Taxi!

We’d booked accommodation and a taxi from the airport to the place.
The taxi was not there. Luckily, a few other taxis were and we collared one to take us to our digs.
He offered to take us via The ATM (more on that later) and we gratefully accepted, having only Euros on us at the time.
We arrived at (a very dark, asleep-looking) Sambatra at about half past two in the morning.
Eep!
Despite not sharing a common language, we managed to convince the nightwatchman of, um, something, and he went off, got a key, and led us to a room.
There was stuff in it.
Like clothes. And toiletries. And a TV. And a laptop.
But it was late, after a long day of travelling, and there was a bed. So we showered and collapsed onto it.
The next morning we were woken by the cleaning lady, and moved to the room we were supposed to be in.
We still don’t know quite what happened.

First!

The beach and surrounds were lovely.

Aaand relax.

We mostly took it quite easy.

Action!

We did do one or two touristy things, though. Biking of the Quad variety:

and, um, watching guys pull boats:

Language, Food

The locals speak Malagasy and French. Almost no-one speaks English. Not even the hotel staff, which was a little unexpected.
The majority of tourists there are French, with a big wodge of Italians, but very few of anything else.
Luckily, Jo’s French (and mine to a much lesser extent) was not too rusty, so communication was not a problem. Especially with food .
The food in restaurants was by and large French. Very French. And very tasty.
We ate often, and a lot. I’m surprised any of my clothes still fit.

Money

This was more… interesting than expected.
We found one shop with a credit card machine in. Not even the giant hotel resort thingies (which we avoided) had card machines.It was cash all the way.
There are three ATMS on the island, all in Hellville, the capital. Which was an R80 taxi ride away. So, we would go and stock up on cash when we needed to.
The denominations are big numbers (5,000, 10,000), but stuff costs big numbers – 15,000 for a main course kind of thing. So the physical amounts of cash were large, resulting in scenes like this:

Sunsets

Were amazing, almost every day. It would have been easy to take a bajillion photos and post them all.
Instead, have this threesome:

Bonus photos of Jo

Ill

We spent a few days at Sambatra, then moved to the “busy” beach Ambatoloaka, where we proceed to take turns being feverish and ill for four days.
And that was the end of the first week .

I got asked to do some corporate headshots for a web site.
It was quite fun actually. Not so much the photo part, but the chatting and messing around part.

[Skip to the end if you just want the "what I thought of JHB" part...]

Friday

We picked cheap accommodation near to Friday’s wedding, which was great in terms of the (lack of) driving.
The B&B was… interesting. I think it was set up in the 70s and tricked out big style, and looked great.
Since then, though, all they’ve done is clean it every day.
It wasn’t awful, but it was very basic and very old school, and we were looking for somewhere just to sleep, and that was cheap.

The friday wedding was at the very posh Avianto and was great.
It was a nice, smallish, wedding and we met some very cool people.
Alas, the travelling and early wake-up took its toll, and about an hour into the boogie part of the festivities we had to roll home and collapse into bed for sleeeeeep.
Some pictures from Friday’s wedding on Flickr.

Saturday

We decided to asplore a bit and we tripped off to Melville.
It was lovely.
We walked around and looked in a bookshop and had a nice breakfast.
It was leafy and green and sort of Obs-y.
And, what a coincidence, Outer Li JHB is there!
We managed to collar Grant for a coffee and a chat, which was very groovy, as is he.

Then we headed off for the second wedding, a more traditional affair, in Soweto.
This one was more even fun than the Friday.
There was a big mix of people, but we were the only whiteys.
We had a couple of especially cool interactions with the kids, who were surprised / happy / interested to see a white face.
Reminded me a lot of travelling, actually.
My closest frame of reference for the Africanness of the wedding (me being from the UK) is what I can only call Bollywood Extravaganza.
Loads of singing and dancing,by everyone. Full of Win.
Some pictures from Saturday’s wedding on Flickr.

We left as the sun came down, determined not to get lost in Soweto in the dark, which we didn’t.
We did get lost outside Soweto in the dark, though, and spent an hour or so getting through and out of inner city-ish Joburg. Squeak!

For din dins we went to the very posh, very deep into the dark farmlands, Roots restaurant.
Pricey. Excellent, but not amazing. One or two of the six courses blew my socks off (salmon tataki was one), the others were merely good (but still better than most places). Service was also good, but, to be honest, I was expecting better for the price / vibe. Not that they were incompetent, but the overall experience wasn’t particularly smooth, especially the timing – too inconsistent.

Sunday

We decided not to do any touristy things and just to crash the hell out. We were tired!
So went out in the morning, bought a DVD or two to watch later, some wood and food for a braai, then spent the rest of the day in big comfy chairs under a big tree reading big books.
It was big awesome.

Some observations of JHB by me

• Driving. A faster, more concentrate-y, affair than driving in CT, but I kinda liked it. If you’re trying to join the flow of traffic, GP drivers (hmm, coincidence?) give you a gap. You have to be quick, but they do leave you a gap. Also: the onus is on the faster driver to get past the slower, not for the slower to get out of the way. No flashing, honking, get-out-of-the-way bullshit. Just zooming past when there’s a gap.
• Dark. Where are the streetlights on the highways, dammit? And on the signs? And why has the useful reflect-y stuff that has worn out not been replaced? Grr.
• Dry. Probably just me, but I felt dry. Often thirsty, eyes watery.
• Big. Like, totally. Srsly. It takes aaages to get anyway because the distances are so beeg. And I’m not one of these Capetonians* who won’t drive into town from the Southern Suburbs because it’s “far away.”
• Secure. Well, tries to be anyway. funny how just a metre difference in everyone’s wall height (well, often plus electric buzz lines) makes such a difference to the vibe.
• Professional. I’m thinking mostly of waiting staff here, but it was true of other sectors too. The staff are professional. I’m not wanting a waiter totreat me like I’m the Prince of Persia (ahem) of something, but the waiter should have a certain level of respect for the customer, and for themselves and their job. No throwing down of plates or splooshing of beer as the glasses hit the table here. I thoroughly enjoyed being serviced in Jo’burg.**
• Foody. The food there was consistently good, but pricier than CT. CT still better.
• Expensive. In general. I’m sure that part of this is not being a local, but there didn’t seem to be much to do that didn’t invovle handing over large wodges of money. What can you do up there that’s similar to going for a walk in Newlands?

So, I might go back.
If I do I’d like to do so with a native guide.

I’m definitely a Cape Town guy, though.

* – by the way, I am now officially a Permanent Rresident – woot! Picking up the bit of paper was a bit of an anti-climax after all the kak I went through to get it…
** – erm…

Jeremy, pig-wrangler and all round awesome guy.

Gratuitous Hobbit shot:

Eckhard up his tree:

Eckhard out of his tree (ahem):

Huddling around the piggy:

The hordes descend…

There were many, many, people (50ish, including 10 younglings), and lots of them spent lots of time in the pool.
It was awesome.

Presented below are a few blurry, incoherent, but happy-inducing photos.
:-]

Had a lovely time, but had a little bit of a headache on Sunday morning. Ahem.
We went with friends of Parfait’s from work, mainly to go their favourite restaurant: Mariana’s.
The food was (as advertised) fantastic. Highly recommended if you’re prepared to do the drive or if you’re in the area. Book, though!

(thumb links to beeeeeg version)

By me:

By Parfles: