Friday 21 December 2007

The port of Tamatave (Bateau Ivre)

Its great to have made it to Tamatave.  It is the largest port in Madagascar and our last major resupply point for a while.  It also signifies the start of the long sandy straight beach all the way to the south.  We fortunatly have a reasonable forecast to get us started tommorrow.  The past few weekes have taken us to some amazing remote parts of rural Madagascar.  We have stopped in villages where they dont see tourists and dont speak french.  The Coast has been diverse with coral reefs, sandy beaches, crossings and cliffy headlands.  Behind it all has been a constant headwind that has finally decided to turn into a tail wind to help push us on our way.  Lets hope it stays. 
We have been able to update the site with photos due to the kindness of the owner of the resteraunt Le Bateau Ivre.  He has let us keep the kayaks under the resteraunt to save us carrying them into our hotel room in town!  We passed our first bouy today and proberbly our last.  We shopped for the festive period today and bought an extra tin of raviolli and 6 ferrero rochee (excuse spelling).
Thanks to Jeff for his hard work on the updates and to Karel for his excelent forecasts, keep the northerly winds coming.
Happy Christmas Simon and Phil
 

4 comments:

derrick said...

just poppin in to say Happy Christmas!!! Good thing you have those festive green kayaks. LOL!!

Iceland Circumnavigation said...

Hey Phil and Simon,

greetings from Brooklyn, happy X-Mas and strong tailwinds to you! All the best of luck, the trip looks amazing!

Marcus

Bubbly, Lydia, and Sinka said...

cooool pictures

Allan Mackie said...

Great website, brave project. I lived on the island of Madagascar for more than 10 years up to 2002-you will no doubt be well aware that from now until March is the annual cyclone season went something like 20 to 30 cyclones of varying degrees of strength come racing across the Indian Ocean slamming into the east coast of Madagascar and across the island. They can cause serious damage and loss of life. Please be careful.
Allan Mackie (you may, or may not, remember training my son James (Jim or Jimmy ) in Cornwall a few months ago.