The weekend at Foulpointe

As I had to finish the last post I was writing about the beach quite abruptly as I was going to be late back from work, I start again!!!!!
We arrived at Foulepointe on Saturday lunchtime amidst pouring raining. We were escorted there by one of Jens hosts, not sure they think we are capable of sorting stuff by ourselves!!! He then proceeded to introduce us to a friend of his and asked her to take us to church with her on sunday morning.... before helping us find a bungalow. He then started to show us round, although the routs he took us were somewhat off the beaten track and involved wading through knee high streams and jumping muddy ditches only to then have to exit the field through someones front gate!
The weather got better after lunch and after Jose had gone home we headed off to the beach where we were offered hundreds of necklaces, alot of which were made out of stuff we definately wouldnt have been able to import to the UK!!! We then spent the evening in a very french fish restaurant by the sea. The malagasy wine was interesting to say the least but still drinkable.
Sunday morning its was absolutely chucking down with rain again. Ventured next door to the rather inoquous looking restaurant only to discover it was run by an englishman, Marc. He was extremely surprised to see any english people let alone 3 of us since he might see 1 per year at best. Breakfast turned out to be free and we spent most of the morning chatting and waiting for the rain to stop. Eventually at 3 pm it did and we ventured out of town to the old fort whose walls have rocks on the inside and are covered on the outside by coral and shells stuck on with egg whites! We ate at Marc's restaurant in the evening: watched shaun of the dead while waiting for dinner, although I am not sure how much the other dinners appreciated it since the humour was very british!!! We were very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food, Em and Jen had large pieces of duck while I had Zebu steaks - one would have been sufficient but ended up with 3 pieces bigger than the palm of my hand and about 1.5 inches thick. We paid for the food but the drinks for the rest of the evening just kept on appearing free of charge!!!!
On Monday we were met at the beach by Olga who I am staying with and Moniqe (Ems host) and some of her family. We hired some pirogues with guides. These and dug out canoe type things with a stabiliser on one side made from another smaller tree trunk and they are punted along..... We went out to see the coral reef and the managed to see sea urchins, cucumbers, serpants, star fish and very fun blue and black stripy fish that the guide attracted by crushing up sea urchins and pouring the remains into the water. The trip wasnt particularly environmentally friendly as he then pulled up a lump of coral to show us!!!!!!
The drive home was long................mainly on account of getting in a taxi-brousse which proceeded to drive around foulepointe for an hour and 20 minutes before leaving trying to drum up more passengers. It was less eventful on the way home since we didnt have to get out of the bus and wade though the river, maybe because the van was less laden, althought the unladen taxi behind up who had made his passengers wade though proceeded to get the van stuck and we had a good giggle at them trying to push it out as we drove off!!!!