47th post - Lokobe and return journey

The first day here in Ambatoxavay started with a really delicious breakfast: There was fruit, coffee, tea, fried eggs and so-called Mofo Gasy . These are small cakes/pancakes made from rice flour that are really delicious. I was given the recipe and definitely want to try it out :)

Since we obviously still hadn't had enough of lemurs, today's program included a visit to Lemurialand . It's a kind of animal park/zoo near Hellville . I think we got ripped off a lot when it came to the tuk-tuk prices to get there, but since the village is so small, there are only two drivers, and you have to rely on them and can't say no. So we drove there for about 30 minutes for half a fortune and then paid the entrance fee.

But our guide was really cool and knew a lot, so the tour was really fun. First we saw or rather looked for the " roi du camouflage ", a gecko that could adapt its color to its surroundings exactly.

Secondly, we were once again amazed by lemurs, but this time we saw different species than before on Nosy Komba, including King Julien :D However, these were "locked up" (aka they were surrounded by a moat because they don't like water). Later, however, we would see wild lemurs :)

Before that, we visited snapping turtles, which can easily bite off your finger, which is why we weren't allowed to pet them. Our guide told us that they even kill crocodiles. If they are eaten by a crocodile, they hide in their shell and later eat the crocodile from the inside out - scary!

Luckily, the wild lemurs came straight towards us and we were able to feed them with bananas and pet them for a good twenty minutes, while our guide showed off his cinematic talent and constantly filmed and photographed us :D He said exactly three things, each time in a different order: “ Maaaaaki, maki maki ”, “ Voilà ”, and “Banana? ”.

After this furry pleasure, we stopped by to see the two giant tortoises Napoleon and Bonaparte, who I think were 150 and 170 years old - and really huge!

To top it all off, we saw crocodiles, which to be honest, really scared me. A crocodile eats 5kg of meat a week and can run at up to 40km/h - I can't do that, so I was glad there was a wall between us. When I saw these animals, I was honestly glad that we hadn't seen any at Mont Passot :D

The last stop on the program in Lemurialand was the Ylang-Ylang distillery. Nosy Be means “Island of Perfume” because these Ylang-Ylang plants smell incredibly good and are a main ingredient in Chanel n°5, for example.

We were told that a container like this (see picture below) contains 500kg of petals - just imagine that, flowers weigh absolutely nothing!! According to my calculations, that would be around 300,000 flowers. You have to find them first :D This then produces around 12l of essential oil, which is sent directly to Paris.

After this lovely visit of about 2 hours, we took the TukTuk back to Hellville because we wanted to use the rest of the day to withdraw some money and take a closer look at the capital. So we dropped ourselves off at the ATM and told our driver to pick us up again at around 2pm.

A little richer than before, we strolled through the streets and looked into a few shops. There was really a lot going on in this city and I found it to be a total sensory overload. But it was very interesting, especially the big contrast to our tiny village and this city. We walked around here for about 4 hours and also visited the Bazar Antranomanogny , a kind of market.

After a while we sat down in a really cute restaurant and shared a meal again before we got to the last stop, the supermarket. Here we stocked up on water, peanuts and baguette (as always :D) and then waited for our driver. Funnily enough we met the two English guys who had also stayed with us on Nosy Iranja - so Nosy Be is kind of small. We chatted a bit, the two of them were flying home today and passed the time until the flight.

When we got back to our accommodation, we freshened up (aka tried to shower ourselves with water from the canister) and then walked around our village a bit. It was really nice and we met a lot of nice people. We also saw this building, a cold storage room for fish, which didn't fit into the landscape at all. Of course, it was a project of the corrupt president, who would have thought...

Laura and I then wanted to sit down in a small bar and have a drink when we were approached by a boy who was learning English with an organization and wanted to chat a bit to improve his English. So the three of us sat down in the bar, bought him a large beer and talked to him in English for quite a while.

I found his story quite sad. He left his family because they were too poor to give him a life. Now he's 18 and lives alone in this small village and is trying to get his English certificate so he can become a guide and get out of Madagascar one day. It's a crazy story, but he seemed really happy to be able to talk to us and have a beer. At least something. After a while we said goodbye and went to our room to eat something.

Our feast consisted of baguette with freshly bought bananas from the village and peanuts. Don't judge before you try, it was really delicious :D Necessity is the mother of invention, I've heard.

After that we went to sleep.

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Today we did the activity that made us move to this village in the first place: a visit to the Lokobe nature reserve.

But the day started again with the awesome breakfast, we even asked for more of these rice cakes - so delicious!

At around 8:30 we got into a pirogue with our guide and his cousin. Luckily, this one was much more stable and had fewer holes than the one on Nosy Iranja . We didn't even need a bucket to empty the boat :D

We paddled for about 20 minutes and then arrived at a beach where we moored. The nature reserve is only accessible by sea, so of course our boat was not the only one there.

We were greeted by a few souvenir stands, some of which I thought were really cool. However, we hadn't brought any extra money with us (probably fortunately) and so couldn't buy anything anyway. But it was nice to look around :)

After I had bathed myself in sunscreen, we started walking and first came across a rice field. It reminded me of my first trip to Madagascar, because there were these fields everywhere. The green of a rice field is a beautiful color and I'm really happy to see it again.

What I saw next made me really happy: Lemurs (yes, again :D). We were told how the baby lemurs are raised and that the females always have the say. #GoLemurs

We stuffed the cute fur balls full of bananas again and continued walking after a few minutes. During the entire walk through the forest, our guide explained to us various plants and animals and also how he had learned all of them. His father is also a guide and had accompanied him on his tours since he was a small child.

The next animal we encountered was a boa constrictor. We learned that they sometimes eat lemurs, for example if they fall from a tree at night. Lemurs are almost blind at night and therefore cannot see the impending danger. However, a lemur like this probably stays full for a long time, which is why such an incident does not happen every week.

Next, we were treated to something that really showed off our guide's observation skills: He showed us the smallest species of chameleon in the world. At some point, he suddenly reached into a tree trunk and said, "Here, put your hand up." However he found these little worms, they were definitely smaller than I expected.

Since we had been on the road for some time, it was time for a short break at a waterfall. I used this to make up for the lack of showering over the last few days and tried to remove the sunscreen residue from the last week from my skin while I bathed. I really felt like a new person afterwards and the cool water felt really good. Afterwards I sunbathed a little and enjoyed the beautiful place.

After a break of about an hour, we went on to see a type of lemur that we hadn't seen before: a nocturnal lemur that is completely blind during the day. Unfortunately, I couldn't take a photo of it, but for those of you who know the animated films Madagascar, it's King Julien's little friend.

Towards the end of the tour, the guides once again demonstrated their powers of observation by showing us the king of camouflage in the wild. It took me a while to see him, but maybe you're better than me :D

On the way back to the beach we said goodbye to the lemurs again because we would see them for the last time today.

When we got back to the starting point we sat down at a table, we were starving. The hour-long wait for the food was really long, but it was worth it: the food was super delicious, there was a kind of potato salad, bread, rice, zebu and I even ate a fish (thanks to Laura's coaching). There were oranges for dessert.

With full stomachs, we hit the beach one last time to take a maximum tan with us to La Réunion.

An hour later, around 2 p.m., we paddled back towards the village. We docked somewhere else because our guide wanted to show us the mangroves, a type of tree that only grows in salt water.

Once we got back to our accommodation, we freshened up as best we could and started packing up everything we no longer needed.

Then we went out into the village and met our guide, with whom we spent the evening. First he bought bananas for us, because they are so incredibly delicious here, completely different to Germany and even to La Réunion. The people here in this small village haven't yet discovered the art of ripping off tourists, which is why we paid practically nothing for the bananas. Afterwards we went for a drink and our guide even invited us in, which was really nice. We tried the vanilla rum, which was really delicious and relatively smooth to drink.

After 1-2 hours of chatting with our new friend, we said goodbye and went to our room to have dinner. Today we had bananas, cookies and peanuts on the menu. Yummy! :D

After this luxurious meal it was time to go to bed.

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The very last day had arrived and we had mixed feelings about it. It was really nice here and I would have liked to stay longer, but I did miss my normal standard of living a little.

For breakfast, we stuffed ourselves with all the rice cakes we could get our hands on and then packed the last things into our backpacks.

Then we waited for our tuk tuk, which arrived promptly at 9am and took us to the airport. Before that, we took a final selfie with our guide friend and exchanged contact details.

Once we arrived at the airport, everything went smoothly and we quickly got through all the checks etc. Apparently everything went smoothly for everyone else too, because we took off almost 30 minutes early - Deutsche Bahn could never.

After about 1.5 hours of flying we arrived back home and I was actually quite happy about it.

Since we had basically spent the last two weeks fasting, we went straight from the airport to a burger restaurant that Laura and I had been wanting to try for a while. We took our food with us and sat down by the sea. It was super delicious and a great end to the vacation :)

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Overall, this trip to Madagascar was completely different from my first one.

Firstly, the islands are very different from Grande Terre in terms of landscape and culture. Secondly, my first experience was of course much more luxurious and therefore full of contrasts. During the day you saw the poverty and in the evening you sat in luxurious accommodation drinking cocktails. This time we saw the poverty during the day and in the evening we sat in a house without electricity or water. I liked the whole thing because we actually lived like the people there and got a good idea of how they were doing. This time I also had more contact with the locals and talked to them a lot. That was very exciting and I missed it a bit last time. In terms of landscape I think I still prefer mainland Madagascar (apart from Nosy Iranja).

I am grateful to have had this experience and hope to forever cherish having electricity coming out of the socket and water coming out of the tap!