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The Blue Ventured experience was more or less totally what I hoped it would be in all the best ways without actually being able to envisage what it would actually be like and what it would involve. So something close to 25 of us were loaded onto the camion and we all said farewell to technology, food of any complexity and rolled out of Tulear at 11pm bound for the site at Andavadoaka. We were told to expect a trip from about 20-36 hours conditions dependent, but after a few minor incidents of getting stuck in the sand we managed to pull in in time to experience our first Andavadoaka sunset, around 6pm! A sprint to the sea ensued - never mind the onloading - and we just caught the sun going down while floating in the Mozambiue Channel. Good start!
Loved the diving - thank god! Actually must say I really think it is fantastic. Have done about 35 dives now, as we normally got 1 a day and sometimes 2 which was great when it all to rarely happened. To become fully "science trained" involved learning all the different types of coral types and how to recognise them underwater and then about 180 different fish - 28 different families in total (All the mombasa crew will be deligted to know i managed it in the end!!!) It was pretty hard I must say but I am delighted as it now means that when underwater I can actually recognise the different fish types and know each ones role within the reef. It really is an amazing eco system, and it is pretty alarming to know the facts abnut them, the most worrying one being that if things continue as is, and unless the coral manages to adapt as well to live at higher sea temperatures, in twenty years they will be no more.
Which leads me on to what Blue Ventures are doing here - and I must say it is really pretty cool, and has been really reassuring to know that I didn't pick one of those rip off "charities" that makes volunteers pay a fortune to "save the world"!!! They are making a tangible difference to the lives of the people out here and are genuinely trying their best to create a sustainable environment where the local people can fish enough to feed their family, sell some fish and not destroy the reef and moreover ensure that there is enough food for 2mrw....They work hand in hand with the community and everything that happens, happens with everyone;s backing.
In terms of day to day life, things were pretty relaxing. There are dive slots at 6am, 9am and 11am, so, with our hut being right beside the kitting up area, or because at least one of us is diving at 6, more often than not I was up around 530 or so! Weird how used to that one becomes I must say, but inevitably with such an early rise bed was calling my name loudly at about 9am! Breakfast was at 8 and consisted of a RICE type porridge and more often than not stale bread and on occasion (highlight!) scrambled eggs! After the last dive at 11am we ate lunch at 1330 or so and then the afternoon is spent in numerous different ways. For the first while a lot of it has been spent revising all the stuff mentioned above and getting lectures on the whole operation out here. Other than that it is spent more or less at leisure - reading, siestaing (if that isn't a word it should be), chilling out or whatever.
On some days there are other things on, for example, a load of us taught English to the kids in the local missionary school once a week. Somehow or another the Paddy, the Geordie and the Yank got roped into teaching the oldest kids - who have something of a grasp of English, I must say I feel quite sorry for them, as if i my accent is strong, James' (the Geordie) is twice as strong!!! I think that by the time we had finished they had a rather different "grasp" of the language!! There were lots of other mini projects going on, which are cool to be involved in too, such as one I was doing to try and promote the local tour guides for when the (very) odd tourist rolls into town!
Trip wise I have also had a few pretty cool ones. The first one involved getting a Zebu cart (think horse and cart only replace horse with diarrhea laden cow type device) for a few hours along more dirt track until we arrived at a bay of which the village that was our destination was at the other side. Queue a 2 hr wait for the tide to go "out" before proceeding across to depths well beyond the height of the cart that resulted in an aqua-Zebu cart! Thankfully we managed to keep our electronics (i.e. cameras) safe but everything else got well and truly drenched! The reason we were heading over there was to witness a ceremony to unveil the first place in Madagascar to ever declare one of their beaches a reserve for turtle hatching, after one did so there last April. The village in question are doing it totally of their own bat which is really exciting as they have historically hunted turtles for their meat and eggs. We spent the night here sleeping in the Nahooda's (village chief) porch before returning by Pirogue (much better) the next morning!
The other trip of note was even more surreal, if possible. Another little project BV have is trying to arrange for alternative ways to traditional fishing to survive and one idea in its infancy here is that of sea cucumber farming. It turns out that sea cucumbers - basically an underwater invertebrate - are a pretty massive aphrodisiac in China (what isn't??) so instead of the local people exploring and often damaging the reef to find them the idea is to farm them instead by setting up pens and ensuring the ones they buy stay healthy and don't get eaten by crabs etc or stolen by people. Anyway, about 2 weeks into the expedition the first batch arrived to the village in question, some 2 hours away by pirogue. Our job was to count them and see how they were progressing, Problem - they burrow into sand during the day and only come out at night! So we had to snorkel around with a torch in a pen measuring 12 x 12 m in about 50cm of water in 30cm visibility when the tide is out and try and find all 300 of them in each pen at midnight!!! Not as easy as it sounds! Unfortunately there were more than just sea cucumbers in the pens - along with a few unidentified species of sea slug (aliens according to our resident marine scientist Romney), a few cow fish, mating crabs, crocodile fish, eels and many others that gave a few of us more than a mild scare when reaching down into the unknown...As i said, surreal.......A few nights spent on the beach by a camp fire - with maybe a few rums (oh yeah by the way forget spiced rum, vanilla rum is the new thing) - were only blighted by an onslaught of sand flies that just loved sweet Nordy blood.....
Other events that stand out so far are doing a night dive - at 4am - which was simply awesome. Every pirogue (local sailing boat) trip has been brilliant - but more of that in the next blog...-Another highlight has been a visit to one of the local hotels for lunch. Yes the food is that, well not bad, but bland! I am not lying to you when i say that we have rice or breakfast, lunch and dinner - without fail. If i wasn't heading to SE Asia after here, and especially following Uganda I would safely say that I would not eat rice for a year! The fish, when we get it unfortunately, is really good and on occasion we got spoiled with Squid which i love. More often than not though it was rice, beans, and not much else! Roll on SE Asia for the variety!!!
And then just like that expedition 41 was over and so it was time to decide to do what next. I had the day before leaving for the expedition just booked my flight to Bangkok for the 17th November to give myself 10 days to see something more of the country. The camion was a free ride back to Tulear but there seemed little point in going back that direction when there was a wealth of things to see and do about 200knorth. Problem though, with virtually no roads how do you get there. Solution: Eh,the sea of course........
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