Six days in beautiful Ile Saint-Marie

Our final Madagascan destination, Ile Saint-Marie, and the hotel in which we planted ourselves, did not disappoint. The island is a beautiful place, wit ha small population, green, lush vegetation and beautiful palm-fringed beaches. I'm sitting here by the bay sheltering Hotel La Crique, the sound of the calm ocean lapping at the shore, birds singing in the trees, four gay French and Malagasy men frolicking in the shallows (ooh delete that part, it's ruining my description!), the sun slowly making its way down to the horizon. A short swim out to the various rocks scattered in the bay revealed sea urchins on the sea floor and some beauitful, small, neighbouring bays to explore by snorkel tomorrow. Aaaahhh, paradise found. And we still have five more days of it. I might need to find another book to read.

 

 We've never been at a loss for things to do in our little slice of paradise. Lots of swimming and snorkelling in the beautiful bay on which La Crique is situated. On the northern end of the bay there are many huge slabs of rock underwater, harbouring the hardy corals that grow on it; and between the rocks protruding out near the shore, beautiful black and white sea stars wave their arms in hope of catching some passing food at low tide. The southern end, and around into the next gorgeous bay (from where the sunset is even more beautiful) the snorkelling is the most amazing.

I think in the past it would have been a lot more so, as it seems that the marine life is in recovery mode, with quite a lot of dead coral scattered around the sea bed. The typhoons - especially the major ones in 08-09 - probably did quite a lot of damage. Still, there are many beautiful coral communities growing here on the large rocks that seem to have been planted randomly in the bay by a giant hand. Quite a few beautiful fish inhabit this underwater world, including some peculiar lobster-like creatures, mostly green with a piercing stare as they glare up at you with their Chinese-New-Year-dragon faces and try to wave their 'swimmers' at you - har har, no claws! Yeah, you better run, you little bugger, you'd taste good.

We hired a couple of mountain bikes one morning and rode the 15km to the main town, Ambodifotatra, for a look around. the town has a nice feel to it, well spread out around the harbour, and more to it than you realise. I also got the feeling that it - and the island generally - are quite wealthy compared to many other parts of Madagascar. I guess its not surpirsing given a lot of wealth flows here from the main economic activity - us spending money! But in the interior are apparently a lot of rice and cassava farms, and I think for those on the land (or fishermen, for that matter), life is still pretty difficult.

We spent the afternoon cruising round on our bikes, across the causeway which provides access over Baie des Forbans, the check out the now defunct and terribly small (and possibly quite inadquate in its time) lighthouse. Gold. Why not hang your washing out on the lighthouse.

Then we went on to our #1 destination.

 

Ile Sainte-Marie is part of Madagascar's 'Pirate Coast' (also known better as the Vanilla Coast) and it is said that there was much pirate activity here in the past, with many buried here in this picturesque location. Despite the stories of our guide, who was quite indignant at having to be our guide after we turned up, paid for a guide but none materialised!, there is no evidence that any of the stories are true, nor that any of the graves actually did belong to pirates.

I was happy to believe that they do, though. Especially the grave with the skull and crossbones on it, the grave apparently belonging to William Kidd, and the female pirate's grave, my favourite. Not only were the pirates Malagasy, but French and English pirates also got in on the act, and some of them even pilfered local people to sell as slaves, or to take as wives (though the latter never did the former crime!).

 

Funnily enough there was a long, steel 'gangplank' whose rusted, narrow length had to be navigated before reaching the actual cemetery, from where we could also see the 'pirate island' where they used to hide out after docking their boats. Arrrr!

We also checked out the cemetery for normal people, at the rear of the Catholic church, with its interesting Muslim and chinese sections (where evyerone is named Chang Khan) before heading off on a long, bumpy, circuitous ride across to hte eastern side of the island, passing through small villages, stopping off for yummy cold yoghurt to cool us down. This road definitely wasn't cut out for bicycles. Luckily - and first time for everything - our bikes were good quality, with working brakes AND gears. Woah! It made it easy to conquer the hilly ride home, which was tough after a long day's riding, but even tougher in the dark with no lights... neither on the bikes themselves or on the street. We managed to make it back without riding into any ditches. Nice one.