Tue, Aug 20, Flying to Majunga

Reticulated Tortoise - Hotel resident

This morning had a relaxing start as we were to have our suitcases outside by 9:15 and leave at 10. 

Bob birding with the hotel's pet rabbit!

We had breakfast and settled in to rearrange our luggage.  There was some confusion as to Air Mad’s regulations on amount of luggage.  Since we are returning to this hotel several times as we fly in and out of Tana, we considered leaving a suitcase behind as we were told we could only check one bag per person.  0n the other hand, it seemed to make better sense to pay for excess luggage as we had brought all our gear with the intention of using it rather than leaving it in a hotel storage room!

Fano’s solution was to plastic wrap our extra bag with David’s tripod and his day pack into one piece of luggage.  We took off to the airport and managed to get everything checked in.  My personal pack was too heavy, but David rushed me past the objecting official which seemed to work!   We settled into seats to wait for our 1 PM flight to the NW coast.  We had some beer and looked at each other’s photos, until suddenly we were off and dashing to the  gate, and walking quite a ways to the 68-seat 2-engine turbo prop sitting on the tarmac.   We took off and had a comfortable ride north, over undulating grasslands with bits of forest.  The latest theory is that this was always mostly grassland and not completely covered with forest that disappeared with the arrival of humans.

We flew over a large river delta into the town of Majunga, a trading post since 1745, and now populated by immigrants originally from India, and landed around 2 PM.  Our driver, Tuvo, had driven up from Tana to transport us into town and on to our next destination. 

Our room at the fancy Baobab Hotel

Street scene in Majunga

We checked into the quite fancy ocean-side hotel, the Baobab Tree, dumped our luggage in Room 301 (no elevators!) and returned to the van.  Fano stopped at a grocery store to pick up oranges, cookies, chocolate, and yogurt drink to hold us until dinner.  We drove to another private reserve consisting of a lake and surrounding marsh. 

Lineated Day Gecko

We saw more egrets and herons along with Madagascar Bee-eaters (similar to enormous hummingbirds) and the black and white Pied Crow.  David pointed out a bright green Lineated Day Gecko (12" long)clinging to a tree trunk.

Light was beginning to fade by then, so we headed back to the Baobab Tree.  I grabbed a shower and washed my hair as our next three nights will be spent in a more primitive hostel,  and thought I ‘d better take advantage of the rare hair dryer!

Hotel bar

My delicious Malagasy chicken

We got together for dinner:  I had Malagasy chicken with rice and a ginger slaw, beer and local white wine.

 There is excellent wifi here which we won’t encounter again for a while.