Day 315, Year 5 Happy 7th Anniversary to Heather and Jed
Date: Monday, September 6, 2010
Weather: Another Beautiful Day; Land/Sea Breeze Back Again
Location: Nosy Mitsio, NW Madagascar
Happy Anniversary, Heather and Jed! It hardly seems possible that our daughter has been married for seven years, but statistics tell us that is so. This must have been a big Labor Day Weekend for them, beginning with the threat of Hurricane Earl on Friday and ending with their anniversary today. It is also the first weekend after Heather has started working full-time and we know that life has been a bit hectic for them. So here’s hoping Heather, Jed, Jonah, and Sam had a chance to take a deep breath and celebrate the anniversary.
We celebrated Heather and Jed’s anniversary by snorkeling and then snorkeling some more. I know there is nothing they would rather be doing, so we enjoyed it for them. We headed to Nosy Ankarea at 7:45 am, as Bruce, Nadine, and Tristen on Pioneer headed for the long beach on the northern arm of Nosy Mitsio. We arrived at Nosy Ankarea by 8:45 am and jumped in the water for a wonderful early morning low tide snorkel. The fish always seem to be more active in the morning and even though the wind was blowing 15-20 from East causing a bit of chop on the water, we had a fabulous snorkel. We got to swim with a large Green Turtle and got good photos of many of the fish. After about an hour and a half the camera battery died so we came back to Windbird to get another battery. We were both famished, so I fixed French toast for the first time since we were at Heather and Jed’s last summer. We gobbled it down and got back in the water. The winds had calmed down so there was no longer a chop, but the tide was higher and the fish were not as numerous. Maybe they take a three hour mid-day break like everyone else in Madagascar. We snorkeled and then took the dinghy around to the west side of the island to see what is there underwater. I got in but saw only more of what we had been seeing, only much deeper. For the first time that I can remember since Fiij, Mark is even more smitten with the snorkeling here than I am. So we have decided to stay here at Nosy Mitsio one more day and make another day trip to Nosy Ankarea tomorrow. I think that island is enchanted, or at least it is enchanting. We love visiting there.
Pioneer is headed south to Tsara Banjina tomorrow, so we will meet up with them again at Nosy Sakatia in a few days. Tomorrow we will make the decision about heading further north in search of mother and baby whales or heading back to the south. KEA, a boat we met in Chagos, will probably arrive here tomorrow from up north and hopefully they can tell us if the whales are up there. We are making decisions one day a time, so tomorrow we will report on whether we are headed north or south.
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| 100906 Day 315a Nosy Ankarea, Madagascar–Underwater Nosy Ankarea S |
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| 100906 Day 315b Nosy Ankarea, Madagascar–Underwater Nosy Ankarea S |
