After spending the past 3 days doing literally nothing except swimming in the pool, reading, eating and sleeping, it was time to get out and actually do something in Nosy Be. Staying at this resort is super nice, but isn’t making me particularly adventurous when it is just so easy and comfortable to stay where you are (plus when the days are so hot and the pool is so cool).
So, I
embarked on a trip to Nosy Komba and Nosy Tanikely, two islands on the other
side of the island. My day started with the buffet breakfast (fresh fruit and
crepes), before I was driven to Hell-ville, the main city on Nosy Be. It took
an hour to get there, and I hadn’t realised quite how far from the town we
were. We reached at about 8:30am, and after waiting for a few more tourists to
arrive (all of whom spoke French), we got onto the Sante Marie and sped away to
Nosy Komba. All the other tourists were French speaking, and didn’t speak much
English, so the guide would speak to them and then repeat what was said to me
in English. I later found out that a lot of the other tourists were from
Reunion Island (I had presumed they were all from France). We arrived at Nosy Komba, a small island and one of the most touristic places I've seen in Madagascar.
Honestly I wish I had skipped this island all together. In the pamphlet it had said we were going to a reserve where we would see lemurs as well as lizards, chameleons and snakes. In my mind I was picturing the Kirindy Forest all over again, but this was much more like a zoo. I was split into a group with two French speaking ladies, one of whom was smoking the whole tour (the other was vaping), which didn’t really add to my experience. We started by looking for lemurs, and after the guide made some funny noises, we managed to find a few in a tree. Our guide mashed up a banana and then managed to call the lemurs down from the tree to the eat. I was a bit uneasy about this as I have been trying to avoid most animal related activities, particularly ones where humans interact with them, however after encouragement from the others, the guide directed me to stand under the tree, hold out my hand, on which he put the banana, and then the lemur climbed down and sat on my shoulder. While I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the whole experience (is this using animals for exploitation? Would the lemurs be better off if humans didn't come and feed them bananas for pictures?), the lemurs were wild and not captive, and they did seem to enjoy the bananas. In all honesty though it's not something I would want to do again (nor was it actually something I ever wanted to do), and I wasn't really able to get an answer from the guide about how the 'reserve' worked (his English wasn't that great and he didn't really know what I was asking).
The whole experience felt very inauthentic, and while I got some cool pics of the lemurs on my shoulders and eating from the palm of my hand, it really has nothing on being out in the Kirindy forest with the family of red-fronted lemurs.
After that, the tour just got worse. It was then I realised that although it didn’t look like the stereotypical zoo with tall fences, and while lemurs may have been free to jump around, the turtles and snakes were fenced in with stone walls. We went and found the very large tortoise (turtle?) Caroline, of which the guide then proceeded to pick up, hold in the air, and bring closer to us … I couldn’t imagine Caroline enjoying being man-handled like that at all. This happened with all the following animals we saw, the chameleon look petrified on the stick it had been placed on, one of the turtles fell from a ledge it had been placed on (I guess that’s what it’s shell is for?) and the snake was in a defensive position as soon as it had been placed back down again. It really wasn’t ideal and I wanted to leave asap. If I had of known this is what the reserve was I probably would have avoided the Nosy Komba portion of the tour all together (and saved 30 euro).
Once we
left Nosy Komba things got better though, and we got on the boat to Nosy
Tanikely, another island. This island was a national park though and was quite
beautiful. The sand was white (and ridiculously hot) and the water clear and
blue – perfect for snorkelling! We had a Malagasy lunch on the beach (a lot of
coconut rice for me) and then we got to hop into the water. The snorkelling was
very good, lots of colourful little fish, some nice looking coral, and apparently
a turtle (which I missed unfortunately). It was fun swimming around there for
an hour or so, the water was super clear, - certainly the highlight
of the Nosy Be portion of my trip.
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