Nosy Be is an island off the northwest coast of Madagascar. It is one of 253 small islands that surround the main island of Madagascar. and is considered the tourism capitol of the country, so the government keeps the roadways very maintained. The name Nosy Be can translate as Island Beach or Big Island.

It was a tender port, so we again used the ship’s lifeboats to reach the island. The ships’ picture of the beach, looked much better than the actual beach, due to weather we experienced later in the day.

It is a small port, but it had lots of of activity and merchants

We chose a history/sight-seeing tour, so that we could gain more information about Madagascar. We lucked out that our guide Marselli, was born on the island, and he is a local English teacher. He makes very good money being a tour guide, so when cruise ships come to Nosy Be, he takes a day of vacation. In his youth, he rode his bike 22 km to school everyday to learn English, because if you know English you can make very good money. Our driver for the day was Leon.

Marselli gave us so much information…There are 270,000 residents on the island of Nosy Be. The island covers 123 square miles. It’s main industries are fishing, transportation manufacturing, farming, and tourism.

in 1837, Queen Tsiomeko of Madagascar went to Nosy Be to hide during a coup by Ranavalona I. Upon the defeat of the queen’s army, Nosy Be was given to Ranavalina I, in exchange for her safety. The French then colonized the island in 1840, founding the outpost of Hell-Ville. They grew mainly sugar cane. The island along with Madagascar became an official French colony in 1897. The entire area, was then granted independence on June 20, 1960. It is still debated amongst the Madagascar residents, if independence was a good thing.

There are 4 main religions…Catholic, Evangelical Christian, Protestant, and Muslim. Muslims are allowed to only marry other Muslims.

Family traditions are still maintained…you must have a female ox to present as a dowry to marry as it shows prosperity. You must stay married for at least one year, before you can divorce. During the wedding the bride wears a cloak along with 2 other women and the groom must choose his bride. The groom gets 3 tries to chose his wife. After each guess the women move around. If he is wrong on the 3rd try, he must bribe the bride’s parents with beer.

A crazy tradition involves circumsion….the child’s uncle or chosen godfather, must eat the circumsion skin with a banana and rum, to prove himself capable of being a good influence in the boy’s life.

Three languages are spoken on Nosy Be…Malagasy (Creole which is African-French), English, and French.

Nosy Be also had tuk-tuks, to Jim’s delight!!

The capitol is known as Hell-Ville. The town’s name is in honor of the 19th century French admiral Louis de Hell, who also served as the governor of nearby Reunion Island. The town has a busy and interesting market.. Most of the merchants are of Sakalava descent and were the island’s first residents.

The merchants spend all day at the market.

Vegetables and spices as well as oxen meat, which only come from the males and is known as Zebu, are sold at the market. There was also mango salsa.

The market is not the cleaniest place, as a huge cockroach ran across the floor and one of the merchants stepped on it and swept it under the table. There were also lots of flies. Tomatoes are not grown on the island but brought from the mainland of Madagascar.

We left the market and travelled into the nearby hills. Along the road, there were coffee and ylang-ylang fields along with small villages with each have a community school. The huts are made from the abundant palm frond. It is abit more modern than the mainland as solar power is prevalent.

We stopped for a short walk through one of the ylang-ylang fields The plant was brought to the island in 1903 from the Philippines, by Father Rambo.

The plants can grow to be 40 meters tall. It is cut to gather the flowers. It takes 500 kilos of flowers to make 12 liters of perfume. The Ylang Ylang is why Nosy Be is called the Island of Perfumes.

At the field we saw several chameleons. They can rotate their eyes 360 degrees and their tongues are 2.5 times the length of their body. The tongue has a glue type substance on it, so that it can easily catch insects. Males are green and females are red and each chameleon has 2 brains. The female never closes her eyes when she sleeps.

We stopped for a quick view of the Mozambique Channel, with the mainland of Africa being 250 miles to the east.

We drove to Mont Passot which has an elevated view of the Amaparihibe crater lakes.

There were information boards, showing you what you were looking at.

The viewing tower was nice to get a view above the trees

The island has 7 lakes, and all of them are home to crocodiles, so swimming is not advised. Legend has it that they do not attack if you look at them but they will charge you if you turn your back.

From Mont Passot, we could see our cruise ship in the far distance.

As we left, we could see an approaching storm. Earlier in the day, we had been warned about the out-lying bands of Typhoon Dikeledi, that could cause problems with our tour.

On our way to a local resort for lunch, we drove through Dzamandzar, which has built domed concrete houses to help with wildfire prevention during the dry season.

As we drove through the narrow streets in our bus, it was interesting to view an average day in life of a local resident

At the resort, we were greeted by traditional dancers. Our guide, Marselli, joined in.

It was a very nice resort…we loved that the rooms had fruit names

During lunch, a squall came on shore, everyone was hiding inside, but we decided to have some fun and stomped in the puddles. We even went on the beach, with the wind and rain, as we said it would be the closest we would ever get to a typhoon.

Lunch was nice even with the rain..the drinks were amazing

We left the resort and saw the results of the sudden down pour of rain.

We stopped at local craft area, for souvenoirs and even though we did not get to ride in one, we bought a small hand-made tuk-tuk.

At the port, Marselli asked us if we would exchange older dollars with him, that other guests had given him. Since this was our 3rd port in Madagascar, we understood the money situation, that US dollars are accepted but only if they are 10 years or newer with no rips or tears. We did a quick exchange of the bills, and can now add money laundering to our list of adventures. LOL

Back to the ship to enjoy the calm after the storm

From our lounge chair we watched the Madagascar Navy. It had been circling the ship all day. However, they were in a small raft and had to keep stopping to blow it back up with a hand pump. They were at least trying to protect us.

After raising the lifeboats, the port pilot then left the ship

What an amazing sunset!!

We had 3 sea days, and we enjoyed it with a few fun activities, Jenga, eating OMG cheesecake at Cagneys, cake decorating with Elizabeth our tour director, popcorn and a movie, and we received a pen for winning Alaska trivia.

We knew the weather was going to get bad since we were on the outskirts of the typhoon, and that proved to be true…on our 3rd sea day, the crew packed up all the lounge chairs at 11 am and closed the pools. The wind began to howl and we could tell that the captain had kicked the ship into high gear to get out of the typoon’s path. Jim had way too much fun standing in the wind!!

Wow what a whirlwind…we would now have 3 ports in South Africa…