Around Fort Dauphin

I'd decided to go and see the reserve at Nahampona. Essentially I was hoping to see lemurs for which Madagascar is famous. It was only a little way out of town (about 7k) and so travelled there by (overpriced) taxi.

It was a nice place, originally opened by the French about 100 years ago and with a lot of interesting plants and trees. I spied some lemurs high up in some branches, and we came upon some bamboo lemurs (which were also pretty cute).

My guide took me out of the reserve to see a small waterfall, and then onto a boat trip.

On the boat trip we passed a lot of huge plants called "Elephant ear plants", their huge ear shaped leaves clearly being the reason for this. I asked my guide why they were so called, and he told me it was due to the leaves resembling elephant ears (clearly irony is a difficult thing to convey in a foreign tongue!!)

I spent a lot of the afternoon on Libanona beach. It's on the other side of town and a really nice place. I had a sandwich and beer overlooking the bay.

In the afternoon I followed the throngs of locals and ended up watching a football match in the local "stadium". It was a ramshackle place, and the playing surface left a lot to be desired (the grass was about 6inches long in places and stopped the ball!

There were about 400 of us there (mine being the only white face). The match appeared to be a local derby between two Fort Daupin teams, one in yellow, the other in blue. The crowd support seemed to be behind the yellows (who lost 7-1)

The blue side were a lot stronger, and all of their players had football boots (about 2/3rds of the yellows played barefoot). Blues also had the advantage of a rampaging centre back, built in the mould of Paul McGrath, who came forward at every opportunity and took all of their set plays. Yellows weren't helped by their keeper, who was probably at fault for about 4 of their goals.

I did get a small section of the crowd shouting "get it in the box", although whether they really knew what they were shouting, or whether they knew what an ideal tactic it was, given the playing surface, I shall never know.

I gave my biro to a kid sat next to me. It wasn't anything fancy, but he held it like it was a jewel as he carried it home.