Ifaty, Madagascar

We piled into a medium sized Mitsubishi Canter truck that had the back converted with bench seats. The seats were designed to fit crates of the local beer called THB, Three Horses Beer, under them. As soon as the seats were filled with everyone sitting with one shoulder tucked into the back of the seat and the other towards the centre, they decided to load as many crates of beer as they could fit under the seats and in the aisle. All the late comers had to sit on the crates of beer and we had to squash our size 10 feet in sideways to fit around the crates. The sides of the truck were covered in canvas so we were unable to see out.

The road was pretty dusty and unsealed. In some places the truck struggled in the deep soft sand. It was pretty dry and the 32 passengers all swayed in unison as we bounced over the rocky potholes as we were a pretty tight unit. Some even managed to sleep which is always amazing. The 32km trip took us nearly 2 hours.

We found the Hotel Vovotelo along the dusty village road of Mangily. The owner is French and only spoke a little English. He gave us a discount as he hadn't had a lot of bookings for the Christmas / New Year period so was happy to have us stay even though we didn't have a reservation. With the recent attempted coup in Tana, and the start of the wet season and probably with the economic situation in Europe there has been a drop in tourists to Madagascar. The place was right on the beach and we had a small rustic thatched bungalow with an ensuite with cold water. We planned to rest up over the Christmas break here.



There is no electricity in Ifaty village and the generator was only turned on a few hours at breakfast, lunch and in the evening at the hotel. The rest of the village manages without electricity as it has done for centuries. This is always a worry for meat and seafood in such places. And of course the generator is not on long enough to make a really cold beer!

We were right beside the beach and the sea was lukewarm. The shower was the best place to cool down, but it there wasn't always water. The bead sellers, massage ladies, woven hat sellers, boatmen looking for clients to go to the coral reefs snorkelling or fishing spent all day in the shade of a tree beside the hotel loungers. As soon as a newbie arrived they would pounce on them before they could lie out their towels on the loungers. They too were suffering the lack of trade.
There were lots of hotels along the beachfront and many were closed so the traders spent a lot of time outside our place.

Face paint for beauty and sun protection

Ifaty has one of the world's largest lagoons but unfortunately much of the coral reefs have been destroyed. Everyday there was some activity to watch along the beach. In the morning the pirogues would head off into the wind for the day's fishing or take some of the tourists out for the day. We would watch them head off to put out their nets and then see them pull them in at the end of the day. Some of the tourists had their wind surfers with them and when the wind was right they would sail up and down the beach.



A French guy owned a flying boat that took tourists out over the lagoon and the village and its loud engine would roar into life as it launched itself out of the water and into the sky. All day the local kids were in the water to play or to wash, or sail their home made boats.



The majority of the tourists in the hotel were French and we were the only non French speakers so we never got to meet anyone to talk to. There were several families and a few with very young children. One day a ring tailed lemur swung in through the trees and into the grounds. The parents next to us took their children outside to watch the lemur and in no time it had jumped on the kids heads and shoulders and scared the life out of them. They were reticent to go outside after that and it probably gave them a fear of real lemurs for life but they did venture out to play with their plastic lemur toys.



We signed up for the set menu Christmas dinner with about 30 others. On the buffet we had lobsters (they looked like Morton Bay bugs and were tiny), seaeggs (kina, but with very little roe and not as tasty as ours in NZ), cockles (the size of a small fingernail), mussels (the size of a large fingernail), but no fish. After the seafood entree we lined up to be slices of goat which was cooked over a drum of charcoal embers. The meat was bloody and pink for us and we asked the only waiter who could speak English if it was OK to eat like that and he assured us it was "bon". However, he could see we were not goat meat eaters so he sent it off to the kitchen to be fried till brown. It was rather tough but I kept thinking about the plastic bags and decaying rubbish on the sides of the road that the goats eat as I chewed each piece! Dessert was a roulade Christmas cake with a peanut ice cream filling which was very nice.



To entertain us while we ate, the owner had employed a band and some local dancers. The instruments were all home made and sounded a bit like ukeleles. The girls tied a cloth around their butts and did most of their dancing wriggling their booty at us. As with all these things some one has to get up and join in and give everyone a laugh to give it that interactive theme. I felt for the dancers as we ate so much food in front of them and they probably have very little themselves at home.

During the day we would go into the village to buy fresh bread, papaya, bananas, tomatoes, lychees and mangoes as it was too expensive to eat in the restaurant everyday. Every second shop is selling the same things and several would also have cooked food that they sold. The day after Christmas Day, which was actually celebrated on the 24th as the Europeans do, we saw quite a lot of the children wearing the new clothes that they had got for Christmas.

A shirt walk from the hotel is the Raniala Nature Reserve, which is also known as The Spiny Forest or the Baobab Forest. As is the rule in Madagascar we had to hire a guide to walk around the park. There were so many baobab trees in unusual shapes and we learnt all about how the fruit is rich in calcium and holds a lot of water. One of the specimens was 1200 years old.



We saw plants used to control diabeties and help leukemia sufferers. There was also a plant used by the kings in the olden days to poison antagonistic subjects. It was also used to kill fish. There were a few birds and the night jay that blended in with the leaves on the ground was extremely well camouflaged. A few tortoises were kept in a fenced area but we saw tracks of lots of others that roamed freely. It was sad to see some of these beautiful animals stuffed and for sale along the beach.

This one is alive!

After a lot of walks up and down the beach, to get ourselves into some kind of fitter state to climb Mount Kenya at a later date, and a lot of reading and lazing around we got up early to head off to Isalo National Park. Although we had told the receptionist the night before that we would be leaving early, she forgot to get our passports out of the safe and we discovered that the owner had gone into Tulear with the safe key. We had to hang around until he came back and by then most of the taxi brousse had left for Tulear. We hung around in the heat and dust on the side of the road and watched several guys repair a broken down truck. Once they were finished we were offered a ride with the truck owner in his pick up. That was way more comfortable than the bush taxi and we were able to see the scenery that we couldn't on the way in. We were surprised to see salt ponds and mangroves along the way. Unfortunately we were too late to head off to Isalo so had to spend another night in Tulear.