visited. But that was okay we thought as we only intended to be there a night. The first choice for our exit strategy was a plane - expensive but quick. Ilias offered to book us seats, but that afternoon we got a message to say that planes from Morombe were still cancelled. Our second choice, to leave by boutre, looked extremely promising however as Jean from Andava - in Morombe visiting family - managed to find us one that was leaving the next day. I had mixed feelings about the boutre. Yes it was cheap. Yes it was 'romantic' and yes it was adventurous. But it was also unpredictable and the toilet options were minimal. Well, non-existant. Still, I thought, how hard can it be to pee over the side of a boat?

It all seemed too good to be true - the boutre was leaving the next day and we were on it. We left the hotel at 5am Malagasy time (ie 6.30am) and Jean and two crew members carried our luggage through the town to the north end of the beach. I can report that Andavadoaka's poo beach is not the only one in Madagascar. Morombe has one too. Anyway, the smallest rowing pirogue in the world took our luggage onto the boat and we followed behind in an even smaller pirogue. We arrived on board at about 7.15am to find the boat full of passengers. About 30 in total. There wasn't much space and there was even less privacy. What reservations I had about boutre toilet arrangements were multiplied as I realised that there was no where on the boat without onlookers. Peeing over the side of the boat was one thing but to do so with an audience was another thing entirely.

As is the way in Madagascar, after plenty of waiting around, suddenly there was a frenzy of activity with a sense of urgency as the anchors were pulled up (they took half an hour to get on board) and the sails were erected. We finally left Morombe at 9.50 and set sail for Morondava and Belo Sur Mer. The wind was not ideal. Some might say that it was bad. In fact, someone did say it was bad, but the captain seemed to think it was worth trying anyway. We'd been shown into the captain's cabin, a tiny wooden box on the top of the deck. We shared it with a woman (the captain's wife I presume) and three or four children as well as lots of bags. We dozed on and off and ate some rice and fish prepared on board.

The sandy coast went past the window to our right as we sailed north. Though there were no engines on board, it wasn't that peaceful due to the plink plonk of the homemade Malagasy guitars which were attacked by the children. The boat tacked a few times and the noise of the crew above our heads was pretty loud too.

Still, the motion of the boat was pleasant and I was sort of excited about the journey, though anxious about what I would do when I finally needed to pee. At 1.30, the coast appeared through the left window. I'm no whizz with direction, but even I knew that meant we'd done a 180 and were heading back to Morombe. The captain had decided that the wind was too bad after all and so we'd anchor in Morombe and set off again at midnight. The idea of going all the way back to Morombe and starting all over again the next day pretty much floored me. At this rate, it could take us a few more days - and we still might not get anywhere.

A few phone calls later and we'd made other arrangements for transport. Back in Morombe, the tiny pirogue was lowered into the water from the boutre and we departed with our bags precariously perched across it, waving goodbye to the passengers and crew. Justin had tried to get some of our money back from the captain but he just looked frightened and explained that he'd already spent the majority of it on food. Our boutre journey was over somewhat prematurely - and had turned out to be quite a pricey day out which I would have enjoyed more had I known it was to be our only day out on the boat.

The adventure did not end there. Oh no. One of Ilias's friends came to the beach to pick us and our bags up and promptly got stuck in the sand as it was not a 4x4 and not made for sand. We were another hour on the beach with about 20 vezo men and children trying to push it out of the sand. Muscly though the vezo are, even they could not shift it and it needed the help of a 4x4 to pull it before it shifted. We finally arrived back in the same room of the hotel Baobab less than 12 hours after we had left it.

We finally managed to properly leave Morombe on our second attempt (third if you include the plane that didn't get booked) only 8 hours later than planned. We'd booked a 4x4 through Ilias to leave at 8am the following day after the aborted boutre journey. At 9.30 (which is approximately 8am Malagasy time) the car had still not turned up. Nor at 11. Nor at 1. Leaving Morombe was proving to be harder than it sounded. After lots of reassurances and blatant lies from the hotel staff, the car finally turned up at 4pm that afternoon with Patrick, Ilias's driver, smiling broadly at us. The staff advised us to wait for morning but I was worried that the invisible forces that had so far kept us in Morombe would strengthen overnight and we would not manage to leave at all.

We waved goodbye to Morombe with no tears at 5pm and drove for 3 hours through the most spectacular scenery until we got to a town called Ambiky. The drive really was incredible - with huge monster boababs lining the road and a rainbow over forest in the distance. I say road, but for most of the journey that would be a generous description for what was actually just an absence of vegetation. The journey was uncomfortable and violent as a result and it felt like a cross between being in a carcrash and being on a rollerocoaster. I did not mind. At least we were going somewhere.

We ate a lovely local meal (beans and rice. Hoorah) and then bedded down in one of Ambiky's 'hotels'. I don't think many tourists stop through the town. The hotel owners initially showed us a barn with no furniture in at all, but when we seemed unphased by the prospect of sleeping there, they relented and offered us a room with an actual bed in it. Justin erected our mosquito net and I was shown the bathroom which turned out to be a small room with a bucket of water in it. No toilet bowl. No hole to pee down, just a tiny hole in the back of the back wall where the pee was supposed to drain. Only apparently it hadn't drained for a while and there was a big puddle of pee towards the back of the room. Still, at least it was private.

We set off on the final leg of our journey to Belo sur mer at 6am the following morning. We stopped off for bok bok and coffee at 9 and then in a town called Manja for lunch before arriving in Belo at 5pm. The journey was as spectacular as it had been the day before and we drove through quite a wide variety of habitats on the terrible 'road'. Children in small villages ran out, singing "salama fazahar" in unison when we passed. My favourite image of the day however was not the huge towering boababs shrouded by mists in the early morning. Nor the two young zebu herders crossing the river while holding their clothes above their heads to keep them dry. Nor was it the village meeting in one of the farming villages. It was the sight of a naked man who was sat on his own in one of the rivers eating a french baguette grinning hello to us as we passed.

So... We finally arrived in Belo sur mer, optimistic and excited. We'd planned to do some diving there and visit a national park as well. I was initially disappointed to find that the diving centre was not sending out dives because the diving manager was on holiday. However, due to my divemaster status, Stephane, the hotel manager (who knew of Blue Ventures) agreed that we could rent out the boat for a day to go diving. Sadly, it was not to be. Monday dawned with a southerly wind and Stephane advised us that the visibility would be too poor and it wasn't worth our while.

Meanwhile lots of investigation over our first two days had finally rewarded us with a booking for a local guide to take us to a national park and we booked it for Tuesday. That day dawned with another southerly wind which the pirogue could not sail against to take us there. And so that too was cancelled. In the end, we spent four days in Belo relaxing, reading, not diving and not visiting national parks. I did, on the other hand, manage to find the best coffee in Madagascar at one of the roadside stalls. We ate breakfast there each morning (coffee and bok bok) and also commandeered the friendly woman to make us lunch which she did at a very reasonable price of 3,000 ariary per person (£1) for a delicious 'all you can eat' meal of very tasty beans and rice.

Belo is a vezo village - but much bigger than Andavadoaka. There are more hotels (mostly foreign owned) and more tourists. It is the centre of boutre building in Madagascar, and there are boutres in different stages of construction all along the beach. Apparently they take between 4 and 6 years to build. As I never saw anyone working on one in our five days there, this is possibly why. However, a brand new one was launched while we were there - though we were too tired to stay for more than an hour at the all-night party in its honour.

And now we're finally in Morondava having left Belo on a motorised pirogue this morning. Thankfully, that transport method was not reliant on wind direction. Ironically, the wind would have been in our favour for either diving or for visiting the national park today, but we were running out of cash and it was definitely time to move on. We've found ourselves a hotel that's a little more luxurious than anywhere we've stayed at yet. We have hot water and electricity that's on all the time! The hotel also arranges 4x4 hire (it's the only 'reliable' way to travel in this country it seems) and we're (fingers' crossed and all that) going to the Tsingy National Park on Saturday. The hotel is owned or run by a nephew of Ilias (the owner of Coco beach) it turns out - though we didn't know that when we booked in. In the meantime, we shall feast on some tourist food and prepare ourselves for six days of 'roughing' it. Whatever transpires, at least we are no longer reliant on a 'good wind' for our plans.