One evening our guide Romeo says: let's go to the village, I'll show you the night life and real fun! We expected some national African dances (there were such shows in the animation program of the hotel) or something like that, but it turns out that there really is a night life here and there is a street where about 10 bars are waiting for visitors every night.
The most popular bar is "Taxibe", where live music was played by a large group of musicians and singers. They played and sang popular foreign and local songs, skillfully moving the audience as the whole bar danced, sang and whooped!
By the way, a cocktail here costs only 1.5 euros. The most diverse audience gathers here: I saw both 18-year-olds and 60-year-olds. Both locals and tourists. I highly recommend a visit here, no matter how old you are.
The next morning from Nosy Be we traveled to the main island of Madagascar. It takes about 40 minutes to swim to it. However, traveling inside the island is much more complicated than in Nosy Be. First of all, because of the huge distances and the tragic condition of the roads. It takes 8 hours to drive a distance of 250 kilometers.
Although we didn't get to see much that day, at first glance the nature, vegetation and people appeared to be very similar to the images seen on Nosy Be Island.
Every square meter has a variety of palm trees, mangoes, ylang-ylang trees, ficuses, various shrubs and other plants, most of which are not even visible. The climate here is warm and humid, so the conditions for vegetation are just ideal. In some places among the green areas you can see local settlements, which look really exotic.
The condition of the roads is, of course, worse than in Europe, so we drive slowly. When passing the villages, children run out to the roadsides waving. The guide tells us that tourists started going to Madagascar island relatively recently. The Italians were the first to discover it (later I was convinced of this when visiting hotels - most tourists spoke Italian), the Poles started flying less than a few years ago.
Maybe that's why it seemed to me that the population is not "spoiled" by mass tourism. Everywhere we traveled, the locals welcomed us very warmly, no one asked for money for the opportunity to take a photo, although I heard that this is quite a common case in poor countries.
Yes, there is a lot of poverty here. Few people use electricity in their homes, the living huts are simple, made of wood, without any amenities. However, there were no people begging for alms or starving. Everyone is neatly dressed and takes care of the environment.
While driving, we also saw students walking from school - they all wore very nice uniforms. In Madagascar, education is paid, secondary school costs 20 euros per student per month. Then we stopped at couple of svools in villages to give gifts to children we have taken with ourselves - a bunch of pens.
To get to one of the most famous attractions in Madagascar - the Avenue of Baobabs - you need not only to drive, but even to fly, so it would be very difficult to do that after staying on the island of Nosy Be.
For those who want to get to know the main island of Madagascar better, I would recommend choosing a sightseeing trip longer than a week.
And we just looked around the island, living conditions, beauty of nature, and came back to hotel. We were too far away from any of famous Madagascar island sights to try to reach them. For this I am sure I will be back to Madagascar in the near future.
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Thank you for reading. You are always welcome to check my posts.
All photos are original.
With love
"Do what is right, mot what is easy nor what is popular" - R. T. BENNETH.