MY SKIN!!! Pt 3

There wasn't a great selection at tea, but the mains were only 10,000, so I had prawns, followed by steak Chinese style. Or I intended them to follow one another. In fact they both arrived together, but oh well. It ended up being like surf and turf. Quite nice, though a little saltier than I would've liked.

The room was very nice, and I slept like a log from 9 till about 7:30. I had ordered breakfast for 8, and had mistakenly asked for just bread. No matter, they just ignored that and brought out bread, a big croissant, / fried eggs, a sausage, a slice of thin pork, mushrooms, a quarter pineapple, a quarter papaya, a banana, an orange, a handful of strawberries, coffee, tea with vanilla, and an iced juice drink rendered unfortunately undrinkable by the fact the ice could've come from local water. Wow!

After breakfast I had about 2 and a half hours to kill. I went for a shower, then just lay around my room reading (no wifi, remember!). I had asked the hotel to order me a taxi for midday, but came down at 11:30 in order to avoid any mishaps. The guy rang up though, so the taxi arrived about 5 minutes later. It was to cost only 15,000, and not the 100,000 I had budgeted, so I decided to give the hotel a nice tip. Their English wasn't the best, but they'd tried hard, so I gave the guy 10,000, 5 for him and 5 for the woman who'd been on the previous night. 

I also paid the taxi driver 20,000. I have a fair bit of money left, and I didn't spend half as much as I expected anyway, so  I could afford to be generous. Previously all the tipping had been handled by a kitty, so I have no idea what other people have been getting, but I doubt it was that much!

It wasn't even 10 minutes to the airport, so I'd arrived with plenty of time. I needed to change some money, but first to get checked in! The queue wasn't too long at this point, so it only took half an hour. No Heathrow, but not bad. Unfortunately the woman at the desk only gave me one ticket, to the Seychelles! I tried to get more information out of her, but her English wasn't very good so I gave up. At least my bag was checked through.

I then went to the ships, with an eye for some sweets for work (not seen a single bag of Madagascan sweets on my holiday, they just don't reach the countryside), and perhaps a little lemur friend for Misty. The sweets were fine, but lemur thing was 90,000, or £25. It wasn't even that big! Sod that, I left. 

Next I went to exchange currency, at a terrible rate I might add. I had about 100,000 left, or £27ish. The minimum the guy would do was £50. Well damn. It's a closed currency, so once I get out of here it'll be useless even if I try to exchange it. I wasn't particularly hungry or thirsty, and the flights will stuff me fatter than a pig at Christmas anyway. I had no room for anything bulky. I had 100,000 ariary to burn, otherwise it would literally rot in my wallet forever. That means there's a lucky pupper out there somewhere who has the most expensive toy lemur ever coming her way!

I killed time to the next flight by reading. It went rather quickly really, and I had a seat in row 8, only the third row behind business class, which meant getting off would be easy. Good. 

The flight was largely uneventful, the food was very good, though perhaps this was partially thanks to the limited availability of spices in Madagascar (they only have those that are grown in the local region). I finished my book, which I had only started this morning, so just rested until the end of the flight. The sun was setting during our descent, and it was lovely. I was in the aisle though, so couldn't photograph it at all. It'd probably have come out awful anyway through those windows.

I was first to security. I don't mean in the first lot, I mean first. Business class people are old and slow, most of the people in the first 3 rows were Chinese, so have short stride length, and I normally walk purposefully, so I didn't queue for a second. The lady at the connections desk gave me the rest of my tickets, so I could stop freaking out, and the flight was in 15 minutes early, so I had 2 hours to kill. Reading again then; luckily I had 2 books!

The next flight was 4 hours long, so I went for the films this time. Captain America: Civil War. It was alright, about what you'd expect from the modern Marvel films really. The final couple of hours, including takeoff and landing went to my book. Riveting I know.

At Abu Dhabi we were in early once again! What is this?! I was actually near the back this time, so nearly last off, BUT they just opened a new security counter as I was walking up; I was third through that one. Good trip so far, Tana aside. This time there was an hour to kill by the time I got to the gate (the airport is HUGE, it took 10 minutes of Serious walking to get there), but there was free wifi, so I mooched around the Internet a bit.

An A380 again to London, and I was hopeful of triple seats to myself again as I intended some serious sleeping on this flight. Alas it was not to be, some Czechs I think came along and rained on my parade. But wait! Once the captain announced boarding was complete, they ran off, leaving me with 3 pillows (plus my trusty neck pillow, which manfully served as my only pillow during camping), and the perfect chance to get some sleep!

The best!

First I awaited the snack. Some sort of chicken sandwich, which wasn't bad. The bed was excellent. I have refined my sleeping technique on 3 airplane seats, and had a solid 4 hours in the middle of the flight. Then they started rustling with breakfast, so I thought I might as well get up for that. 

No cereal. Barbarians!

Another hour of sleep, and the descent had begun. I flipped on the map, shocked to see we were early once again, and also that there were some strange zig zags on the route we had taken. Oh well, drunk or not the pilot got us down safely. Half an hour early too, though for me that may just mean half an hour in a cafe in King's Cross as opposed to on a plane, we will see at the train station.

I think a straight line might've been more efficient, Mr pilot

Funnily enough, after all that flying, my lips were dry. In fact, it would be more accurate to say my lip skin was dry... MY SKIN!!! Maybe I have finally uncovered what that little boy was yelling about! I got to baggage, and after 10 minutes of tense waiting, my bag popped out and dispelled the omnipresent fear that it had been ransacked by Madagascans and left for dead.

The tube ride was uneventful. No scissors to be seen or heard of. I got into Kings Cross just after 9, and the first train I could use my open return on was 9:30. Jackpot! Just enough time to grab a little something to eat then. I had a look at a pasty/coffee shop, but the breakfast pasty was £4.99. That's 2 meals in Madagascar! I went to WH Smiths instead, and got a wrap, some crisps, and a Starbucks cold coffee for £3.99, and ate them all whilst waiting. About a minute after I finished, the train was ready for boarding.

The roof at Kings Cross. Good for a filler photo.

The train journey was also uneventful. Thanks to a barrage of threats Vicky was waiting for me at the station, and she drove me home in am acceptable fashion. 

That's it. Blog over. Hope you all enjoyed it, and see you next time!

Misty was pleased to see me

Home sweet home.

MY SKIN!!! Pt 2

As you may guess from the title, this is the beginning of the end, as it were. Aside from the first section of this post, there will be no more exotic holiday stuff to read about. Instead it will be mundane travel stories. Still, my amusing writing style will continue, and you never know, there might be a humorous little girl reminding you to watch her scissors!

Before tea, we had to watch an 'animation'. This turned out to be a song and dance, somewhere between the Betsileo campfire songs and One Direction. It was alright, but watching for 45 minutes when I was hungry wasn't exactly welcomed. I would have been more appreciative at virtually any other time.

Tea was pretty good. I went for prawns in coconut milk and rice. It could've done with a bit more flavour in the sauce, but the prawns were lovely. Pauline and John were staying in the area instead of flying out with the rest of the group tomorrow, so I stayed up until 10pm chatting with everyone.

I couldn't even manage to sleep till 8:30, so I got up at 8 and went for breakfast (which was the same as yesterday, except the juice was pineapple and orange mixed, and the fruit was banana). As I was eating, a slightly smaller specimen of the polka dotted butterfly showed up. This one was not lofty and proud like the other, in fact it was a real show off! It went hanging around some orange flowers for about 5 minutes, occasionally landing and flapping its wings in a showy manner. As such, I got a lot of photos.

Look at it there, showing off. The other butterfly would disapprove.

Another mid morning walk along the beach ensued, basically to kill some time. I didn't want to go all the way to the village, due to the hassling children, but got most of the way there. I was rewarded with one of the odder things I've seen; 3 boys playing football with a dead puffer fish! No photos as a) I was quite far away, and b) I don't really like taking photos of people, as they often come up and hassle you after.

Lunch had been done especially early for our party as we were leaving before the normal lunch hours. I just went for 'Barquette de lagon'. I had no idea what it was when I ordered, save for the fact it had shrimp, fish, and calamari, as these were specified separately. It turns out a Barquette is a boat. Unfortunately this one was made out of cucumber, and the rest of the meal was salad. Oh well, the salad was really just carrot and lettuce, so nice. The cucumber escaped consumption though.

Honestly I was hoping 'Barquette' meant bucket...

We then got on the bus to drive the 45 minutes to Toliara airport for our internal flight. On the way we dropped off Pauline and John at their new hotel, where we saw a Madagascan built car! I can't remember the name, but the badge was a zebu. It looked... robust. Also on the way into Toliara there were some baobabs with fruit on. Old gits!

We drove through a different part of Toliara to get to the airport, and I must say my opinion of it has been downgraded from 'pretty mediocre place' to 'downright awful place'. Half of the buildings were built from corrugated metal, there was a lot of rubbish, it smelled fairly ripe, and the roads were dreadful. Seriously, do not go there.

The airport at least wasn't the worst I've seen. Not great, and severely lacking in electronic means of doing things (a LOT of the process was by hand), but pleasant enough. The queue however was not. We arrived 2 hours before the flight, and got checked in 20 minutes before. Luckily security was 2 guys vaguely rummaging through your bag. They didn't even do a metal detector, or even look at you really. I feel like I could've had an assault rifle strapped to my chest, and got on the plane.

Somehow, despite there being 40 odd people behind us in the queue, the flight departed only 15 minutes late. It was unallocated seating though, so I got trapped between 2... hefty gentlemen. At least it was only for an hour.

Everything about the flight went fairly smoothly, so we got into Tana with no problems. The baggage collection was a bit of a scrum, but mine came out quite early (before the airport wide power cut. Only lasted for 1 minute, but I really do hope air traffic control is on a different connection).

We once more had an exodus person to get us to our hotel, and the hotel this time is 15 minutes max from the airport, which is great for me since it means the taxi will be less expensive. We arranged to have tea at 6:30, as almost everyone else was leaving the hotel at 11pm for a nice 2am flight to Nairobi, and so I returned to my room to blog for an hour.

There is wifi here, but it doesn't actually do anything, so this will be out tomorrow, probably, when I return to the airport.

Also, since this blog post has been very photo lite, I have decided to pick out some unpublished items from earlier in the trip:

The rather nice waterfall at Ranomafana. Without me ruining the view!

An orchid, also at Ranomafana, also without me.

Some weird thing that was in my room at Ranomafana. Gave me nightmares

Peak Boby, from the plateau just near it. I don't THINK I put this in the other post, but if I did just pretend it's new.

A rock shaped like a cowboy hat, on the long descent to the second camp site near Peak Boby

Fancy rocks, on the same descent

A nice view from the bus window near Anja

A rock shaped like Madagascar, with the pebble showing its location, that being Isalo national park.

A nice little bird at the Piscine Naturelle, Isalo

A nice sunset at Ifaty

A picture one of my friends sent me on Facebook

Misty, excited about her holiday to Southampton (where she will be today)

Day of Rest

So, today the plan is to not do too much. Obviously this would make for a pretty boring blog entry, so I decided to fill up today with a couple of things I either forgot, or couldn't find the right place for previously, followed of course be a recount of the day's events. Here we go:

First, I would like to introduce the Traveller's Palm:

Ta daaaaa

At first, I thought this was called the 'Topless Palm', because it doesn't have a top in the same way as a regular Palm. I was wrong, but I feel like maybe that is a cooler name...  Anyway, the reason the Traveller's Palm is called such is because potable water gathers where the leaves meet, so in the olden days, if you found one of these trees, you were guaranteed a drink. This tree is emblematic of Madagascar, almost as much so as the baobab, which is why it warrants a special mention.

Next up is something I saw on the trekking in Isalo. I basically just missed it at the time, and now I don't want to alter the post in case the order gets messed up.

Yes that is my finger. It was sunny ok, I couldn't see the screen!

This is a Betsileo coffin. Note I say coffin, and not grave, because this coffin has no remains inside. The Betsileo hole up their dead in small caves (near my finger, above), and cover the entrance with a drystone wall to keep animals etc out. After a few years, they exhume the remains, and take them to a bigger, family cave/tomb, higher up in the mountains, where they will remain indefinitely. I think they do this so that the corpse dries out prior to being placed in the family tomb, so nothing on the new corpse will disturb the old ones.

The whole thing is a little macabre I know, but this is more or less the only human Madagascan history I have found! There is a reason for this though; I asked Mamy. Basically, there were NO indigenous humans in Madagascar. There were a few Africans, Indians, South East Asians, and Norweigans (yeah, Norweigans apparently), who found the place earlier, but not enough to form a native population with their own culture. Basically everyone is descended from the French colonists.

Finally, since there was outrage that I never mentioned yesterday's lunch: I had crustade de la mer, which was bread covered in calamari, shrimp, and fish, with a sauce, and sautéed potatoes, followed by crepe chocolat. All very nice, the food here at this hotel is brilliant!

Okay, now for yesterday evening/today!

After lazing for a while, it was time for tea. I intended on only having one course this time, but the starter of meille fueille (spelling?) aka sliced potato and chicken in a curryish sauce sounded too good to pass up, and indeed was amazing! The main, which was spaghetti fruits de mer, was essentially the same as my main at lunch. Still nice, but a bit disappointing in the variety stakes.

Bed was after that. I tried to stay up a bit later since breakfast was open till 10, but I failed, and went to sleep at 10:30. Correspondingly, I couldn't sleep past 8:30, so got up for breakfast.

It was essentially the same as many other places in Madagascar; bread, jam/honey, choice of egg, and fruit, but since I've eaten a lot of that stuff lately I know that this was high class stuff! The coffee especially had real milk (ie not condensed), so was great. I am going to murder some cereal back in England though! 

Whilst breakfasting I saw a metallic looking blue/green hummingbird, and a black with white polka dots swallow tailled butterfly. Lovely!

Fiona turned up just as Meryl, Nick, and I finished eating, and told us the fishing boats would be coming in to the nearby village shortly, and did we fancy a walk? We all decided to, not having any other big plans. 

The sun was hot, and so we took our time walking. Along the beach lots of shells and corals wash up, some of them pristine thanks to the gentleness of waves inside the lagoon. A lot of the shells are like mirrors on the inside, and what I at first though was bits of driftwood are actually bits of HUGE mollusc shell (I'd guess a whole one might be a foot long).

Half way there, we found a puffer fish washed ashore. It must've done so quite recently, given how pristine it looked, but alas when we chucked it back in the sea it proved to be dead. A shame. We also saw a white crow catch one of the little crabs, and have about as hard a time with it as I had with crayfish in Ranomafana!

Alas poor pufferfish, we hardly knew ye.

At the fishing village, the boats (called pirogues) were indeed just coming in when we arrived. They aren't the most robust of constructions, made entirely from bolsa wood apparently, and the sails are a colourful patchwork of old sacks sewn together. This doesn't really matter in a lagoon though, it is calm enough that you could go out on a couple of logs tied together and be fine.

I prefer brand name sacking for my sails. Ensures their robustness, y'know.

There wasn't much to do after the boats were in, unless you count being hassled by kids. I don't though, and neither did anyone else, so we left back to the hotel.

At this point it was getting on time for lunch, so i went to the blackboard (where they put up what is available at any give mealtime), and chose brochettes de zebu. Why? Well that was the only thing that wasn't fish or salad in the starter and main sections! It was probably the best brochettes I've had, with a lovely sauce on the side, though not the best zebu I've had.

I looked around at some of the decor in the main building. What is this jiu jitsu statue?!?

I lazed around for much of the afternoon, only taking a walk up the beach in the other direction for 45 minutes (round trip). There was oddly little that way. No crabs. No shells (though I think this is because the tide was coming in), just a few rocks, 2 dogs, a man herding some goats, and some plant things growing straight through the beach. I returned coincidentally at the same time as sunset.

The sun was quite high when I left

Beach... Fingers? Ok, that's their name now!

By the time I got back, the sun was forming some sort of parabolic dome over itself...

Tomorrow we fly back to Tana, and prepare to depart, so really this has been my last day of holiday type stuff. It hasn't been bad!

Bashful Baobabs Make an Appearance

The staff at the lovely H1 hotel were very enthusiastic, and always smiling. Their English was ok, but not the best (I did hear them learning though, so they clearly try their best!), which lead to some funny conversations with them. Here is one from the afternoon that was like a Morecombe and Wise sketch:

Me: "Can I have a Sprite please?"

Lady: "What size Sprite do you want, small or large?"

Me: "How much?"

Lady: "The small is like this, the big is like that"

Me: "Sorry, I meant how much do they cost?"

Lady: "Small is 3000"

Me: "And the large?"

Lady: "We don't have large."

Me: "..."

Lady: "..."

Me: "I'll take a small Sprite"

The funny thing was, later at dinner I asked for a Sprite, and they brought me a large one! Oh well. Speaking of dinner, it was very nice. A vegetable soup I actually liked, probably the best zebu I've had, and crepe surprise where the surprise was a banana (not that surprising, but still nice).

The only downside to the evening was Mamy. When he got drunk on the camping trip a few nights ago, we found out his father had died a few days before our tour started. This is obviously affecting him, as tonight he was totally wasted, and when asked about who we should tip in Ifaty (Mamy is leaving us after sorting us out in Ifaty, essentially because Exodus don't want to pay to send their guides on flights when it isn't necessary, and we are catching a plane from Ifaty back to Tana), he misunderstood, and went on a rant about how it would have nothing to do with him and how he "would be free of us tomorrow". You can understand him being upset, but this was very unprofessional, and cast a pall over the evening.

On the way back to my room (it is another little house thing), there was a big fire a couple of miles away on the plains. It was very dramatic in the night, and I tried to get some photos but, well, see for yourself:

You can totally tell what it is. If you squint. Really hard.

A 6:30 leaving time meant getting up at 5:45. I'm not even going to use a disgusted sound though, as I'm used to getting up around that time now. Breakfast was as robust as dinner, with bread, Malagasy bread (made of rice, very much like crumpets), pancakes, egg selection, and fruit juice, as well as coffee with MILK! (Literally the second time I've seen milk in Madagascar, and the first was in Tana). Then we all filed into the bus (which Dharma had been polishing again) for the last time.

For a while, we drove through the grasslands, but slowly the scenery changed to... well, Monument Valley. There were fat sandstone pillars with flat tops, very flat topped mountains, and not much vegetation in between. We drove past a rock that looked like a woman, which is called the Queen of Baro, and then we were out to a grassland with actual trees!

The mountains were far away at this point, but look how flat they are!

Is that a Diner I see over there?

The Queen of Baro. Maybe I didn't catch her good side; I remember her being more... queeny 

At first it was just fruit trees (the rest are typically cut down for wood), but soon a new and vaguely exciting tree began to show itself: the Silver Palm. This is actually the same species of Palm we have seen in other places, but something in the soil makes them grown dull silver green instead of regular green.

They looked more silver than they look here. But still not all that silver really.

Villages then started to appear again, and the first one we happened upon was huge! This is the sapphire region apparently, so there is a gold rush (but with sapphires). They don't have the equipment to make proper mines, so instead they just use shovels and dig from the surface (which is apparently successful; there is some foreign investment in the area, but up to this point there is no need for them to bring in machinery: it is profitable enough without). We don't stop here because all the good sapphire are immediately exported, and they try to con you into buying the leftovers apparently. This was fine by me; it was a very busy, disorganised place and I could easily imagine being pick pocketed or mugged.

After a few more (smaller) sapphire villages, we were in the territory of one of the iconic trees of Madagascar, and one that had been conspicuous in it's absence thus far: the Baobab! Fat trunked, with no branches aside from a very small spread at the crown, these trees are (mostly) found exclusively in Madagascar. They don't survive the axe because of national pride though; their wood is spongy and more or less useless for building, and you can get juice out of the fruits (though the fruits are edible, they aren't very nice apparently), so they stand tallest on the plain. The one we stopped next to for photos was 600 years old!

I don't think Rosa really understood my goal in this 'showcase' photo...

So fat! So old! So Baobab!

As we travelled along, we sat a few different species of baobab, but mostly they look rather similar. We learned a bit more about them too. For instance, the first time they give fruit is when they are 80-90 years old!

This species is too branchy for my liking. Do you even fruit bro?!?

The people round here are nomadic, constructing crude huts to last then a year or two, and then moving on. I don't think I have seen worse structures for living in permanently ever, and due to all the moving around, there is no infrastructure, so they have to do things like bathe in puddles in the road when it has rained. It had just rained as we passed, so some children were doing this.

Thank god I didn't photo the kids bathing in the road, or child services would've been round!

We were making a brief stop in Tuliara to get fuel, and money for those who needed it (I did not; my £300 from the start of the trip will last me to the end!). Though this is the capital of the south of Madagascar, and in general is more modern than other places, there really wasn't much to see here, aside from HUGE puddles, and a little boy beating up a CD (he was holding it with one hand and punching it with the other. No idea why).

The road to Ifaty was motorway 9. Probably even better maintained than motorway 7, and given that we only had to go 30km, we were there very quickly. The hotel is once again the best we have stayed at, and honestly I think this will take some beating! It is once again little huts, but this time on a private beach on a lagoon in the Indian Ocean.

That isn't a real lemur. It is how the room tricks you into entering!

The view from the porch. Seen worse.

There are some activities on offer, mainly for tomorrow, so after taking a half hour walk along the beach and seeing some long beaked birds, crabs, and an unifentified organic... thing, I am heading up to the main hotel, to see if there is anything interesting. If not, I guess I'll just relax. Life is hard!

Rosa rushed out of nowhere and insisted on photographing me because I looked good.

The birds that lurk around here. Let's call them... Beach Birds

I disturbed a small crab (top left), which tried to rush into a hole, but the big crab was already there. Drama!

This thing was there too. It felt organic when I touched it. Disturbingly so.

And I have tomorrow here too? What ever will I do!?

Swimming Straight Out of A Commercial

First, some admin. You may recall photos of Nick and Meryl were pending (they are married). You may also recall Meryl fainted onto her face. As such, I have waited until now (until her face was better) for the unveiling, so you didn't all think she was some sort of street fighter. Also I didn't want to edit the post everyone else's photos are in in case it changed the order (people have been known to read them in reverse regardless!)

Nick and Meryl

There was a band with 3 guitars and one bongo type drum playing before/during dinner. They were pretty good. Dinner itself was also ok, a nice chicken noodle soup (though not as good as the other night), then chicken and chips. The Malagasy chicken are very thin, but mine this time was ok. Pineapple for dessert: pretty nice as always.

It was a luxurious 7:30 leaving time the next day, so we chatted at the table a bit before bed. The night was actually rather cold, despite it being generally warmer here (45 degrees 3 days ago!), but still not as cold as Boby. I slept quite well, and no pigs or lemurs ransacked my tent. All was well come the morning.

Breakfast was bread with honey, or... Nutella! A rare luxury! I had 3 slices (here the bread is slightly different to further north. Still baguettes, but about 8 inches long, and quite hard outside). Before leaving camp I saw a little bird which I think was the same sort of lovebird as yesterday, but much closer up. It had a vibrant blue ring of feathers around each eye. Very nice.

After that it was a couple hundred steps back up to the plateau. After Boby, I laugh at a couple hundred steps! Speaking of Boby, I discovered today that less than 1000 people climb to the summit each year. I was shocked; I'll be almost as famous for that as I am for discovering that white sifaka in Canyon de Makis!

Our camp was in those woods somewhere, but the lemurs took it :(

On the top was much the same as yesterday: flat, a few trees, and the spiderweby sandstone, though here the strata are horizontal, not vertical, giving it a Grand Canyon type feel. There were quite a few fine specimens of those baby baobabs I saw a few days back too.

Hi-oh Silver, away. Or something

That is one fat baby!

I also discovered the trees than are hanging about are crocodile skin trees, due to their bark looking like, well I'll give you one guess! The bark is also very thick, which is why these trees remain. There used to be more, and this used to not be a national park, so the zebu farmers set fires that burned a lot of the trees to get new zebu farming land. Naughty, as always!

There ARE Nile crocodiles here so... crocodile or tree?

Zebus are prevalent in the area, as you may expect if you recall that on the other side of the cliffs are the great grasslands of Madagascar. The tribe here is no longer the Betsileo of middle Madagascar, but the Baro. The Baro have a reputation for not wanting to use their minds. They all become either soldiers, policemen, or zebu stealers! They are also polygamous, and the traditional dowry is a zebu. Coincidence?

Our campsite was in those trees again! It has still fallen to the lemurs.

A view from the other side, and the only village for 50km in any direction!

We continued walking for about 3 and a half hours. It wasn't as exciting as yesterday, but we saw a few things. First, a scorpion, a very very small scorpion (not more than 1.5 inches long). It was lay very still on a rock, but still quite exciting to see. Next was a preying mantis. This seems pretty exciting, but it was VERY small, and brown. In fact I'd seen 4-5 yesterday, and never even bothered mentioning it because it looked pretty standard. Looking up close though, you could see it was an "exciting" insect after all. Finally there was a flock of Guinea fowl. Very blue heads. Who knew!

It can't even kill you with the sting. Booooring!

The 2 blobs between the trees in the middle are the Guinea fowl. I know I mention iPhone zoom a lot but... Yeah

I'll bet you were expecting the preying mantis huh? Nope, too small. Besides, the scenery was relentless.

Our destination for the morning was the "Piscine Naturelle", or Natural Swimming Pool in English. When questioned on what I was doing in Madagascar, this was one of the only things I could think of with a name I remembered! The photos I had seen of it looked stunning, and indeed it was fantastic. 

See. Fantastic!

Whilst it was a lot busier than our private swimming hole yesterday, because it is only a kilometre from the nearest car park (the other way, where we were going after), there were only 3 other groups. One was a couple about my age, and only the girl wanted to swim, another was a load of old French people who just hung about and the left, then it was a lot of kind of old, very fat Czechs who went in after we were done. If you look back at all that, you will see that our group only had to share the pool with one person, and only 5 of us went in (me included), do all was well.

The waterfall was actually warmer, desire my weird face. You try to smile whilst under a waterfall, without letting any African Death Water in your mouth!

The girl climbed up the rocks to the middle of the waterfall, and started posing like something out of a shampoo advert. Was it Timotei, that one where the woman goes and washes her hair in the waterfall? You know the one anyway. Well I wasn't letting her hog all the good photos! She might've had her model like figure, and shampoo commercial suitable hair, but I had shamelessness, and a mighty 12 day old beard!

Maybe he's born with it... Wait, that is makeup. I wasn't wearing makeup!

We had zebu burgers and rice whilst watching the Czechs floating around like whales with tattoos. The burgers were very nice, though I'm not sure about the tattoos...

After that it was a 20 minute walk to the bus. On the way there was a very sticky stick insect which the local guide spotted, then Nick pointed out some flowers the guide had pointed out to him. Little white ones. Boooring! But wait, these weren't flowers at all, they were Flower Bugs, tiny little bugs with backs that look exceptionally like flowers. They were awesome after all!

I'm sorry I misjudged you little guy.

Back with our trusty orange steed.

We rode the bus back to a different hotel in the same village as before. I sang the mantra "please have wifi, please have wifi", all the way on the bus, and my prayers were answered! It is pretty good wifi too, and in fact everything about the hotel is great! It isn't like that other hotel, where I said it was great and then everything was terrible either. I already had a lovely hot shower, the room is immaculate and very big, especially the bathroom which is lovely, and dinner is free! The afternoon was free too, so I sorted out some luggage stuff, and wrote this blog entry. Now I think I will browse the Internet, which I have been bereft of for 6 days!!

It was great before I did "luggage stuff"!