Today we had hoped to rent a nice covered boat to cruise around the island of Sainte Marie.  Unfortunately, this didn’t happen.  First, nobody would cruise up the eastern side of the island in the open Indian Ocean, saying it was too dangerous, but that we could tour the other side.  This would have been fine, but they didn’t have any boats with a top, which meant we would not have any protection from either sun or rain, and we would have to share with 6 other people who had also asked to do the same thing.  Who would have thought that boats would be so hard to find on an island populated around tourism, and we’re not even in the high tourist season–I think there are more vacant cabins here than occupied ones at the moment?

In the end, we decided to stay around the resort for the day and relax.  This turned out to be a very good decision, as we found out some interesting news later in the day during dinner.  It would seem that the boat they had offered us, ran into some misfortune!  Nothing tragic, but the boat did break down way out in the channel and they had to call in a tow boat to get everyone safely back into shore and end the tour early.  So not only are boats difficult to find here, but apparently the boats they do have are not in the best condition.

Our day around the hotel was relaxing.  We spent a lot of time swimming, enjoyed a nice lunch, spent some more time swimming, enjoyed a nice dinner, had another game of pool, and then it was time for bed.

The food here at the Soanambo has been fabulous.  I had a wonderful seafood pasta plate for lunch today.  My dinner was an incredible peppercorn zebu steak that was cooked to perfection.

I didn’t take many pictures today, but here are a few…

Dave’s lunch.  Dinner was even better, but I didn’t get a photo…

This might be tomorrow’s lunch wandering around the guest cabins?

I spotted this crab on the pathway at night on the way back to our cabin…