Discoveries of the island !
Retrospective : 5 days (from october the 10th to the 15th, 2014), at Sainte Marie Island - Madagascar
Rest and end of the story :
Sainte Marie Island - (Part 1)
You are going to meet Grégoire, guide in Sainte Marie, native from Nattes Island. He’s not only a connoisseur of plants, animals and natural medicines, he’s also a fisher, a breeder and has many agricultural skills
The market of Ambodifotatra, main "city" of the Island
Red bananas (Musa acuminata)
Grégoire got the boat
Grégoire
He showed us a starfish, immediately put back into the sea
Lunchtime with the market’s products. And for Mathias, a Grégoire’s fresh-from-the-morning fished specimen
Cooked red bananas seem like potatoes but with a slight floral touch
After lunch we discover more about the surroundings
Houses made of falafs with jackfruit trees around
Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) can weight up to 40kg each. It’s often eaten raw in Madagascar, contrary to the habits in Mauritius or La Réunion where it’s used to be cooked
In Grégoire’s orchards grow pineapples too
Don’t forget the clove trees
Traveller’s Palm (Ravenala in malagasy) can contain many decilitres of rainwater
For the Tuktuk, please look at Sainte Marie by Tuktuk
Children playing after school
Ricefields
At Les Lémuriens Hotel" :
These lemurs are known as Varecia black & white.
As the sifaka soyeux that we met at the Tsingy,they are endemic to Madagascar
Fresh made cocktail with the lemurs
Like a whirlwind, back with Grégoire as the night falls. Our devoted pirogue driver is still waiting for us, and same for the tuktuk driver !
Our journey will stay engraved in our memories ... at least as much as our way back story ... you will understand why !
Unfortunately (or not), we missed the whale season from a couple of weeks.
We leave the hotel nealy 4:30 a.m., driven by Patrick in his puncture-proof Renault 19. It’s the same Taxi in wich we had met for the first time Mathias and Erika, our Swiss friends. We left with the promise to meet once more in Tana the incoming weekend.
From Soanierana Ivongo à Tamatave 166 km (4 hours) at the rythme of the
regurgitant murmur at the horn sound ! :-)
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