As I said in the last post, things got a little messy in Amber Mountain. When things don’t go perfectly, I tend to remember the lessons and in this case how well everyone did to make things have the best outcome possible. I thank my friends, Jacques and our drivers, as well as the nun who allowed us to stay at their facility for making it possible to safely weather the storm. Though Cyclone Chido was a powerful storm and it was tragic for many thousands of people in the path of the storm to the west of where we were, it seemed to be business as usual in the city of Diego Suarez. On the drive all the way from Amber mountain to Diego and back to Ambilobe, there was less evidence of the storm than we saw on the mountain. Kozobe Hotel was in good shape and our stay was relaxing. It was good that we stayed there, because it made our last drive as a group go better than expected. The two bridges that were destroyed by Cyclone Gamane had been replaced with temporary rock bridges. They were in fine shape for our vehicles to cross the river. There was no need for porters or boats to get by the rivers and we made it to the Port of Ankify much faster than we thought we would. We thanked our drivers and Jacques arranged for porters to carry our gear to the boat that was waiting for us to ferry us back to Nosy Be. He came with us to make sure everything worked out in Nosy Be.
It was a beautiful sunny day. There was quite a bit more debris in the water from the storm that the captain had to be sure to avoid, but it was a safe crossing and I remembered to take some photos. We arrived at the nicest hotel of the trip, The Exora Beach Hotel for our last night together. I was the only one who was staying longer. I booked more days at a nearby B & B called Villa Tongasoa as an insurance policy, in case we hadn’t seen a whale shark on the first attempt with the group. It turned out there were many other things to do and my host, Bernard, at Villa Tongasoa had lots of connections to make good things happen and his wife Nadia was an excellent cook.
It was another outstanding adventure in Madagascar, but I still haven’t seen it all!
For photos and some commentary through the end of my time in Nosy Be in 2024, click here. The one above is from the Marine Reserve at Nosy Tanikely. You might remember from an earlier post, I didn’t bring my GoPro there to take photos on the first visit at the beginning of the trip.