Category Archives: Madagascar

Day 18 – Ile Sainte Marie

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We awoke at 4:45 this morning to get ready to leave for the airport for our flight to Ile Sainte Marie.  Nadine and I plus her family accounted for 7 of the 12 passengers on this flight, so we had lots of room on the 72-seat ATR plane.

Like other flights in Madagascar, this one is not very far; only about 325 km when measuring a straight line distance.  Total flight time would be about 50 minutes.

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Below is a close-up map of Ile Sainte Marie.

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One bit of good news is that Cyclone Clovis seems to have taken a turn and moved further to the south than expected, so our weather here is fantastic.  It seems we successfully dodged another storm.
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Ile Sainte Marie is an island just off the east coast of Madagascar (but still part of Madagascar) in the Indian Ocean.  The island itself is about 50 km from top to bottom, but no more than about 6 km across at its widest point.  We would arrive at the airport, which is located on the ocean at the extreme southern end of the island.

The girls are excited about the trip…
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Here are some photos from the plane just before landing…

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Below is a photo from the plane just after landing.

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Once inside the terminal building, we headed back outside and waited for the porters to gather our luggage and bring them to the van to take us to the hotel.

Here are some pictures of our plane…

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Just outside the terminal building, our hotel has a small building of its own to greet it’s guests as they arrive.  They provide a nice lounge to relax in while waiting for luggage.  I just can’t figure out what is taking them so long to get our luggage.  There were only 12 people on the plane, so how long can it take?

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Looking back at the airport terminal from the hotel lounge…

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Dave waiting in the lounge for the luggage…

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Here’s a map of Ile Sainte Marie.  You can see our hotel, the Soanambo Hotel shown near the bottom of the island, not far from the airport.

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Once our luggage was loaded into the hotel van, we headed for the Soanambo Hotel, which is only a couple of kilometres from the airport.

Here we are on the main road up the island of Sainte Marie.

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We arrived at our hotel and checked in.  It is a very nice place, and below are a few photos.

Here is the pier across the lagoon, as seen from the restaurant.

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This image is looking up the beach.  Our cabin would be a fair walk up the beach.

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Looking back at the restaurant from the pier…

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Drinking fresh coconuts upon arrival…

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At this point, I stopped taking photos for the day, so I don’t have any more to post.

In the afternoon, we took a taxi up the road to the village.  It was about 7 km of very bad roads.  Not much of a town really.  This is a very small island, and the resorts are the main reason anybody is here.
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Later that evening we had a swim in the pool, a very nice dinner by the water and a game of pool before going to bed.

Day 17 – New Year’s in Tana

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Today is New Year’s Day, and it is a beautiful sunny day here in Tana.  Below is a view from our breakfast table on the terrace.

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After breakfast, Nadine’s family picked us up at the hotel and we went back to their place to relax for the day.  We played some games, had a nice lunch, and the kids packed for our trip tomorrow.  Nadine’s family will be joining us tomorrow for our trip to Ile Sainte Marie for 4 days, and the kids are very excited about it.

In the evening, we headed back to the hotel to pack for the trip tomorrow.  Our flight out will be very early, so we need to get packed and rested.  Before going to bed, we take a moment to take the laptop down to the bar (where the internet connection is) to briefly check e-mail and weather reports.  It seems that we have another tropical cyclone to look out for.  Tropical Cyclone Clovis is heading for the eastern coast of Madagascar, which is where we plan to go tomorrow.

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In the map above showing the path of Cyclone Clovis, I’ve added a big red dot showing where we plan to go tomorrow and stay for 4 days.  It looks like the heart of the cyclone will miss us, but it may cause some pretty bad weather while we’re there.

Day 16 – Nosy-Be to Tana

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This afternoon, we would leave the resort in Nosy-Be and fly back to Antananarivo for New Year’s.  I’m still not feeling much better, so I’m convinced this is not from the car ride.  Therefore, I’m taking the advice of Dr. Fitzsimons of the Traveler’s Medical Clinic back in Canada, and I’m taking some real medication.  He prescribed some powerful 3-day antibiotics to take if we felt we picked up a bug of some sort and needed to kill it.  Of course, nausea is listed as a side effect of the pills, but who cares since I already have it?  Basically, I’m putting more faith in the advice of a Canadian physician who I saw for only 20 minutes and over 8 months ago than the advice of a local doctor who examined me for an hour while I was actually sick (she said I didn’t need to take the antibiotics).

Briefly fast forward a day, and I’m feeling significantly better, and 2 days later almost normal again.  It could be a coincidence, but I’m betting the drugs cleared everything up.

When it was time to leave later that afternoon, the electric golf car picked us up at our room and drove us back to the reception area where we checked out and met the boat.  This time we would take a boat for part of the ride back to the airport.  What an improvement over the bush trails!

Back at Nosy-Be airport, we arrived a little early for our flight (actually 90 minutes ahead), but better early than late.  Eventually, we flew back to Tana on another nice 72-seat plane.  The flight took about 80 minutes.

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Nadine’s family picked us up at the airport.  Since I still wasn’t feeling totally great, we opted out of plans to go out for New Year’s Eve celebrations, and instead headed back to the Palissandre Hotel to rest.  Other than being awakened at midnight by very loud fireworks, it was a restful night.