Rodney & Sheryl's Travels: 3/30 - Nose Be, Madagascar

Nosy Be is an island just off the northwest coast of Madagascar and means "big island" in the Malagasy language. The island was called Assada during the early colonial era of the 17th century. Nosy Be is Madagascar's largest and busiest tourist resort. The volcanic island has an area of about 120 square miles (300 sq km) and reaches a peak on Mont Passot at 1079 feet (329 m). It is located about 5 miles (8 km) off the coast of Madagascar.¹

We were here on our world cruise in 2006. At that time, we rented a little boat with another couple and went to Nosy Komba, which is a little bit southeast of Nosy Be. We had a great tour of the island, enjoyed feeding the lemurs, huge tortoises, and saw lots of large geckos. This time, we opted to just stay on the ship. Nosy Be is a tender port and we are not big tender fans, especially in 95°, extremely humid, weather - 150 of your closest sweaty new "friends" (and I use that term very loosely) crammed into an enclosed tender bouncing our way to shore. And you should hear the whining if they get a little wet! If the Amsterdam goes down, we're thinkin' twice before getting in the danged tender. I wonder if we've been on this ship a little too long...