Last weekend in Tamatave

Our last weekend in Tamatave proved to be quite different to that which we may have anticipated!!!!
On the Friday lunchtime we had a phone call from Marc who was the englishman who owned the restaurant in foulepoint the previous weekend. We arranged to meet up for lunch and ended up going to the Bateau Ivre which is Tamataves poshest restaurants!! It turns out that his dad and step mum own the restaurant so we had a very posh lunch with them. They then invited us back for dinner with them. We returned for dinner where we also met the american couple who had set up the local captive breeding programme for lemurs and also the english couple who currently run the park. It was a very nice evening with massive platters of delicious fruits de mer and very very nice puddings!!! We stayed at their house on Friday night which had all the mod cons of living in western society.
The best thing about it all was the warm water on tap - I would like to say that Jen and I had had hot showers but hosed down with hot water would be a more accurate description after Em had managed to break their shower. Quite how we'll never know but she claims it fell apart in her hands!!!

On the saturday we went out to the lemur reserve. It was a 4 km walk from the main road where the taxi dropped us but the walk was very interesting with a local village where all the children greeted us as we passed through. There was a local quarry as all the locals were sat by the side of the road chipping big rocks down into stones 1 to 2 cm big ready for collection. There was also lots of beautiful plants and the road ran up the side of the river.
The park itself contained lemurs that were being bred in captivity as well as lemurs that had been released into the wild. In the late afternoon they all came down from the tree canopys and got really close. 1 cheeky lemur squeezed through the mesh into the enclosure with some captive lemurs in (the holes in the mesh being no larger than the palm of my hand). It then ate all the food in the pot and promptly left again. Another one was in the tree about 0.5 m above our head and held down its hand as if to touch us!!!!! There were also tortoises, cameleons and snakes in the park, although thankfully all the snakes here were captive!
We had a very amusing ride home in a very old renault 5 van with wooden bench seats in the back. Jen and I were too talk and kept hitting our heads on the ceiling so sat at the back with our heads stuicking out the top since the back door and ceiling didnt meet by about 40 cm. We had just dropped Em off and were on our way back to Jens when the van broke down among much smoke etc coming out of the engine. It was at this point we decided to walk the rest of the way!!!
The roads around tamatave are far far worse than any of the roads out of town come across out here. There are the most enormous holes in the road and all the vehicles, bikes, lorrys and pousse pousse swerve around all over the road to avoid the worst of the holes. As it rains so much here, the holes are often very large puddles so quite often end up wadding through them when they stretch all the way across the road. According to the locals the president and the tamatave mayor dont get on so the president has given no money for the upkeep of the city for many years which is why the roads are so bad. Apparently the mayor has just been put in prison and replaced so hopefully things will improve here soon.