Morondava

 Margaret and Stuart in front of our Air Madagascar flight.

 My beach hut at Morondava.

 Street scenes in this bustling town.

 And fishing scenes on the beach.

Friday, October 27^th.

Had the buffet breakfast and then went to pay my hotel bill and my Visa card was declined. That was the first time that happened. So, I went up to finish packing and came back with the Mastercard and that worked, thankfully.

I had arranged for a taxi to the airport with a man outside the hotel who talked to me every time I stepped out the door. We had agreed on 60000 ariaries. Last night at dinner in the hotel I met a woman from Sydney named Margaret, who is going to be on the same trip as me, so we agreed to take the cab together. So away we went. Again it was an hour 20 kilometre drive through this congested, polluted city and past the rice paddies. When we got to the airport we found it was not open yet. There were other people waiting, but with only a couple of domestic flights a day they were in no big hurry to open. We waited about a half hour and then had our passports and temperature checked. When I went through the scan they decided to totally empty my carry-on backpack. She took everything out and confiscated my hand sanitizer. Once inside we had a couple of hours to wait. Margaret and I got talking to an Englishman named Stuart. All three of us have done a lot of travelling and we swapped stories and tried to solve the problems of the world. Finally we boarded the plane five minutes before it was due to take off and it was only about five minutes late in doing so. The plane was only about half full and the flight was only an hour.

When we arrived in Morondava on the west coast of the island, three of us got in a taxi which took us to our guesthouses. There is a road from the airport directly to the beach where it meets at right angles the beach road, and that pretty much is the main roads of the town. Stuart has been to Madagascar twice before and was staying at a beach house very close to ours. When we arrived at Chez Maggie we checked in and got sorted. Then Margaret and I walked back into town to get to the ATM. We took out some money, bought some water and a snack and then walked back along the beach to our guesthouse. On the way there were lots of things to see, including the houses of the people and the fishing boats coming in. They are called outrigger canoes and have one stabilizer wing and a sail that looks like a sheet. The fishermen brought in the catch and I was surprised by the size of the fish. They were very large. I watched as the women butchered the fish on the beach.

We went back to the guesthouse and Margaret stayed there, while I got a new camera card and returned to watch some more. I saw a canoe that brought in a three foot hammerhead shark and another that had caught a large leopard ray. I walked all the way back to the main intersection and then walked back along the road rather than the beach.

When I got back I chilled by my room because of the heat. Then Margaret came and got me and said that Stuart was there. So we all sat and talked until 6 pm when our guide, Morgan, from Intrepid met us. We had a brief meeting where he gave us the itinerary and told us the start time, 7 am. We are a group of four, plus Morgan and a driver. The other couple are a young couple from England.

After the meeting the young couple, Ryan and Sarah, went for dinner at a different restaurant and the three of us ordered here. We had a drink and talked more about travelling, or rather we listened to Stuart. Dinner took an hour and a half to come and was nothing special. After dinner Margaret went to bed and Stuart and I talked for a bit before he called it a night. Back to a wi-fi-less room where I typed up the day and got ready for bed.