Yesterdays diving was good, exploring a couple of coral gardens. The first one was called Fucilleri after the fish that tend to congregate there. Well, we werent disappointed, there were thousands of the bright yellow fish swimming around on top of a small shelf. There were the most beautiful corals too, and we were lucky enough to spot a trumpetfish, puffer fish, butterfly fish, and an octopus.
The second dive at the site called Licorn was equally as wonderful regarding the coral. Marine life included shrimps, blue spotted Ray, a large crocodile fish, and an octopus hiding in a hole with just his eye visible.
The highlight of the day however was a call after the second dive that humpback whales had been spotted, so we motored out in the general direction, and we werent disappointed! We found them, and managed to motor alongside them for about 20 minutes before we had to turn back for lunch. It was a pair of males swimming together, and every couple of minutes they surfaced to blow, before gracefully arcing back under the surface of the water. The dorsal fins and caudal pedicles (knobbly bits behind the dorsal fin) were clearly visible,
and we got within about 25m of them. I was quite emotional to be able to witness the behaviour of such huge and majestic creatures in the wild.
In the evening we went on a trip to the top of Mount Passot to watch the sunset. We had expected to wander into a filed at the top of the mountain as a single group, and just sit and watch the sunset – peaceful and a tad romantic. Nope, it wasnt like that at all! Theres a tourist trail up there, you pay to get to the top of the mountain, there are many souvenir stalls that you have to walk past, and their were around 200 people there. It was busy, noisy and easily the lowest part of the holiday for me. Honestly, if Id realised it was going to be like that Id have stayed at the hotel!
Nevertheless, it was quite a pretty sunset, albeit not as good as the ones from the hotel, and there was some sort of marriage celebration with a cake, lots of applause, couples having their photo take and eating cake – we werent involved I may add! The writing on
the cake says pretty much ‘best wishes to the newlyweds in Italian. There are many Italians on Nosy Be, including the Manta Dive Centre. There a direct flight from Milan, so I guess that has something to do with it.
Today we had a day off diving, and headed out to a village in the south of Nosy Be near the Lokobe Nature Reserve. On the way we stopped at a Ylang Ylang plantation. The trees are cropped to make it easier to harvest the flowers which are used to make the oil. It takes 500kg of flowers to make 12l of oil. Much of what is produced is sent to France to make Chanel No 5.
Once we reached the village we were decanted into 4 canoes with a local man as ‘Skipper and off we paddled to the reserve. It was great fun, taking around half an hour. We arrived and met our 2 local guides for our wander around the reserve. My goodness, it was special! It is primary forest, with less open tracks than weve seen before. The background noise
was more with the birdsong and general chattering of the forest. There were many lemurs spotted above us, black lemurs and brown ones. Apparently, the black are males and the brown are females. One female had a baby – so cute! We saw a Boa asleep in a tree – really special! There were many chameleons including more of the ones. There was a Madagascar Scops Owl snoozing in a little hidey hole. A great wander although sadly I was one pair of prescription sunnies less when we arrived back at the village for a yummy lunch.
After lunch we got back in the canoes, but as the tide was now against us we had a tow from a couple of engined boats. The one towing the canoe I was in was very African from the sound of the engine to the look of the vessel – if you havent seen the film, I highly it – Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn; one of my favourite films.
