The first couple photos are from the flight from Ethiopia over the Aldabra group (one of the largest coral atolls in the Indian Ocean) and nearby Assomption Island which has a small landing strip that can be seen in the photo. Aldabra is known for its giant tortoises. (If you go through the photos below you will see a couple which I photographed on day two when we visited Nosy Ambariovato.) The flight landed at Nosy Be Airport. I arrived a day earlier than the rest of the group and stayed my first night in the village of Ambatoloak, at a quiet place called Villa Perle Noire. It was the perfect place to recover from the long flight. It was clean and the receptionist spoke English well. She was even able to arrange a person to exchange money (which couldn’t be done at the small airport in Nosy Be or ahead of time in the States) at the hotel, and also to arrange a driver to take me the next day to the place I met the rest of the group.
The second and third nights were spent at a place called Alma Villas which was very nice and large enough for everyone who arrived early to do the Whale Shark excursion. Thanks for making the arrangements Mike. I would recommend it to anyone who was spending a week with a large group (each villa has four large rooms, a common area, a nice kitchen where it is possible to arrange to hire a cook, and its own pool) and wanted to do scuba diving or snorkeling around the island of Nosy Be. You could easily spend a week or more seeing what there is to see and you wouldn’t see it all.
As you can see in the gallery below we saw a lot before the scheduled itinerary even started. We even saw a baleen whale which I was able to photograph which our guide said was an Omura’s Whale which he also said was with a calf. Not much has been published about his species, but I was able to find an article in The Royal Society Open Source Science Journal which you can access by clicking here
Most of the Images in the gallery below are my photographs. I am grateful to Lonny Pace, who gave me permission to use the last eight in the gallery. The lemurs where photographed on Lemur Island, as where the day gecko and the tortoise. The White-tailed tropicbirds were photographed at Nosy Tanikely, as were the Giant Fruit bats.
(To see the whole image click on any to start the gallery.)
I also want to mention I am a proud uncle. My nephew Scott,, who I was hoping to get to accompany me on this trip but was unable to because he is deep into finishing his PhD dissertation at Yale. (He was on the first trip in 2018 with the group while on his gap year between his undergraduate degree and starting his doctoral research.) I am pleased to announce, Scott’s first two scientific papers, where he is the lead author, can be read by searching the following titles: Understanding the Effects of Livestock Grazing on Dryland Plant Communities within the context of Abiotic Variability, and Prioritizing Accuracy or Efficiency: Comparing General Allometric Models for Perennial Bunchgrass Species. Fair warning…it’s not easy reading.) He was the youngest person on the first trip and he got along well with everyone. Grace took on the role of youngest on this adventure and like Scott she is conservation minded, talented and looking to make a difference.
