Sleep in! Our big adventure today was getting back to Tana. Normally we try and add something in but with a middle of the day flight out of Morondava and a ridiculously early start tomorrow, we decided to just make it simple.
We had a leisurely breakfast, sat by the pool and then checked out at 11. As a reminder here is the pool in Morondava. Nice as the others have been. It was actually one of two pools. Cote de Pallisandre was incredible. Nice wind off the beach to keep things cool and wonderful staff.
We had one last ride with Miffy to the airport. We wanted to stop at a post office for a particular postage stamp. There is a national post office on our way. No stamp here though. We will again when back in Tana. Then a quick drop into a Pharmacia for some more bug spray. Our huge 25% deet bottle is getting a little more empty than we are comfortable with. Three brands to choose from and it took 30 seconds. 15 minutes later we said good bye to Miffy. He was a great driver and good ambassador for his country.
The Morondava airport gets 4 flights per day. So not a huge airport. However there was a place to shop for touristy trinkets (we didn’t) and a restaurant for lunch. With two hours to kill and it being noon, we had lunch. A grilled 1/2 chicken, some fries 2 cokes and it was 33 000 MGA or $12 CAD. Try that at Swiss Chalet for $12.
We had a similar plane back, another ATR 72. It was close to 40º in the plane and more so on the apron to walk out to it. The air vents were ‘working’ but only sort of – ours was only the gentlest of breezes. So the start of the flight was a little rough. However we made it just fine and Tana was a lovely 24º. Carl our driver from ‘Part One’ met us with big smiles on both sides. He told us he was scared his first time climbing the Grand Tsingy. So much for a tough guy persona – we get the impression Carl may be ex-army. He was only slightly more chatty than previously on the way to the hotel. It is the same Relais as before for a quick overnight stay. We are up at 4am to head up to Nosy Be (not sure why our 0800 flight got changed to 0600?). So it was a quick relax by yet another nice pool. Or at least that was the original plan.
Said pool at the Relais.
However, somehow we’d used up a lot of our bandwidth again. Dave now being an expert at how to buy, headed out to the street where there were several Orange kiosks. The first guy didn’t actually do that even though his store was just painted orange and he had and Orange sign??? The second guy only sold credit coupons in 1000 MGA increments. We need 110 000 MGA. No way we were entering 110 14 digit codes manually! By the third try Dave was in luck. The guy had to phone his boss to get approval but we got it done. So now when we exhaust the last of our current data, we have enough credit to immediately buy more. The Relais does have nice fast internet in the room so we won’t burn anymore until we hit Nosy Be. With that done it was time for Dave to meet Kris at the pool for some rum and relaxation.
Then dinner and early to sleep. 4am will come very early!