Life’s a beach

There was quite a storm in the night, not long after we went to bed, with sheet lightening and torrential rain. I sat up to watch, enjoying being in a nice dry tent. But I still woke up early, as did Chris, but we dozed a bit before getting up. Breakfast consisted of fresh fruit, pastries and a menu of additional items. I chose the pancakes, which were good but served almost cold.

We had no plans for the day before a nocturnal walk we’d booked for this evening with the lodge’s guide, so had a leisurely day. After breakfast we took a short walk to the fishing village just along the beach, from where many of the hotel employees come.

Chris continued to the end of the beach but I walked back along the waterline, enjoying the cool water on my feet and taking photos.

During the morning I had a couple of dips in the sea, broken up with a visit to the main building for a cold drink and to get online. The WiFi was frustratingly slow today however, unlike yesterday. We had lunch there too and split our afternoon between our beach loungers, terrace and the main area. The guide found us in the latter spot to tell us the night walk had to be postponed as he had to do something else- we suspected we’d been bumped for other guests! But we were able to rearrange for later in our stay.

Late afternoon we had a stroll in the area behind the tents, where the staff accommodation is located, as I’d overheard some other guests staying there were lemurs there. Sure enough we found them, high in the mango trees enjoying the fruit.

There was a rather spectacular sunset with clouds building dramatically over Nosy Be, so we walked along the beach to take photos before freshening up for the evening.

We went for pre-dinner drinks and were again rather frustrated by the guide who described our planned outing for tomorrow in more detail. It emerged we needed sandals for a wet landing among the mangroves, whereas we’d assumed we'd be landing at some sort of village jetty. So we cancelled in favour of a trip to Nosy Be, but that would have to wait till Monday. Meanwhile we could, fingers crossed, do the night walk tomorrow instead. Let’s see, we said to each other ...

When we left the restaurant there were a few spots of rain and again lots of sheet lightening. We hurried back to our tent before it could get worse. There we sat out on the terrace for a while as it was still hot in the tent and were pleased to discover we could connect intermittently to the WiFi despite being three tents away from the main area, and to follow the score in Newcastle’s match against Arsenal. We were even more pleased when Newcastle secured a significant victory over a team that had so far been unbeaten this season!