by Judy Handley | Aug 3, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 281, Year 5 Cooling Down
Date: Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Weather: Beautiful Day
Air Temp: 74 degrees F
Water Temp: 78 degrees F
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
It is winter here, but it feels more like a lovely New England summer. Mark, Ed, and Lynne have been remarking about how cool they are and I thought they were being rather silly as I am very comfortable. But when I checked the air and water temperature this afternoon I realized that the water temperature is about ten degrees cooler than when we arrived in Chagos (although it cooled down a bit there as well) and the air temperature is fourteen degrees cooler. Most of the time in Chagos the temperature hovered around 80-82, sometimes going down to 79. Today we went snorkeling with Ed and Lynne and after a fairly short time, Mark, Ed, and Lynne headed home because they were really chilly. There’s nothing really dangerous in the water here, so I stayed in and snorkeled alone back to Windbird. And I was not chilly when I got out of the water. So I guess this is one time when body fat comes in handy!
We got an email from our friends Alan and Helaine Kanegsberg today and they sent an article from the most recent Cruising World as an attachment. The article was by Fatty Goodlander and it was about Wild Card’s trip through the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden. It was so much fun to read the article and see the names of our friends that went that way. Fatty didn’t mention Robert and Tina of Shirena who were in his same convoy, but we also got an email from Robert this morning. Shirena is still in Israel while Robert is back in Australia recovering from the heart attack he had in Egypt. He and Tina are hoping to be cruising the Med by his time next year, but it will all depend on his recovery. In Alan’s email he also mentioned a fellow Concord Yacht Club friend who just had a heart transplant. Our thoughts are with Mike and Gretchen Coughlin as Mike recovers from his surgery and with Robert and Tina as Robert continues the rehabilitation program to get his heart back in shape.
In mid-July we started a trek to explore the islands and bays south of here. We planned to be gone about three weeks, but when Ed and Lynne had to return because of Lynne’s skin infection, we ended up coming back and doing our land travel. Now we’re going to try moving south again. We will sail to Hell-ville tomorrow to get the heavy stuff like fuel and beer that is really difficult to transport across the island by taxi and then by motorboat. We have tried to avoid staying the night in Hell-ville, but other cruisers have been doing it and finding there is no problem with theft as long as you have everything under lock and key. So we will spend one night, do our shopping, try to send photos to the website from an internet café, and then head out on Thursday afternoon. We’ll revisit Nosy Komba so I can have another lemur ‘fix’ and visit Lokobe National Park on the southeast corner of Nosy Be. Our plan is to then go back to Nosy Iranja to try and see the turtle hatchlings and work our way down to a place called Moramba Bay. Everyone that cruises to Madagascar says Moramba is their favorite anchorage, so we want to go spend a few days there and enjoy the beauty. Ed and Lynne are going with us but plan to return before we do. We’ll probably get back here sometime the first week of September, so after the next couple of days we will be back to HAM radio for email and no cell phone until we return.
Tonight there were no guests at Sakatia Towers, so the cruisers in the anchorage invaded. Barry and Tina of Dream Catcher from Richard’s Bay in South Africa, Bruce and Nadine of Pioneer from Cape Town in South Africa, and Ed and Lynne and ourselves spent our evening on the Sakatia Towers deck. Lots of cruiser business transacted. John assured us that we would be better off to book his driver Anatole to do our mega shopping on Thursday morning, so he called and made those arrangements for us. Tina and Barry need some sewing done of one of their sails and we think we can do that for them, so they will follow us to Hell-ville so we can do the sewing.. Bruce and Nadine want to head north in early September and would like to tag along with us when we do that, so we planned to meet them back here the first week of September. We shared information about different anchorages and just generally had a great time talking together. The Sakatia Towers deck is truly a meeting place and we truly appreciate John Sheppard’s hospitality. I know we will be looking forward to returning here in early September.
by Judy Handley | Aug 2, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 280, Year 5 A Day in the Life
Date: Monday, August 2, 2010
Weather: Rain Overnight, Still Cooler Than Normal
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
Today I did a mammoth laundry and continued to work on the Ankarana photos. Mark spent his entire morning trying to get some photos on the website, but he had no luck at all. He thinks he has a computer virus that he can’t get rid of with Spybot and it is slowing things down to a snail’s crawl. Heather and Jed put some great photos on their Picasa site, but we can’t download those either. We can only view them in thumbnail size but can never get the enlargement. So something has gone awry. We’ll keep working on that but photos might have to wait until South Africa. After striking out with his efforts to post photos on the website, Mark cleaned the fuel filter and changed the anti-freeze in the engine. In the early afternoon, Ed and Lynne came over to see photos from our inland trip and we spent the whole afternoon looking at photos and just generally checking in with one another. Lynne and I had fun looking at some of our underwater photos from Chagos and from here. Mark and Ed spent time studying our fuel polishing system. Then it was time for us to go visit with Bruce and Nadine on Pioneer. We met them on the Sakatia Towers deck last week and they really wanted to hear about trip inland. Bruce is British and Nadine is Italian but they are now from Cape Town in South Africa. They crewed on boats in the 1980’s and 90’s together and Bruce did some serious racing, but eleven years ago they settled in South Africa and had Tristen. She is a beautiful ten year-old and we really enjoyed our evening with them. They are on a catamaran that they delivered from South Africa. They will be here until late September when they will fly back to South Africa. Tonight we shared information with them about our inland travel and they shared information about their trip from South Africa to Nosy Be. It was a delightful evening and we hope to talk to them more tomorrow before we both leave here headed in different directions.
We will stay here tomorrow and then we think we will head to Hell-ville to refuel and replenish the food supply. From there we will go back to Nosy Komba to visit the black lemers. From there we will cross the channel back to Nosy Be to Lokobe National Park where we have learned from Bruce and Nadine that we can do a nice two-hour walk and get fresh water for laundry. By the weekend we will be headed south for about three weeks. We are really looking forward to that explore.
by Judy Handley | Aug 1, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 279, Year 5 The Meeting Place
Date: Sunday, August 1, 2010
Weather: Nice Day, Cooler Than Normal, Cloudy Late Afternoon
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
It was a good day. I worked on naming photos from Ankarana and Mark worked on his computer. It has gotten sooooooo slow, so he worked to clean it up. I have created the Best Of. all of our Madagascar photos and we had hoped to get those on the website today. BUT even the internet connection was slow today, so we will try again tomorrow. I had so hoped to have a few photos from Ankarana on the website by tonight, but that will have to wait as well. We saw such wonderful things and we want to share those with you as soon as we can.
We jumped in the water for a snorkel in the early afternoon. After being inland for a few days, it was good to be back in the water. We saw Lionfish hiding in soft coral and a juvenile Emperor Angelfish that is dark blue with concentric ovals radiating from the rear to the front. We saw adult Emperors in Chagos, but we have never seen a juvenile, so that was a thrill. Ed and Lynne came over in the afternoon and we talked about our plans for the next six weeks in Madagascar. By the end of this week we hope to be headed south for a three week tour. By the end of August we would be back here and then head north for a couple of weeks before checking out and heading for South Africa. It was good to share plans and ideas. After Ed and Lynne left, we called our daughter Heather. It was great to hear Jonah and Sam talking in the background and to get an update on what is happening in their lives. We then headed into Sakatia Towers to thank John Sheppard for looking after Windbird while we were gone. It is so wonderful to have someone like John to be there to watch over us. His place is truly the “meeting place.” Tonight we met a dentist from California who is here with his teenage daughter, a friend of John’s from Germany who lives on Nosy Be working on agricultural projects, and two of the crew from a BIG sailboat from the United States that is being delivered to Mayotte where the owners will come aboard. When I say big, I mean a sailboat that is more than a hundred feet long with a crew of six plus a skipper and his wife. The crew members we met tonight were from Italy and South Africa. Sitting on the Sakatia Towers deck in the evening is certainly an international experience. I do believe that when we complete our circumnavigation and look back at favorite places, Sakatia Towers will be in the Top Ten.
When we got home from Sakatia Towers we called Justin, Jo, and Ziggy in England. They are leaving there in two days and heading back to New Mexico. We were having a great conversation when the cell phone beeped telling us we were out of time. We didn’t realize that it costs twice as much to call England as the US from here. Strange! But we will call them again later in the week when they return home. The weather has been wonderful in England this summer and Ziggy has so enjoyed being where there is grass instead of desert sand.
We will spend the next three or four days here and then start our trek south. The last time we headed south we ended up coming back, but this time we really hope to get down to a place called Moramba Bay. There are lemurs, strange limestone formations, and loads of baobabs. And while on the subject of baobab trees, I must admit to a huge error. I thought we were seeing baobabs in bloom when we arrived in Ampanasia Bay in the far north and again on Nosy Ankarea near Nosy Mitsio. But we learned from Goulam that what we were seeing were a type of Elephant’s Foot (Pachypodium rutenbergianum). We now know the difference but without good identification books, I was definitely confused.
by Judy Handley | Jul 31, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 278, Year 5 Back Home on Windbird
Date: Saturday, July 31, 2010
Weather: Partly Cloudy
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
Our first trip inland in Madagascar was a huge success, but as you know, it is always good to be back home. Everything was fine aboard Windbird, so no worries here. It is so wonderful to have someone like John Sheppard and his capable staff to look after your boat while away. In a country with no marinas, this is the only way to go. Our trip home was super fast as we had a kamikaze taxi brousse driver. Even after stopping in Hell-ville for food shopping, we were back on Windbird well before noon. Last night Goulam called the phone number we had written on our little blue ticket and he arranged for the taxi brousse to pick us up at his place instead of in the village of Mahamasina. Coolie told Goulam the taxi would arrive at 5:30 am, but it was more like 6:15 am when it arrived and probably 6:30 am when we left. Goulam had arranged for the three people from Austria to travel in the same taxi brousse, and they packed us in like sardines. Taxi brousse just means jungle taxi and it can be anything from a small Puegot to a mini-van that has been adapted to hold about eleven people comfortably or eighteen people very uncomfortably. We were eighteen this morning but other than not being able to move, all was fine. We were in Ankify in three hours and on a speedboat headed for Nosy Be by 10:15 am. Coolie, the man who arranged our transportation was in the van and on the speedboat, so we were escorted all the way. How lucky that he needed to go to Diego Suarez to get new pages in his passport and that his travel coincided with ours exactly. Otherwise, I cannot imagine how we would have made the connections. I think some guardian angel was with us on this trip.
The country between here and Ankarana to the north is quite interesting. The little ferry stop of Ankify is a bustling wharf like the one in Nosy Be, just much smaller. As you head the fifteen kilometers from Ankify to RN6, Madagascar’s only national highway (that word is used loosely here), you go through a green, lush countryside. Once you hit the highway and head north you are in river country. Small rivers head out of the mountains to the east and flow westward to the sea. The river water is diverted for farming and there are rice paddies and small fields of grain mixed with zebu grazing land. Then the rivers end and all there is for as far as you can see is zebu grazing land. The zebu carts in this area have wooden wheels like American covered wagons used. In Nosy Be, most of the carts are built on old car axles. It was interesting to see the difference between Nosy Be and villages on the road north on the mainland. Ankarana is up on a plateau, so this morning it was all downhill to Ambilobe, the only town of any size that we passed through. The poverty of the country is most visible as you travel like this. From our perspective it looks like the island people are much better off than those on the mainland. We loved our walking tours in Ankarana but enjoyed seeing the countryside just as much. And we are glad that we took the less expensive public transportation instead of more comfortable and more expensive alternatives. We feel like we saw more of what life if really life for the Malagasy this way.
Our hikes in Ankarana with Goulam have left us with wonderful memories. Just being with Goulam was very special. For the rest of our lives we will hear Goulam saying, “Nike–Just do it!” He would say this when I would hesitate to make a jump across a deep crevasse or when climbing in the tsingy formations. And as he hiked up hills or in difficult terrain, he would say, “Mora, mora. Slowly but surely.” And he was right. One step at a time we hiked though amazing countryside. And then he would say, “You are lucky today. I called ahead on the cell phone to talk to the lemurs and they are in their places.” More amazingly, however, are the times we would be driving down a dusty road and Goulam would make a quick stop and say, “Chameleon. There.” How he could see a chameleon, camouflaged by definition, while driving we don’t know. But we do feel like we had three lucky days thanks to Coolie for his travel arrangements and Goulam for giving us a graduate course in plants, animals, and geologic formations in Madagascar in those three short days. It was also interesting to stay in a traditional hut for that time. It gave us a glimpse of what life is like for villagers in Madagascar.
by Judy Handley | Jul 29, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 276, Year 5 Second Day in Ankarana
Date: Thursday, July 29, 2010
Weather: Another Perfectly Beautiful Day
Location: Ankarana Special Reserve, N Madagascar
Wow! We had a second great day walking in the tsingy, exploring caves, walking through the forest and fields, and watching a sunset from a viewpoint from which we could see all of Anakarana, Goulam’s Camp, and out to sea to from Nosy Mitsio to Nosy Be. It was a spectacular view. We saw Northern Sportive Lemurs and Sanford’s Lemurs but we did not get any National Geographic shots of them today as they were so high in the trees. We did see a beautiful male Parson’s Chameleon on our night walk and just generally enjoyed a day of walking with Goulam and learning more about Madagascar flora and fauna.
Just being here is so special, but Goulam’s stories make it even more interesting. As we were climbing through the tsingy this morning, he stopped and said that we had not asked him how the tsingy got their name. We had just assumed that tsingy means sharp, pointy rocks in Malagasy, but Goulam’s story was much more interesting. In the second half of the 19th century, the French were exercising their power over this country. The Queen in power decided to try to overthrow the French and much violence pursued. The people of Ankarana fled from the French by coming in to this area with the lethally sharp rocks hoping to hide or escape from the French. The Malagasy people had no shoes, so they were fleeing into the fields of sharp, pointy rocks on tiptoes. In Malagasy “mi tsingy” means walking on tiptoes. And that is almost what you have to do even when wearing hiking boots or substantial running shoes. There are acres and acres and acres of these sharp, pointy limestone formations, some low, some very high. When walking amongst the tsingy you feel as if you are in a lost world. It is just like no other place on earth. So climbing among these rocks has been a highlight for me. The cave walks were also spectacular with other worldly stalactite and stalagmite formations and thousands of bats of all sizes. Our headlamps that we usually use for reading on passage have been invaluable leaving our hands free for climbing and holding on in the caves while viewing the fantastic sights.
Tonight we had dinner with a couple from Austria and their 19 year-old son Nick who has just completed a public service project in northeastern Madagascar. The other couple is from the Netherlands and they have just come from a tour of the southern coast. We had a great dinner of mud crab and rice and enjoyed sharing experiences with both couples. Tomorrow morning we are up and out at 7:30 am to see more tsingy, more tsingy forest, and more caves. And we are hoping to see the Crowned Lemur tomorrow.
by Judy Handley | Jul 29, 2010 | Madagascar, Sailing Logs Year 5 |
Day 277, Year 5 Tsingy, Tsingy, Tsingy
Date: Friday, July 30, 2010
Weather: Yet Another Perfectly Beautiful Day with Late Afternoon Clouds
Location: Ankarana Special Reserve, N Madagascar
Today was Day Three in Ankarana and it is summed up with walking, walking, walking, tsingy, tsingy, tsingy, lemurs, lemurs, lemurs, with another cave experience thrown in for good measure. Today was our lucky day. We saw three different kinds of lemurs-the Northern Sportive Lemur, the Crowned Lemur, and the Sanford’s Lemur. And we saw them in many places so we were ecstatic. Lemurs in the wild are not acclimated to people like the ones on Nosy Komba. The two experiences are totally different. It was wonderful to have them jumping on us on Nosy Komba, but it is a true thrill to spot them in the wild. The tiny Northern Sportive Lemurs peeking their little heads out of holes in trees and looking at us with those BIG eyes was just too cute. The walking distance was triple today what it had been on previous days and we saw enough tsingy for a lifetime. It was a gloriously beautiful day and our feet surely feel the pain of so much walking. As they say, “No pain, no gain.” We have seen so much and enjoyed every minute, but tomorrow morning at an obnoxiously early hour, we must walk out to the main road to catch our taxi brousse back to Ankify and then our boat back to Nosy Be and on to Nosy Sakatia.
Goulam has been a fantastic guide. At every point, he has gauged just how much more we could physically take without being miserable. Walking with him is like walking with an encyclopedia of knowledge of plants and animals. I find it unbelievable that he can look at almost any plant, tree, or animal here and immediately give you Latin name for it. When we returned today, he loaned me three books to look at: 1) Birds of the Indian Ocean by Ian Sinclair and Olivier Langrand, 2) A Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Madagascar by Frank Glaw and Miguel Vences, and 3) Plantes de Madagascar Atlas by Lucile Allorge (written in French but Latin names remain the same). As I looked through the books, I realized that Goulam’s spelling of the Latin names of all of the plants and animals that he has written in my journal while on the trail were right on. He truly is amazing. I didn’t carry a journal with me on the day that we arrived, but I quickly learned that there was no way that I could keep up with Goulam without having him write things down for me. Both Mark and I feel richer knowledge-wise and richer as an individuals for having spent three days with Goulam. What Madagascar treasures he and Ankarana are.
I am writing this log under one of the covered picnic table areas just outside Goulam’s main office and kitchen, as well as the place where he sleeps. At 6 pm the generator goes on and a TV in front of the main office is switched on. Many people from the nearby village come here to watch what I would call Madagascar MTV in the evenings. Each of the guest huts has one light that can be turned on during the 6 to 10 pm hours, and there is one plug-in for charging camera batteries, cell phones, and for us, computers. I doubt many people bring their computers here, but I’m glad I did. Dinner will be served at 7:30 pm and tonight we will once again eat with our new friends from Austria. Then we will head to bed in order to get up at 4:45 am. We doubt that the taxi brousse will really get here that early, but we dare not take the chance of missing it.
