MADAGASCAR
Madagascar’s balmy north-east is an unspoilt place with friendly people, tame(ish) wildlife, aquamarine water, fresh fish and cheap rum. We paddled from some small islands to a big island to small islands again, searching for the simple life.
Paddle from island to island in northeastern Madagascar and learn the meaning of mora mora.
t’s positively medieval, man! You’re not going to believe how beautiful it is,” says a fellow airline passenger named Ant, giving me a punch on the shoulder to emphasize his point. He fires off a volley of names of places, each one a machine-gun burst of vowels: “Barabaramahamahamaymay” followed by what sounds like “Beraberavinavina”. I have no idea what I’m hearing. It’s a Sunday afternoon in October and our SA Airlink flight from Joburg landed on Nosy Be – a big island off the north-east coast of Madagascar – about 20 minutes ago. But we can’t disembark because… Well, it’s a Sunday afternoon in Madagascar. The mobile stepladder that will allow us to get off the plane can’t be found and the only things moving outside are the palm trees swaying in the breeze. “Mora mora,” says Ant. His wife and kids join him in laughter. “Slowly, slowly,” he translates. “Go with the flow. You’ll catch on soon enough.” Ant’s family did the same paddling safari last year that my wife Ronel and I have signed up for. They enjoyed it so much that they’re back in Madagascar, this time to hop aboard a chartered yacht and explore the islands in the Mozambique Channel. Thanks to Ant’s enthusiasm I can’t wait for our own adventure to start. Eventually someone has a brainwave and we disembark one by one by tiptoeing down the luggage conveyor belt. Welcome to Madagascar!
DAY 1 Battling the trade winds
I wake to a chorus of strange-sounding birds and insects outside my hotel room. Ronel and I spent our first night in Madagascar at L’heure Bleue, a pretty, French-run hotel that overlooks Madirokely Bay on the south coast of Nosy Be. Bert Spalding, our paddling guide, came and introduced himself and we got to know our four paddling companions: a couple from Fish Hoek and two friends from Kommetjie. Bert, a South African who has lived in Madagascar for 12 years, told us that we were there to relax and not work too hard. As we lay in the hotel’s big seawater swimming pool with a Three Horses lager in hand, watching the sun set, Bert gave us a rundown of the week ahead: Our home base would be a dhow called Salama Tsara (Hello Pretty), which belongs to Madagascar Island Safaris (MIS), the company that organised our trip. Any time we didn’t feel like paddling we’d be picked up and ferried to
the next island. The experienced crew would cook our meals and ply us with drinks. What’s not to like about that plan? After breakfast (tropical fruit, strong Malagasy coffee, a croissant with fragrant honey) a driver from MIS picks us up in a minibus for the quick journey to the harbour in Nosy Be’s capital Andoany (formerly known as Hellville), where we’ll meet up with Hello Pretty. A crew member loads our luggage into a tiny boat and we find places to sit around the edge. The captain of the dhow, Honore Mahavita, balances on the bow clutching a bag full of baguettes and slowly we move across to the dhow, which is lying at anchor. Once on board and with our bags safely stowed, we stretch out on deck under a shade net. The diesel engine starts up and we putter south-west, towards a small island called Ankazoberavina, about 30 km away. Our plan is to snorkel on a reef there, then to paddle about 6 km into Russian Bay to the MIS campsite on the Ampasindava Peninsula. Slowly the bustle of Andoany fades into the distance. Every now and then a fisherman in a small pirogue passes by, and I start to see bigger dhows under full sail, harnessing the trade winds to deliver goods all along the coast. The scene couldn’t have changed much in 300 years. Today, however, the trade winds are not in our favour. Salama Tsara might be beautiful, but boy is she slow. When I ask Honore how long before we reach the coral reef, the answer is “one hour”. An hour later the answer is still “one hour”. And the same another hour later. It’s time to lie back, relax and surrender to mora mora.
It’s late in the afternoon by the time we reach Ankazoberavina. While Bert unhitches the four kayaks from the deck and lowers them into the water, we use the opportunity to snorkel over the reef. Parrot fish, lunar fusiliers, butterfly fish and zebra fish dart around in the crystal clear water. “The darkness will catch us if we don’t get going,” Bert warns. It’s time to get paddling… Bert’s kayaks seat two people each and they’re very stable. We soon find our rhythm on the open water. We follow Bert, who heads south towards the mouth of Russian Bay in the distance. It feels like we’re speeding along compared to the pace of the dhow, and when I look behind me I can’t see it any more. (Honore tells us later that he hooked a marlin behind the boat and it dragged him off course. The marlin escaped…) Once inside the bay, the chop dies down and paddling becomes easier, but we’re running out