Quirimba to Pemba, Mozambique, to Dzaoudzi, Mayotte 2 - 4 Apr 08

Lemurs go bananas for bananas

3 April. After breakfast, Flemming went with Bruno and Yves on a superb dive at 'Passe Bateaux, La Barrière', the reef separating the lagoon from the ocean. Superb visibility and lots of light even down at 25 meters. Nice drift dive with 3 moray eels, big grouper and loads of pretty corals. Meanwhile, Angela went snorkelling from the beach and found several very large turtles in the lagoon grazing the seaweed and colourful corals a little further out. It’s the best snorkelling we’ve had for a long time.
Angela’s back has not been too good recently. Fortunately it was an osteopath’s day off so he was not tied to his clinic in the capital one hour’s drive away. She called him on his mobile phone and he came to the hotel in the afternoon to treat her back, so hopefully it is fixed by now.
We generally disapprove of feeding wild animals but, since everyone seems to feed the lemurs here and they haven’t become aggressive like baboons would, we baited them with a banana to get a shot of Flemming being attacked by lemurs going bananas for bananas.
The hotel owner/manager Pierre Stephanica came over to our dinner table to talk to us. Someone had told him that we were flying around in our own plane and he was interested to hear about our trip, particularly as he is taking flying lessons.
4 April. After breakfast, Flemming went on another great morning dive with Mathias and Christophe (turtle researcher), this time at a nearby coral reef (southwest of 'patate corail') inside the lagoon. Then we did a 1-hour snorkelling trip at the beach coral reef with Angela, where we saw no less than 5 turtles, 3 green turtles and 2 of the rarer hawkbill turtles. Afternoon walk spotting lemurs and fruit bats (roussettes).
We’ve really enjoyed our stay at the Jardin Maoré. The beach and snorkelling are great, we loved meeting lemurs for the first time, the hotel is well managed, the food is delicious and the price is reasonable. What more could you want?