More pirogue-ing - ocean style!

I've gotta say, I'm not so good at this relaxing caper. I get sick of it after about a day. It was time to leave Morondava; we clearly hadn't had enough of sitting in a cramped little wooden boat, so we decided that we would make our way down the coast to the little fishing village of Morombe in an ocean pirogue.

Farewell, Morondava, place of drunken evenings and lost cash ...

And so I find myself lying on the sail of our ocean pirogue, having set up camp for the night in a little fishing village called Ankevo. We are almost at the end of day one of a 3-4 day journey from Morondava to Morombe.

So, you think a sailing trip on an ocean pirogue, its white sail billowing in the wind while you cruise down the coast, past boat-building workshops, estuaries, sand dunes and villages, sounds nice and romantic?

Think again. When the wind has died, you're not going anywhere, the midday sun is beating down on your narrow boat with no comforts except a life jacket to sit on and your backpack to lean on, and little room to move, it's rather unpleasant! But... when the wind picks up, you're skipping along with the breeze at your back, watching the coastline pass slowly by, the small fishing pirogues out getting their daily catch, a dolphin or two leaping out of the water, it's simply grand.

Spending each night wrapped up in the sail of your boat, looking up at the stars, the wind blowing across your face while you drift off to sleep, is also a pretty special experience.

What I didn't expect was to see a fleet of fishing trawlers out raping the ocean, their metal arms protruding out aggressively, dragging their massive nets behind them. But I've forgotten about them now that we've landed, and Silver and Eric (our piroguese) are cooking the prawns and fish that we bought off the beach when we arrived.

We spent three days in our pirogue, cruising along each day, keeping an eye out for flying fish, pods of dolphins and jellyfish bobbing along the surface, watching the distant shore change slowly from small villages to coastal shrubs to huge sand dunes. We finally made it to Morombe at nightfall on the third day - and were we glad that the journey didn't last for four days! It was quite enough, thanks. I'm not sure my butt would have survived another day on those hard wooden planks. I was happy to stretch my legs in the knowledge that our next form of transport would be by road.

If only I'd known that this road journey would almost be as excruciating as three days in an ocean pirogue ...