Early day today. We had to be in the auditorium by 6:45 and our tour to two different islands was the first to leave as it was a 7 hour tour. The tender pier only had room for one tender boat at a time and by the time we returned in the afternoon, the crew figured out that they could tie 2 tender boats together side by side and we would walk though one to board the other (Amazon river style).
When we got to the pier, the exit was sketchy at best. Nobody with mobility issues would have been able to navigate this exit. They had steps set up on a floating catwalk with a piece of plywood on top of the stairs to match the height of the exit on the tender. Behind the stairs on the pier side a net had been attached so if anyone lost their balance they would fall into the net and not the water. I’m kicking myself for not getting a picture.
There were 17 different boats for this tour with approximately 14 on each boat. Loading looked like organized chaos with a skinny sidewalk that was next to a boat ramp and allowed two boats to load at the same time, one on each side. Problem was the sidewalk only allowed one person wide. You had to climb on to the front part of the boat and deal with the wave action moving the boat up and down. There were a lot of people that were having problems navigating. To compound the issue, it appeared “unofficial” ferries, were loading up people, suitcases and other stuff in the same area.
Once onboard, everyone was required to put on an orange life jacket.
Our first stop was to Nosy Komba (Island of Lemurs). We had a wet landing and then walked through a small fishing village. They didn’t have any electricity on the island but they did have solar panels. We walked on a roughly paved granite walkway that was lined on both sides by locals selling tshirts, fabric art, paintings, wood carvings …. Tourist stuff. We were asked to hold off shopping until after the Lemur tour was completed but the people in the tour group ahead of us didn’t appear to have received the same information or chose to ignore it.
Today was turning into another hot day. We were climbing higher and getting away from the breeze that comes off the water. It wasn’t long before the first Lemurs were spotted. To clarify, these Lemurs were not penned up, they were in the wild. In this group were black (male) and brown (female) lemurs. They were not the ring tailed lemurs (Pat and Cyndi got to see those on Nosy Be).
We passed the shopping group (lol) and headed around the corning where our guide “called” the lemurs in. They got on a tree and he turned his back to them, put a piece of banana in his hand and then the lemurs jumped on his shoulders and helped themselves to the bananas. We were all invited to participate in the photo op. They really had a light touch, got their treat and hoped back into the tree and waited for the next tourist. While others were taking their pictures with the 2 males, a female came down the tree close to me and I held out my hand. She happily licked the banana juice off my hand while I took her picture.
We also saw a tortoise, a boa constrictor, a geiko, a chameleon, another snake and some scrawny looking chicken like birds.
After we finished our lemur tour we headed back through the shopping stalls and the selling came on hard. If you dared look or touch something they were all over you. We did end up with a few souvenirs and then parked our butts at a local watering hole close to the beach and for the cost of 2 bottles of water got to wait in the shade with a cool beverage.
From here we continued on to Nosy Tanikely where we got to snorkel and they had lunch set up on the beach. We did not participate in the lunch and instead spent the majority of the two hours in the water snorkeling.
The snorkeling was wonderful once we got past the snorkelers who think treading water is snorkeling, the swimmers and those that were just standing in the water. Not much fish here compared to Zanzibar but the coral was amazing, unlike most marine reserves that we’ve visited before. We saw clams and a few new fish and one lone anemone. Others in our group saw 2 large turtles and try as hard as I could, I wasn’t able to locate them. Note: underwater pics will post later.
Spending two hours in the water, in the hot sun, is very tiring. We boarded the boat, put our lifejackets back on and headed back to Nosy Be, very happy with our last snorkeling experience of the trip.
When we got back to the boat ramp it was once again total pandemonium. All 17 tour boats were trying to offload passengers at the same time at the same place as we loaded. Plus there was an old loud floating barge like boat that had a van on it that was landing at the boat ramp. Just reverse the loading up from this morning … wave action, small and narrow sidewalk … some of the people were actually crawling off the boats!
Since we were the last tour in, it was a rush at the pier to get loaded on the tenders and back to the ship.
Now, we’ve been out ALL day, we are hot, wet, sticky from the salt water and probably a little bit sunburned … and they have been working on the water on our floor and we don’t have a working shower when we get back on board. We called guest services and told them the situation and they gave us access to an empty guest room where we could shower. Let me tell you, it was a really good feeling to be cooled off and clean.
