Madagascar: Nosy Be

Saturday, April 15, 2023, Nosy Be, Madagascar

We were signed up for a ship tour on the island of Nosy Be, Madagascar’s largest and busiest tourist resort. The ship arrived at 10 am, the time our tour was supposed to start. It took awhile for the local authorities to ok us to disembark.  We had to take the tender in to Helle-ville (that’s the real name of the town—they tried to change it but the locals continued calling it Helle-ville), so we probably left closer to 11 am. 

That meant we were making up time all day, and didn’t have time to shop at our first stop, the local market in Helle-ville. We had to follow the tour guide as he quickly walked through, not our favorite pace when shopping.

Nosy Be was different than other places we’d been. For one thing, in the middle of the chaotic traffic there was the occasional ox cart. The oxen seemed to be used to it. And there were the 3-wheeled motorcycle taxis everywhere. They're supposed to be fun, however we missed out on riding one.

Oxcart in the middle of traffic

Tuk tuk taxis cabs

After rushing through the market our bus headed on to the ylang ylang plantation. I used to sell fragrance at Nordstrom and ylang ylang is one of my favorite perfume ingredients—I was looking forward to this. Because we were running late, this part of the tour consisted of the bus stopping by the side of the road, the guide jumping out and grabbing some handfuls of blossoms from the trees, jumping back on the bus and handing them out to us. 

Ylang ylang orchard. This is as close as we got.

We saw a lot of these stick structures

Next stop was Northwestern Nosy Be’s highest point, Mont Passat. The bus drove most of the way, and we hiked the final part. We spent too much time here, but there were some vendor shacks up there. I liked the women vendors, so bought some vanilla (Madagascar is famous for it), cinnamon, and a bottle of ylang ylang essence. Charlie had lost his motivation and was playing games on his phone instead of looking at the scenic overview. He told a vendor it was worth a dollar to him if she could find one of the many chameleons there so he could photograph it. Within a minute or so she spotted a bright green one on a nearby tree. Charlie took the picture and paid up.

Charlie’s $1 chameleon

View from the top

Charlie losing motivation

Next stop: Djamandjar, for a photo stop at the balloon shaped house. I had the misconception these were going to be ancient dwellings. These were houses the French colonists built in the late 1800s for their indentured servants. The house didn’t appear to have had any maintenance done since it was built, and people were actually living in it. I bought a shirt from one of the young women residents. She clearly needs the money. I love the shirt.

Balloon houses

The highlight was being able to hold some lemurs. It was brief, but we have photographic proof of the only lemurs we saw in Madagasgar. 

We had lunch at the La Fourmi Hotel. We arrived to women singing and accompanying themselves with hand percussion. The food was good. We waded in the water which almost felt hot in the shallow spots. 

PS note to La Fourmi: please clean up your beach.

Our next stop was a tourist-oriented market where we had 10 minutes. Along with the vendors, the tour guide encouraged us to purchase items. The time limitation won out and we left empty handed.

We hit rush hour traffic on the way back in to Helle-ville. This consisted of seemingly hundreds of motorcycle taxis lined up to get back in town. We barely made the last tender, which left at 4:30 pm from the dock.  Since it was a ship tour we didn't have to worry about being left behind. There have been incidents where one or two passengers are being paged at sail-out time, and we don't want to be one of them! Once the tender got to the ship, we looked over and were astonished to see a boat of locals trying to sell products to cruisers on the tender. 

Selling until the very last minute