MADAGASCAR

So we sailed in an ocean liner to Nosy Be, an island off the island nation of Madagascar and then took the ship’s tender to Hell-ville, a port on Nosy Be, and then got onto a catamaran (Nosy Marine) to sail to an adjacent island, Nosy Komba. We had a "wet landing," rolling up pants legs and wading through water and across rocks. A good icon of this place is the dhow in the photo below, a beautifully shaped vessel with a traditional lateen sail, this one in tatters.

At Nosy Komba we saw: really cute children, the local school, the main residential street, with chickens. The photo is of the upscale end of town where three dwellings stood together without collapse. Nosy Komba has a commercial district, mostly selling items displayed on tarps, like the pile of footwear below. They also sell tablecloths, embroidered by local women. Hundreds of cloths hung on clotheslines; few tourists are around to buy them. High above the village is a little forest filled with black lemurs who hop on and off people’s shoulders to hunt for banana treats. Tourists have been kidnapped, lynched, and murdered here in recent times, the last event in 2016. We were glad to take the boat brigade back to the Silver Whisper.