Ifaty or Mangily ?
9pm, Sunday 3rd June 2001
 Firstly, Air Mad is excellent - perfectly punctual, loads of free seats, and window seats for both of us. Leaving Ivato, we had a brief look over the city and the red landscape beyond, then everything was obscured by the clouds that formed a thick blanket over the entire view. It finally cleared as we approached Fort Dauphin at the southern tip of the island. This was our first stop on the two part flight. It looked fantastic - big lagoons, long white beaches with ripples of surf, and forest covered mountains leaping up high behind the whole scene. We had tried in Ivato to break our flight so that we could spend a few days here, but to no avail. Onward we continued toward Tulear.
We never saw the town! Immediately upon landing we were offered numerous taxis; accepting a driver that spoke some English, we collected our luggage - a long nervous wait later (why is our stuff always last?) we fixed a price to town: twenty thousand Malagasy Francs (two English pounds), probably way too high. As we left, we started to discuss where we were going and where we would stay with the driver. He offered to take us to Ifaty after Tulear, perhaps the next day. It would take about ninety minutes to drive the rough track, about twenty six kilometres, and would cost two hundred and fifty thousand. Tulear has no beach - just mud; we already knew that Ifaty had excellent beaches and access to the reef. We agreed to go there immediately, finalising on a price of two hundred thousand. It was a slow bumpy journey, but comfortable. It really is what you expect a poor African country to look like: happy, friendly, very basic, with people carrying buckets of water on their heads from communal springs. The landscape is disappointingly flat, a mass of low dunes, with arid spiny forest and white sand meeting the warm blue waters of the Indian Ocean as it flows through the Mozambique channel.
We have an excellent hut on the beach, part of a group of similar though mostly  smaller huts and a communal hot shower. The name of the hotel, I know not - in fact I'm not even sure this is Ifaty, the Hotels match our rough map, but the taxi driver told George that this is Mangily…..very confusing. We sit under the provided mosquito net, looking out through our window at the sea only twenty metres away, with our electric lighting, our own toilet and cold shower, and our big comfy bed. We are wasted! After Ivato, this village seems like an entirely different world - Ivato had roads! This place has only sand tracks, but we do seem to be in the centre. There is a large bar behind us that seems to be a focal point for both foreigners and locals, especially the persistent but well meant hassling of the younger men.
It is in the company of a group of these that we have just spent the last two and a half hours. They took us to the beach for a smoke and some local Malagasy music - a guy with a guitar and a few stoned people trying to get it together to sing - a very chilled affair. We were dragged around a number of small wooden huts in the village meeting most of the local rasta population. They provided us with a few basic necessities, so we took them out for a beer; which ended in us making arrangements for a pirogue trip out to snorkel on the reef and surf. A pirogue is a small and extremely narrow sailboat made from a dugout tree, a very common means of transportation in a country with such a rundown road network. In retrospect, no in-fact at the time, this was a hasty move - we really need to laze about on the beach tomorrow and get into the swing of things. We finally escaped when Tony and Didi were convinced that we could remember their names, they must have told us about one hundred times and we repeated them often.
The whole evening has been a bizarre, often fun, at times worrying event; but everyone seems genuine and (perhaps just a little over) friendly. I'm going to round up now with a few highlights of the day, as I write listening to the continual pizzicato wailing of an electric guitar, interspersed with occasional distorted charting in Malagasy, playing live in the bar (which also doubles as the villages night-club).
 Getting off the plane at Tulear and watching three Japanese unload their four bags stuffed full of surfboards, and three big fat rucksacks. Shit, I'm glad we're travelling light.
- The stunning view on the approach to Fort Dauphin.
- The gorgeous sunset over the Mozambique Channel from our hut.
- Being for the first time in such a remote environment.
- Surviving the evening!
2pm, Tuesday 5th June 2001
 OK, we are definitely in Mangily, a small friendly village just north of Ifaty, centred around the bar just behind our complex of huts - Chez Alex. It's just a little pricey at 85,000Fmg (about £8.50) per night between the two of us. We did manage to spend yesterday chilling out, sleeping lots, and ambling along the beach. We found many small lizards with markings on the back of the head that looked strikingly like a third eye, but they were far too fast to catch.  As we had eaten a full lunch in a large restaurant overlooking the beach, we only had a small evening meal - more of a snack really - three zebu kebabs from a street-side vendor. Cooked as we waited an eaten with several spicy sauces - very tasty. Following our repast we headed to the pub. We drank quite a lot of beer and ended up chatting to three local girls. The bar played Bob Marley songs most of the night, and the girls were quickly up dancing. George joined in, I didn't, I don't really do dancing anymore. As we left for bed, one of the girls came running after us. She proclaimed to George with total inhibition, "I…..would like to…..sleep with you…..tonight!".
Declining politely on the excuse that we had an early start the next day, we headed to our hut.
 
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