Have had a very busy week learning fish species, going on dives and snorkels to practice the surveying we will be undertaking. Already been driving one of the hand made dive boats which is interesting to handle to say the least!
- view when boat marshalling
The food is actually very nice but I can imagine after 8 weeks rice and beans may get repetitive. To break it up we have meal nights at Filipes and Voulaz with a crazy party night on Friday where we have local Malagasy cuisine followed by a lot of dancing and socialising with the near by village (arm wrestles with the locals are regular occurrences and they are strong ! ).
Weekends are pretty chilled, last weekend we had a trip to a local marine protected area called Tanakelly, the diving was the best I have ever seen, amazing corals and fish that look like they are on steroids. After a great dive we went onto the island to look around, climbed the light house and explored the wildlife, it was an amazing day, the boat journey back was a bit choppy but nothing our little unsinkables can't handle.
- top of the lighthouse (mike, me, jaz, fred)
Coming up is more tests and lectures on fish species, followed a trip to kombo this weekend (neighbouring island) dives every day and hopefully in a few weeks sat camp for a week where we hire an old fishing boat and sail the seas diving amazing untouched sites.
All in all this first week has been amazing, met some great people and had such a laugh already, can't wait for the next 7 weeks and the possibility of staying on as staff afterwards !!!
That's it for now, as expected signal is shocking and wifi is hard to come by so updates will be sporadic but I will try to stay as in touch as much as possible. Any news from the real world drop me an email wouldn't mind some updates especially formula 1 !
Goodbye from paradise !!!