The Start of November
Monday 01st November: The Fossa Porn Queen Strikes Again
11:00 Another month another porn movie, my life is definitely rather strange at the moment. I have been filming since I got up and last night I was filming again from around 4pm until I went to bed. Only day two and I have to admit it is already becoming a little monotonous. Still, I have lots of footage and some of it might actually be useful. I have also managed to pick up one or two more scats, although given the plethora of fossa (at one point yesterday afternoon we had at least seven around us) I am surprised there are not more.
This morning there has been more fighting and one fossa fell over 10m straight to the ground, but thankfully seems ok; I should say it moved again, I couldn’t honestly say who was who. A male and the female were mating and Mercury climbed the tree and during the ensuring fight one fell; it definitely wasn’t Mercury as I saw him climb down the tree so I assume it was the male that had been mating. One of the male fossa that was mating with the female has a sore eye and many are now walking around with wounds, passing your genetics on to the next generation is a difficult business. Mating is also a very public affair, even discounting me and my video camera. When a new male climbs the mating tree and moves out the old male sometimes the old male hangs around to watch. One of the newer males was a little put off by this, but eventually managed to get it together to mate! Around 10am when it starts to get really hot everybody melts away for the day, some of them sprawl around camp to rest and Neptune spent much of the time flopped quite near me today. He definitely mated this morning and obviously needs a long recovery time!
It seems a little early to be mentioning food again but for dinner last night I had a plate of rice, a large plate of chips (French fries for any non-Brits reading this) and leftover vegetable stew from lunch including a large portion of potatoes! Manjara had cooked so many chips that I had an ever bigger plate for breakfast this morning, he had ‘kindly’ re-fried them so I had thrice-fried chips; I tried not to think of the fat content! Lunch (served around 11.30am) was a huge plate of cabbage, cabbage is one of my least favourite vegetables and I vowed not to buy it again, but there was so little choice in Morondava and it’s marginally better than beans. This was finished off with mushy over-ripe banana, nasty but it’s the only fruit I could buy.
Valisoa’s two boys arrived last night with the water charette and yet again stayed over. They are a funny pair and were engrossed in my video camera. In a lull in the activities I was filming Manjara filling up the water drum as they cavorted and they were all amused to see it play back! I also got them pumping up the charette tyre before they left.
Tuesday 2nd November: Too Much Testosterone
Its 10.30am, almost 40°C, and a couple of meters away from me are flopped three male fossa, all too hot and exhausted from the mornings exertions suffering with torn lips and grazed faces. They are lying in the shade of camp, panting heavily, but the truce between them is uneasy and they are continually growling at each other. One especially, the one with the worst wound on his face, cannot settle and keeps walking around initiating rumbles from the others. He keeps lying close to one of the other two but they don’t like it, finally one snapped and after a brief scuffle he left, a second followed so now there is one fossa flopped in camp.
This morning the mating seemed more agitated and the fossa more excitable. There were more fights and a lot of scent marking. Once again a fossa took a tumble from a great height, the same thing happened late last night and every time I see it I cringe, but so far the unfortunate fossa has been able to jump up and run away; highly bruised I should think, but seemingly able to fight another day. Overall there were at least nine fossa in camp at one time, although more than that overall, and today there were two females mating in neighbouring trees. The first female, in the higher tree seemed to be preferred, but both females were mated. From the growls I heard at night I think mating continued throughout much of it, although I first starting recording around 5.20am when I got up, not finishing until after 10am when most of the fossa were too hot and bothered to do much of anything. Now I wish I had a refrigerator to crawl into before it all starts up again later this afternoon. I have the decision to stay sat in camp, with a breeze and flies or go and lay in my tent, where while it is hotter I can lay down and strip off and there are no flies.
Mercury walked through camp and decided to sit right next to me, under my feet which I had lifted slightly. He finally looked at me and seemed startled, but I don’t know why! He moved off, came back and then turned round so he was laid right under my chair and again when he looked up at me he was surprised; I was definitely there first! Hot male fossa exhibit very strange behaviour!
As to some non-fossa sightings, I have also seen a beautiful male white paradise flycatcher (Terpsiphone mutata) and a sickle-billed vanga (Falculea palliata).
Wednesday 3rd November: Emma on the World Service
I was sat this afternoon, listening to news on the BBC world service when I heard an article on finger length and testosterone in primates and my ears pricked up. Next I hear Emma Nelson explaining how Neanderthals were likely to have had higher levels of testosterone than modern humans. It was great to hear you Emma and well done for getting such world-wide coverage!
Mating continued this morning and I filmed everything I could possibly get. I have so much I have to dump things from the video-camera’s 60 GB hard drive so I am now backing everything up to two external drives for safety; where data is concerned you can never be too careful. The camera is working well, although I am not brilliant with it (dad, I apologise) as I am usually shaky and as I keep looking elsewhere to see what else is going on with the other fossa I often lose sight of what I am trying to film! I am also unfortunately losing a lot of film from the night; every time I wake I hear fossa calling. The camera does have night shot capabilities which works really well with the extra infra-red lights we bought, but, it suffers the same problem as any light source in a forest; it bounces off the first tree it hits so if the action is a couple of trees behind you don’t see it. This is really frustrating and I have given up trying to film them at night, although at some point I do need to get some footage of Lepilemur at night.
I did realise, as I sit here at the table, just how much money I have sat around me in terms of equipment: one laptop; two external hard drives; binoculars; camera and two video cameras (one to charge batteries while I use the other). Roughly £4000 worth of equipment and sat near me are Manjara and Richard who each earn 5,000Ar a day, which is £1.67 (non-Brits will have to figure that out if you can be bothered) meaning they would have to work for almost 2,400 days, or over six years to earn that amount of cash; it would take me around a couple of months.
Going back to the fossa, the highlight of yesterday afternoon was when a male fossa walked straight across my feet, completely unconcerned I was there. They are certainly getting bolder, one walked up to me again today and I ended up shouting no to get it to back off and a further individual came up to me as I was sat so I ended up pushing me chair backwards; it didn’t look as if it wanted dinner, but its teeth were rather close to my leg and I have limits! Another one ran off with a brand new sponge from the washing-up area, I shouted at it, but of course it didn’t drop the sponge, goodness knows why it took it. Manjara appeared in shorts with a great rip in them today and explained that the fossa had grabbed them and ripped them. It would seem though that the mating is over as this afternoon there were hardly any fossa and certainly no females around.
Lunch, served just after 11am, was mushy courgette, rather than the mushy vegetable stew of the last couple of days; I already long for crispy, stir-fried or steamed vegetables and I have only been back a few days. Breakfast was again thrice-fried penny chips, and this morning I couldn’t even eat them all; my stomach is rebelling at the fat they were dripping in. Richard has arrived today though, so we have a change of cook as Manjara will leave. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, as I hate Richard’s breakfast rice, but he does make a better rice tea; more burnt, less starchy.
Thursday 4th November:
It would seem that fossa mating is over, although a female appeared last evening and was mating all night; this morning there were only a couple of fossa trailing around the place. We had camp sifaka around this morning and they were alarm calling a couple of fossa prowling. I had hopes I might see some predatory action, but the fossa obviously decided it wasn’t worth it. This morning I collected scats from around camp and this afternoon, once it starts to cool off a little, I will head into the forest as Vasay left me a list of almost 20 scats to collect [I collected over 30 with new ones I noticed]. Of course this means I will once again be nearly out of bags [I am now completely out of small bags] as I have already used up all the ones I ‘borrowed’ from Becca and will nearly have gone through the 30 Ronny sent me. I will have to resort to wrapping them in aluminium foil; I looked in Tana but couldn’t see any. I almost bought some in SA but they seemed rather expensive; I really wish I had now though.
Lunch, served at 11.10am, was mushy vegetables. It is actually a pretty nice dish, but why, or why does everything need to be mushy? As it had no tomato paste in, giving it a rather horrid brown-grey colour, I assume we are almost out yet again. Dessy is so incapable of insuring we have enough food in camp; in Mantadia we never ran out of non-fresh essentials (there Sabine and I were keeping check on everything) but here it happens all the time. I have started taking photographs of lunches so I can always remember them, as if I could forget, and so I can share them with you all, as I know you all really want to see my food!
Friday 5th November: *!*$ - Insert Expletive as Desired
07:24 Somehow this morning I managed to blow up (I hope) the fuse on the inverter for the solar power. This is obviously in the ‘not good’ category and quite a bit of swearing ensued, I don’t know if it was caused by the slight rain we had over night, or if I put the positive/negative clips on the wrong way round; I might have done this, which would have been stupid I know, I obviously wasn’t paying enough attention. Whichever it was right now I feel sick, angry and very unhappy. I have to get to Morondava, which without the quad means a 20km walk to Belo to get a car. Annoyingly the charette was in camp this morning, but they left especially early, typical. If I leave now I will have to walk the last hour or two in 40°C heat which I am not that keen on and neither am I keen on walking later this afternoon as I don’t want to risk having to walk in the dark. So I have decided that I will leave camp first thing tomorrow morning, by 5.30am at the very latest, so I can get into Belo early, before it gets too hot. Hopefully I can then get a car to pick me up on Sunday and then try to figure this mess out. IF I can get hold of Simon who will be in Tana next week I can ask him to buy a new inverter there along with fuses for this one, I am not sure what will happen if I cannot. Morondava isn’t great for stocking things although I might be able to order something through a shop-keeper and have it delivered via a taxi-brousse. In the field something always goes wrong, but this was not required. Also, because I watched a movie in my tent last night my laptop has hardly any power - bloody typical as well.
Sunday 7th November: Back in Morondava
14:35 What a couple of days. On Friday after calming down and stopping my swearing fest I did a lot of reading, a lot of reading. I read one whole book and finished two others - and yes, I do read quickly. I also went ant lion wrangling! In Kruger, Graeme (one of our guides) showed us an ant lion, one of the ‘little five’. These ant eating creatures have concave holes in the sand, wait for ants to fall in and when they do they have lunch. Graeme, making it look very easy, ‘dug up’ one of the ant lions to show us. Now we have the same concave holes in our forest and I had never known what inhabited them, but was determined to wrangle myself an ant lion, how hard can it be... I tried and I tried and was very much ready to give up, but finally, I found an ant lion! In Kruger they were pale in colour, the same as the soil, and in camp it was red, which was pretty cool. After a ‘few’ photos I bought the poor guy back so he could bury himself again. Ronny has informed me that they are lacewing larvae; you learn something new every day.
Yesterday morning I did manage to leave just after 5.30am, for the walk to Belo. My rucksack felt very heavy, I have no idea how heavy, but it must have been at least 10kg as it included my laptop, the inverter and 2l of water. The nicest thing about walking is that you see things and soon after leaving I met a fossa coming in the other direction, it trotted up close to me before realising I was there and then, after pausing, it bounded off into the forest. I also saw a pair of pretty coloured, curved beak, nectar drinking (I think) sunbirds and coming out of the forest there were a quartet of parrots in a tree. Walking through the forest, with the sun hardly up was quite pleasant, and the only bad thing was when I tripped over a tree root and went flying down the track; I always do this, I guess I don’t pick my feet up enough. Thankfully the landing was pretty soft, but my leg was slightly grazed. Even walking across the salt flats wasn’t too bad, although across the one to Antsira I used the new ‘road’. On leaving Antsira I had to walk through salt water that was on top of the flats, which was actually quite pleasant and cooling on the feet. I did get to see some wading birds and finally see up close the many tiny crabs that live there. The worst bit was the last hour; walking on undulating deep, soft sand. I was very happy after four and a half hours to make it to Belo and Dede’s ‘place’.
I dumped my bag into a room and quickly drunk a 1l bottle of coke, all the water was already finished. I had asked Dede to phone for a 4x4 to come to Morondava but he suggested his pirogue. It was the same price, took three hours and I would leave early and hence arrive in Morondava early. It seemed better than waiting all morning in Belo for a 4x4 and then arriving late into Morondava. This arranged I collapsed until lunchtime when I ate the most delicious fish with a tomato salad, oh, and of course rice! Dede really is a great cook and a Malagasy entrepreneur.
The rest of the day was spent dozing and reading and trying not to move as I ached all over, especially my shoulders and back from carrying the rucksack. This morning I was up early and on the pirogue by 5am. It was pretty small, wide enough for one person on each seat, but fairly long and it was just me and the skipper, Tony, who despite his name is Malagasy. The trip was so much fun and nicer than sitting in a 4x4 and getting bruised on bad roads for five hours, although the bench seat was not the most comfortable. During the trip Tony stopped a passing fisherman to buy some beautiful fish from him, very fresh, and a few times we had to navigate around large fishing nets with empty plastic bottles warning of their existence. In a very speedy three hours we were in Morondava and I was walking out of the port and up to the hotel, ready to collapse! I didn’t ache too badly this morning but when I finally stirred for lunch, after dozing this morning, my muscles were certainly complaining; mostly my back and shoulders. Tomorrow I have to try to figure out what is wrong with the damned inverter.
21:27 Thankfully I managed to get in touch with Simon who is enjoying his holiday, at least he was until I rudely interrupted it, and he is going to (hopefully) pick up a new inverter in Tana. It will be for European plugs, but we have plenty of converters so that shouldn’t be a problem. I will still try to get a couple of new fuses for the old one, but I think it more sensible to get a new one at this point, otherwise we could be stuck until Christmas and we need power. It is very lucky Simon will be in Tana, so now I will wait for Simon to get back, which means I probably will not be leaving until Saturday; I guess the Central Hotel is at least happy with all the mishaps!
11:00 Another month another porn movie, my life is definitely rather strange at the moment. I have been filming since I got up and last night I was filming again from around 4pm until I went to bed. Only day two and I have to admit it is already becoming a little monotonous. Still, I have lots of footage and some of it might actually be useful. I have also managed to pick up one or two more scats, although given the plethora of fossa (at one point yesterday afternoon we had at least seven around us) I am surprised there are not more.
This morning there has been more fighting and one fossa fell over 10m straight to the ground, but thankfully seems ok; I should say it moved again, I couldn’t honestly say who was who. A male and the female were mating and Mercury climbed the tree and during the ensuring fight one fell; it definitely wasn’t Mercury as I saw him climb down the tree so I assume it was the male that had been mating. One of the male fossa that was mating with the female has a sore eye and many are now walking around with wounds, passing your genetics on to the next generation is a difficult business. Mating is also a very public affair, even discounting me and my video camera. When a new male climbs the mating tree and moves out the old male sometimes the old male hangs around to watch. One of the newer males was a little put off by this, but eventually managed to get it together to mate! Around 10am when it starts to get really hot everybody melts away for the day, some of them sprawl around camp to rest and Neptune spent much of the time flopped quite near me today. He definitely mated this morning and obviously needs a long recovery time!
It seems a little early to be mentioning food again but for dinner last night I had a plate of rice, a large plate of chips (French fries for any non-Brits reading this) and leftover vegetable stew from lunch including a large portion of potatoes! Manjara had cooked so many chips that I had an ever bigger plate for breakfast this morning, he had ‘kindly’ re-fried them so I had thrice-fried chips; I tried not to think of the fat content! Lunch (served around 11.30am) was a huge plate of cabbage, cabbage is one of my least favourite vegetables and I vowed not to buy it again, but there was so little choice in Morondava and it’s marginally better than beans. This was finished off with mushy over-ripe banana, nasty but it’s the only fruit I could buy.
Valisoa’s two boys arrived last night with the water charette and yet again stayed over. They are a funny pair and were engrossed in my video camera. In a lull in the activities I was filming Manjara filling up the water drum as they cavorted and they were all amused to see it play back! I also got them pumping up the charette tyre before they left.
Tuesday 2nd November: Too Much Testosterone
Its 10.30am, almost 40°C, and a couple of meters away from me are flopped three male fossa, all too hot and exhausted from the mornings exertions suffering with torn lips and grazed faces. They are lying in the shade of camp, panting heavily, but the truce between them is uneasy and they are continually growling at each other. One especially, the one with the worst wound on his face, cannot settle and keeps walking around initiating rumbles from the others. He keeps lying close to one of the other two but they don’t like it, finally one snapped and after a brief scuffle he left, a second followed so now there is one fossa flopped in camp.
This morning the mating seemed more agitated and the fossa more excitable. There were more fights and a lot of scent marking. Once again a fossa took a tumble from a great height, the same thing happened late last night and every time I see it I cringe, but so far the unfortunate fossa has been able to jump up and run away; highly bruised I should think, but seemingly able to fight another day. Overall there were at least nine fossa in camp at one time, although more than that overall, and today there were two females mating in neighbouring trees. The first female, in the higher tree seemed to be preferred, but both females were mated. From the growls I heard at night I think mating continued throughout much of it, although I first starting recording around 5.20am when I got up, not finishing until after 10am when most of the fossa were too hot and bothered to do much of anything. Now I wish I had a refrigerator to crawl into before it all starts up again later this afternoon. I have the decision to stay sat in camp, with a breeze and flies or go and lay in my tent, where while it is hotter I can lay down and strip off and there are no flies.
Mercury walked through camp and decided to sit right next to me, under my feet which I had lifted slightly. He finally looked at me and seemed startled, but I don’t know why! He moved off, came back and then turned round so he was laid right under my chair and again when he looked up at me he was surprised; I was definitely there first! Hot male fossa exhibit very strange behaviour!
As to some non-fossa sightings, I have also seen a beautiful male white paradise flycatcher (Terpsiphone mutata) and a sickle-billed vanga (Falculea palliata).
Wednesday 3rd November: Emma on the World Service
I was sat this afternoon, listening to news on the BBC world service when I heard an article on finger length and testosterone in primates and my ears pricked up. Next I hear Emma Nelson explaining how Neanderthals were likely to have had higher levels of testosterone than modern humans. It was great to hear you Emma and well done for getting such world-wide coverage!
Mating continued this morning and I filmed everything I could possibly get. I have so much I have to dump things from the video-camera’s 60 GB hard drive so I am now backing everything up to two external drives for safety; where data is concerned you can never be too careful. The camera is working well, although I am not brilliant with it (dad, I apologise) as I am usually shaky and as I keep looking elsewhere to see what else is going on with the other fossa I often lose sight of what I am trying to film! I am also unfortunately losing a lot of film from the night; every time I wake I hear fossa calling. The camera does have night shot capabilities which works really well with the extra infra-red lights we bought, but, it suffers the same problem as any light source in a forest; it bounces off the first tree it hits so if the action is a couple of trees behind you don’t see it. This is really frustrating and I have given up trying to film them at night, although at some point I do need to get some footage of Lepilemur at night.
I did realise, as I sit here at the table, just how much money I have sat around me in terms of equipment: one laptop; two external hard drives; binoculars; camera and two video cameras (one to charge batteries while I use the other). Roughly £4000 worth of equipment and sat near me are Manjara and Richard who each earn 5,000Ar a day, which is £1.67 (non-Brits will have to figure that out if you can be bothered) meaning they would have to work for almost 2,400 days, or over six years to earn that amount of cash; it would take me around a couple of months.
Going back to the fossa, the highlight of yesterday afternoon was when a male fossa walked straight across my feet, completely unconcerned I was there. They are certainly getting bolder, one walked up to me again today and I ended up shouting no to get it to back off and a further individual came up to me as I was sat so I ended up pushing me chair backwards; it didn’t look as if it wanted dinner, but its teeth were rather close to my leg and I have limits! Another one ran off with a brand new sponge from the washing-up area, I shouted at it, but of course it didn’t drop the sponge, goodness knows why it took it. Manjara appeared in shorts with a great rip in them today and explained that the fossa had grabbed them and ripped them. It would seem though that the mating is over as this afternoon there were hardly any fossa and certainly no females around.
Lunch, served just after 11am, was mushy courgette, rather than the mushy vegetable stew of the last couple of days; I already long for crispy, stir-fried or steamed vegetables and I have only been back a few days. Breakfast was again thrice-fried penny chips, and this morning I couldn’t even eat them all; my stomach is rebelling at the fat they were dripping in. Richard has arrived today though, so we have a change of cook as Manjara will leave. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, as I hate Richard’s breakfast rice, but he does make a better rice tea; more burnt, less starchy.
Thursday 4th November:
It would seem that fossa mating is over, although a female appeared last evening and was mating all night; this morning there were only a couple of fossa trailing around the place. We had camp sifaka around this morning and they were alarm calling a couple of fossa prowling. I had hopes I might see some predatory action, but the fossa obviously decided it wasn’t worth it. This morning I collected scats from around camp and this afternoon, once it starts to cool off a little, I will head into the forest as Vasay left me a list of almost 20 scats to collect [I collected over 30 with new ones I noticed]. Of course this means I will once again be nearly out of bags [I am now completely out of small bags] as I have already used up all the ones I ‘borrowed’ from Becca and will nearly have gone through the 30 Ronny sent me. I will have to resort to wrapping them in aluminium foil; I looked in Tana but couldn’t see any. I almost bought some in SA but they seemed rather expensive; I really wish I had now though.
Lunch, served at 11.10am, was mushy vegetables. It is actually a pretty nice dish, but why, or why does everything need to be mushy? As it had no tomato paste in, giving it a rather horrid brown-grey colour, I assume we are almost out yet again. Dessy is so incapable of insuring we have enough food in camp; in Mantadia we never ran out of non-fresh essentials (there Sabine and I were keeping check on everything) but here it happens all the time. I have started taking photographs of lunches so I can always remember them, as if I could forget, and so I can share them with you all, as I know you all really want to see my food!
Friday 5th November: *!*$ - Insert Expletive as Desired
07:24 Somehow this morning I managed to blow up (I hope) the fuse on the inverter for the solar power. This is obviously in the ‘not good’ category and quite a bit of swearing ensued, I don’t know if it was caused by the slight rain we had over night, or if I put the positive/negative clips on the wrong way round; I might have done this, which would have been stupid I know, I obviously wasn’t paying enough attention. Whichever it was right now I feel sick, angry and very unhappy. I have to get to Morondava, which without the quad means a 20km walk to Belo to get a car. Annoyingly the charette was in camp this morning, but they left especially early, typical. If I leave now I will have to walk the last hour or two in 40°C heat which I am not that keen on and neither am I keen on walking later this afternoon as I don’t want to risk having to walk in the dark. So I have decided that I will leave camp first thing tomorrow morning, by 5.30am at the very latest, so I can get into Belo early, before it gets too hot. Hopefully I can then get a car to pick me up on Sunday and then try to figure this mess out. IF I can get hold of Simon who will be in Tana next week I can ask him to buy a new inverter there along with fuses for this one, I am not sure what will happen if I cannot. Morondava isn’t great for stocking things although I might be able to order something through a shop-keeper and have it delivered via a taxi-brousse. In the field something always goes wrong, but this was not required. Also, because I watched a movie in my tent last night my laptop has hardly any power - bloody typical as well.
Sunday 7th November: Back in Morondava
14:35 What a couple of days. On Friday after calming down and stopping my swearing fest I did a lot of reading, a lot of reading. I read one whole book and finished two others - and yes, I do read quickly. I also went ant lion wrangling! In Kruger, Graeme (one of our guides) showed us an ant lion, one of the ‘little five’. These ant eating creatures have concave holes in the sand, wait for ants to fall in and when they do they have lunch. Graeme, making it look very easy, ‘dug up’ one of the ant lions to show us. Now we have the same concave holes in our forest and I had never known what inhabited them, but was determined to wrangle myself an ant lion, how hard can it be... I tried and I tried and was very much ready to give up, but finally, I found an ant lion! In Kruger they were pale in colour, the same as the soil, and in camp it was red, which was pretty cool. After a ‘few’ photos I bought the poor guy back so he could bury himself again. Ronny has informed me that they are lacewing larvae; you learn something new every day.
Yesterday morning I did manage to leave just after 5.30am, for the walk to Belo. My rucksack felt very heavy, I have no idea how heavy, but it must have been at least 10kg as it included my laptop, the inverter and 2l of water. The nicest thing about walking is that you see things and soon after leaving I met a fossa coming in the other direction, it trotted up close to me before realising I was there and then, after pausing, it bounded off into the forest. I also saw a pair of pretty coloured, curved beak, nectar drinking (I think) sunbirds and coming out of the forest there were a quartet of parrots in a tree. Walking through the forest, with the sun hardly up was quite pleasant, and the only bad thing was when I tripped over a tree root and went flying down the track; I always do this, I guess I don’t pick my feet up enough. Thankfully the landing was pretty soft, but my leg was slightly grazed. Even walking across the salt flats wasn’t too bad, although across the one to Antsira I used the new ‘road’. On leaving Antsira I had to walk through salt water that was on top of the flats, which was actually quite pleasant and cooling on the feet. I did get to see some wading birds and finally see up close the many tiny crabs that live there. The worst bit was the last hour; walking on undulating deep, soft sand. I was very happy after four and a half hours to make it to Belo and Dede’s ‘place’.
I dumped my bag into a room and quickly drunk a 1l bottle of coke, all the water was already finished. I had asked Dede to phone for a 4x4 to come to Morondava but he suggested his pirogue. It was the same price, took three hours and I would leave early and hence arrive in Morondava early. It seemed better than waiting all morning in Belo for a 4x4 and then arriving late into Morondava. This arranged I collapsed until lunchtime when I ate the most delicious fish with a tomato salad, oh, and of course rice! Dede really is a great cook and a Malagasy entrepreneur.
The rest of the day was spent dozing and reading and trying not to move as I ached all over, especially my shoulders and back from carrying the rucksack. This morning I was up early and on the pirogue by 5am. It was pretty small, wide enough for one person on each seat, but fairly long and it was just me and the skipper, Tony, who despite his name is Malagasy. The trip was so much fun and nicer than sitting in a 4x4 and getting bruised on bad roads for five hours, although the bench seat was not the most comfortable. During the trip Tony stopped a passing fisherman to buy some beautiful fish from him, very fresh, and a few times we had to navigate around large fishing nets with empty plastic bottles warning of their existence. In a very speedy three hours we were in Morondava and I was walking out of the port and up to the hotel, ready to collapse! I didn’t ache too badly this morning but when I finally stirred for lunch, after dozing this morning, my muscles were certainly complaining; mostly my back and shoulders. Tomorrow I have to try to figure out what is wrong with the damned inverter.
21:27 Thankfully I managed to get in touch with Simon who is enjoying his holiday, at least he was until I rudely interrupted it, and he is going to (hopefully) pick up a new inverter in Tana. It will be for European plugs, but we have plenty of converters so that shouldn’t be a problem. I will still try to get a couple of new fuses for the old one, but I think it more sensible to get a new one at this point, otherwise we could be stuck until Christmas and we need power. It is very lucky Simon will be in Tana, so now I will wait for Simon to get back, which means I probably will not be leaving until Saturday; I guess the Central Hotel is at least happy with all the mishaps!