Birthday Week at Anjiamarango Beach Resort - Nosy Be

After 6 luxurious and relaxing nights at Anjiamarango Beach Resort, it’s finally time to fly off from Nosy Be and head back to Antananarivo. Tomorrow will be my last day in Madagascar, and I’ll hopefully be going to a national park and seeing some more lemurs, and then the day after I’ll be flying back to Johannesburg. I’ll see have a bit over a month until university starts again to continue travelling around southern Africa – next stop: Swaziland.

Heading to Nosy Be and staying at a resort was what I thought I needed for my birthday week. A week of being able to lounge around not doing anything and not having to do touristic activities everyday. And a week where I get my own bungalow and don’t have to share a bathroom with anyone else! I chose Anjiamarango Beach Resort because TripAdvisor was offering a deal for only $55 a night which seemed reasonable to me – I’ve been paying about $10aud everywhere else anyways. I later looked at their website and they were advertising the bungalows at 55 euros per night ($78aud), so I think I did pretty well.

My week was very relaxing and pleasant, with most days spent at the pool swimming and reading, and that one time I went to a few other islands and went snorkelling. While I didn’t venture that far away from the resort, after a quick glimpse of Hellville the other day, I don’t think I would have liked it. A bit too touristy and busy. Here it has been very quiet with very few other people being seen (which is good because I was sick of getting stared at in Antananarivo and Morondava). The staff were pretty friendly, although there was a bit of a language barrier with the staff speaking French, but very few speaking English.

One of the weirdest pizzas (and the worst as well actually) I've ever had ... it had carrot and beans on it???

Everyday someone would come up to me asking what I wanted for lunch and dinner (breakfast was buffet style), and I was generally able to et food specific to my dietary requirements. Their menu wasn’t very veg-friendly though, and I ate a lot of spaghetti (also the food was a bit bland and needed salt … was this a Malagasy thing or some French thing?? Can’t say). On my last night, the night of my 21^st birthday, I was very surprised when I was given a chocolate cake for dessert. I hadn’t told anyone it was my birthday, but they knew because they had taken a copy of my passport. I was very touched by the gesture and found it to be very sweet. The cake was also egg free, but definitely had dairy in it. I ate a slice anyways as it would have been rude not too, and it made me feel a bit ill afterwards, but I still thought it was a very nice gesture. … Until I got my bill and found out they had charged me 20,000 ariary ($8aud) for it – a cake that I hadn’t asked for! To be honest I would have just been satisfied with fresh fruit, what I had been having every other night. It was bit cheeky.

All in all though, I’ve had a nice stay in Nosy Be, I’m now a bit sunburnt and not as white as I was week ago, and I feel very refreshed. I’m not particularly good at planning trips when there is a end day (ie. my return ticket back to South Africa) so I could probably have used my time in Madagascar bit more wisely, but I’ve been to the beach and snorkelled, seen lemurs and all the other animals the country has to offer, and off course been to the iconic baobab trees. I was also limited being in the rainy season as some roads are closed and you can’t visit some of the attractions (I wanted to go and see the Tsingy).

Back to Tana now!