Lemurs
21 September 2014 | Nosy Komba, Madagascar
September 8
Nosy Komba
After a few days in Hellville, which is a great little town, we motor sailed to Nosy Komba, 6 miles away. We were waiting for an answer on our battery charger repair which we weren’t going to have for 3-4 days, so we thought we’d explore another island nearby.
The town on Komba Island was neat and clean, somewhat touristy, but not the crass, hyped-up touristy of Phuket, Thailand. It was lovely walking through the pathways among the wooden homes thatched with palm fronds. Carvings and embroidered table cloths were for sale from many small shops. along the way to the nature park.
Our main goal of the day was to see lemurs. We paid our entrance fee and a guide took us up a path to a stand of large trees, where he called ‘maki, maki, maki’, which is the Malagasy word for lemur, and down came a brown lemur with a black face, piercing yellow eyes and a fringe of white fluffy hair that almost surrounded his whole face. Our guide put pieces of banana in the kids’ hands and the lemur jumped from the tree to their shoulders and then climbed onto their heads. This was definitely up close and cosy with one of the many lemur species of Madagascar.
We continued up the path and came to the boa constrictor we’d heard about. There were also tortoises and chameleons. To see the pictures, go to the photo gallery and click on Komba.
The next day, ‘the girls’ from Mystic, Smoke and Gromit went to the town well, which was actually a spigot and washed our clothes by hand in fresh mountain water. The locals came and went, greeting us kindly, as if it was an everyday thing to have 6 foreigners there doing their washing.
After a rolly night at the anchorage we returned to Hellville to check the status of our battery charger and do our last provisioning before heading south to Russian Bay.