We've reached paradise!

Well, we made it! Here we are in paradise! It'd been a long arduous journey, seeing unimaginable poverty along the way.

We were staying three nights at the beach before flying back to Antananarivo where we begun our journey. I'm so glad I picked this tour. Some of the others flew from one destination to another but going by bus you do get to see more of the country. We were told that the people from the south were much more aggressive that the north as they had a harder life. Nothing grows here except for fruit, the main diet seems to be prickly pear cactus fruit and the fruit of the Baobab tree along with the odd zebu or chicken. If you saw their chickens you wouldn't want to eat them, I took a photo of one which I'll show you later, poor thing was almost dead on it's feet with very tatty plumage and so skinny with his head hung down to the ground. Poultry like a water supply and I think this one was dehydrated.

On with the beach photos; if you look closely on the horizon you'll see a line of white waves. This is where the water hits the barrier reef, Madagascar has the second largest barrier reef in the world after Australia. It's supposedly far more beautiful than it's Australian counterpart.

I could have stayed here quite happily forever! It seemed so restful even though there were lots of people in the water hunting for crabs and fishing. Life is always busy for these people, they have to grow or catch everything they eat.

This one I took from outside of my chalet.


Boats ready to go fishing.

This was taken from outside the restaurant at our hotel.


This little sand lizard was on the beach too.

It was certainly worth the long drive to get here!

The sea was a perfect blue, the sky too.

One of the chalets from our complex, I wish you'd all been here with me!

The sea seemed to change colour to make it even more perfect than it was!

I love old driftwood. This tree trunk had been bleached from laying on the beach for so long. I wish I could've brought it home for you Jan! Lol!

These were our beach chalets all along the shore, an idyllic place to stay.


It even looked pretty in the dark! I took this at sunrise on the second day. We got up at 3.30am to go out and watch the birds wake up! Yeah, I know it's sad! We had to actually wait for over an hour ~ it was Sunday and I think the birds were having a lie in! Lol!


On our return from the walk we sat in the restaurant watching the boats getting ready for the day ahead and this little magpie robin came and sat on the handrail watching too! They're cute little birds the size of a thrush.

This was my beach chalet, home for three nights. I liked sitting on the balcony watching the sea.This is the upstairs of the chalet with a mosquito net above the bed. I liked those mosquito burners beside the bed ~ we really needed them here as there was a 5" gap between the upstairs and downstairs walls! I only got two bites but they didn't really bother me.

A spiny tailed iguanid who shared my room. Carol, one of the others who I befriended had a brown mouse lemur sharing her room! Luckily nobody had a snake in their room, the only one we saw was a boa constrictor in the restaurant on the first night. I didn't have my camera as we were only there to eat dinner! It's not the sort of thing you expect to see while you're eating is it?!

This is the downstairs bedroom, I really liked this place!


The living area and stairs to the upper bedroom. It was odd going up the stairs with no handrail; I used to press myself against the wall when I went up there!

I hope you liked the beach photos, it was like paradise wasn't it?! I wish we'd had a week there to recuperate from the tour. I haven't added all the photos and I still have a lot of the Spiny Forest where we went to see the birds the next day plus some sunset photos taken from the beach. I've got a video of the sea and as soon as I can remember how to upload it onto YouTube I will! It's not like ordinary videos, these ones upload straight from the camcorder to YouTube, I did one before I went away so I'm sure I'll remember how to do it when I get started!

Have a good week!