Le Paille en Queue Tulear

... for siesta at noon so we headed back to the hotel victory. About 4:30pm I went back into town to find some vanilla rum (rhum) and maybe some vanilla bean pods for Lisa. The guy at the front gate of the hotel flagged down a taxi for me and we barely made it 150 feet down the road when he ran out of gas. After a few minutes another taxi came along and took me into town and dropped the original taxi driver ...

... few trees. Saw some big baobab trees closer towards Tulear. We passed through the "outlaw" town of Ilakaka where they mine sapphires. The town is basically a row of buildings down each side of the street with hundreds of holes dug into the ground in the surrounding hillsides by prospectors looking for gems. Babba said there was the potential for crime here in this city and wouldn't stop as he said it wasn't safe for tourists ...

... mortals like me). Life here is pretty cool -very busy but kind of relaxed at the same time.We are very, very remote. We get electricity for a few hours a day and it is over an hour walk to get any mobile reception (occasionally). We can send and receive e-mails once a week. There is no radio or TV in the village and no newspapers or anything like that. We run out of fresh water at least twice a day which means no washing of ...

Hello all, This will only be a short entry as this I am on the only computer at the hotel. We are in Tulear on the west coast of Madagascar. Gina and I both survived the treking and are doing well. We have seen many animals and are on our way to the beach tomorrow to relax. I will write more when we get to Tana on Monday. This is the first internet connection I have seen in 2 weeks. André

It really felt like we were having a day off today. I spent the whole day on my sunbed, trying to stay in the shade. It was very hard work and I had to keep sleeping just to make sure I had enough energy to get up and go to the restaurant for lunch! There was another great sunset tonight and before dinner we were treated to a display of traditional music and dancing by the hotel staff. The girls wore ...

... wouldn't start. We had to drift aimlessly for a bit while the drivers tried to get it working. Then when it didn't and we had agreed which one of our party we would eat first should the provisions run out they decided to get going on just one engine. As we were crawling along, they continued take the spark plugs out, to pour fuel directly into the engine and then blast it out again, covering the boat in huge black ...

We hitched a lift back to Tulear with the hotel owner's elderly father. We had been considering some off road biking in the area but it looked a bit disappointing terrain wise so we abandoned it. Instead we went to Isalo national Park - 250km in a taxi, proper road this time. Someone had ...

... as falling into 'heat drenched torpor' between 1pm and 3pm and we can confirm this. We just did one dive off Ifaty at an offshore reef. Sadly the area has been overfished so we didn't see as much as anticipated but there were some fantastic anemones and a handful of smaller fish. It was also interesting to swim along a kind of canyon in the reef.

... goodbyes to the Norwegians and checked in. We listened to our ipods and read our books while we were waiting, but it wasn't long before we were off. The flight is only an hour, so we only had time for a little sandwich snack, some admiring of the views of terrain (which looks just like crumpled brown paper, although more beautiful) and a short chat with a South African surfer in a group, who couldn't find a Madagascar tour guide anywhere in Port ...

... seem to be in different uniforms, this time dressed as Gendarmes. Pick up the gear and head west, through the heart of the sandstone outcrop country, which gives way to wide grasslands dotted with silver grey madagascar palms with spherical pom-pom foliage, and the hills take on a flat-topped mesa formation. The houses have changed considerably, and are now very small, wattle and daub ...