My return to Pretoria was much less exciting than my original arrival, because I'd already done it once. This time, I was at the front of the immigration queues, so I was through in about five minutes, instead of the hour of queueing I had had to endure before. In fact, I got there before Mercia! I am glad that didn't happen the first time.

Mercia whisked me off to Chief's house, where a braai was in the offing. What a fine welcome back to South Africa! I saw some familiar faces (Steve & Antoinette were there, as was Mariette) and met some new people too. That evening we ran into Gary's sister-in-law Rachel, who was staying at his house.

The next day Gary took me to a reservoir where we had arranged to meet Steve and Roy & Julie and their kid for a spot of wakeboarding. Gary brought Steve's boat behind the bakkie. The sun was baking down on our heads, so it was hardly surprising that the reservoir was down to 14% capacity. It was barely deep enough to swim in, let alone wakeboard! But hey, no risk no fun.

I failed miserably at wakeboarding and at regular waterskiing. It's tricky when you don't know what you're doing, trust me! But I gave it my best shot - which I then regretted for a few days, as my arms hung limp at my sides through muscle pain. At least I got a good bit of colour from the trip. Raspberry.

Then, back at Gary & Mercia's, another party got underway. We all ate Mercia's fantastic burritos and drank my fantastic caipirinhas. I tell you, I'm tempted to set up a lime import business - they love that shit! Despite sore limbs, I ended up looking after the numerous kids that were running around, which basically consisted of me getting beaten up in turn by the five of them on the huge outdoor trampolene in the garden. Luckily, I managed to get them to play pool with me too, which was only slightly less painful; cues were swung in jubilation and more than once a child got inadvertently whacked. Not by me of course though.

The next day (Monday) was a getting stuff done day, because it turned out that Mercia's maid had managed to throw away all the things I had left in the house for safekeeping during my Madagascar trip. This included my ticket home! So we had to get a police report, then go into Joburg to the Emirates office to get the ticket reissued. A pain in the arse, I can tell you, but at least it got done in time.

That evening was a beer & pizza & DVD night, which turned out to be not so hot on the films front but a right cracker on the massive electrical storms front! I have never seen so much lightning. It was great: there were parallel fork lightnings that landed no more than a few kilometres away; there were huge explosions of thunder emanating from the heart of glowing clouds; there were at least ten blackouts (the wiring in the house is very weather-sensitive). What a great evening's entertainment!

On my last day Mercia took me to Lesedi, a village that houses five of South Africa's main tribal peoples and is a bit of a window on the varied cultures in this part of the world. And then, with a heavy heart, I had to say goodbye to South Africa. Steve kindly agreed to bring me to the airport, so I had one last ride in a bakkie, which was cool. Then I jumped in a plane...

Lots of amazing sights were seen in Madagascar, but one of the depressing ones was the endless stream of forest fires that Jorge & I could see out of the aeroplane window on our way back from Nosy Be to Tana. (I'm going to gloss over the happiness and attendant sadness of finally finding samosas that were as good as the ones in London - in Nosy Be airport of all places! - only to go down with a case of severe delhi belly for the next five days; whilst depressing, it doesn't really count as an amazing sight!)

My last day in Tana was dedicated to buying presents, catching up with my emails and feeling sorry for myself, both for my "discomfort" and for the fact that the trip was coming to an end. Geert & Jennifer took me to a wonderful Moroccan restaurant on my last evening, and we ate shovelfuls of couscous and yummy tadjin style meats. But the rains were coming down on us, and the mood was gloomy all round - Geert & Jennifer themselves only had a few more days left in Mada before moving back to Belgium.

I will end on my flight off the island, which - in keeping with the general mood - was three hours late leaving. If only I'd realised this before waving goodbye to Geert and heading into the airport terminal alone! Still, I had a nice chat with a Frenchman who is working for a South African company selling machinery. And at least the views from the plane were almost as spectacular as they had been when flying in a few weeks before.

I'm going to have to be much briefer than I should now, lest I fall completely behind with this blog and end up never doing it again. So, I'll now cover the bit from Antananarivo to Dubai.

After a few days seeing some of the sights of the capital and spending time with Geert, Jennifer and their friends, I decided on a visit to the north of the island. I wanted to experience some of Madagascar's amazing wildlife and go diving again. Diego Suarez, the main town in the north, was an obvious choice. It lies on the southern edge of a huge bay which almost cuts through to the west coast of the island. I was given spectacular views of the topography from the plane window: I could pick out every detail of the salt pans at the water's edge, the holy island off to one side, the mountains girdling the bay, and the turqoise shimmer of the bay itself.

I had arranged some accommodation before leaving Tana, and was expecting a driver to meet me at the airport. Instead, an attractive young woman approached me and said, "Where are you going?" This made me uncomfortable: I was conscious of being the only white tourist type person in the baggage hall, and was wary of being 'taken for a ride', if you'll pardon the pun. But I thought, what the hell? It was going to be interesting whatever happened. My interest was tweaked when I discovered that there was another gorgeous young lady wating for us in the car! With some trepidation I put my bags in the back and jumped in.

In the end, of course, there was a very boring explanation for this extraordinary turn of events: these beautiful women are the local wives of the proprietors, two French brothers, and as I was the hotel's only guest that evening there was no point arranging another driver. In fact, it was clear I was just one errand they had to run, when we went via the centre of town to pick up some bread from the baker. I had the tantalising smell of fresh baguettes wafting up from next to me on the back seat for the next forty minutes, as we skirted eastwards around the bay until we reached the eight secluded beach huts and restaurant/swimming pool that constitute the Hotel Meva Plage.

It felt very strange to be the only guest and therefore the centre of attention for the ten hotel staff; it seemed they vied with each other to bring me more peanuts and beer, while I sat on a sun lounger luxuriating in the setting sun and the balmy air, or stood chatting with one or other of the brothers about their previous life as car mechanics in the suburbs of Paris and their new life as hoteliers almost in the middle of nowhere. That evening, the sunset over the far side of the bay and the town of Diego Suarez was breathtaking, and later on that night, the stars shone with a brilliance that I have never witnessed.

When the hotel's generator was switched off at midnight, the night sky came to life. I saw why the Greeks called the constellation Orion, the Hunter: obscured from view in light-polluted Europe, he actually holds aloft a perfect bow of nine stars and takes aim at nearby mythical creatures. I swear I saw all Seven Sisters in Pleiades. Shooting stars danced across the firmament in a delicate and graceful silence. And, as the gentle lapping of the waves against the beach at the foot of my hut accompanied the patter of crabs out hunting their prey, I realised this was a night to be rivalled in my memory only by the serenity of the Andean high plains which I was privileged to experience in 1996 in Chile's Atacama Desert.

So much for being brief!

The next day I had the pleasure of fishing with a Frenchman in the Emerald Sea (if it wasn't a depressing image, I would compare the colour of that vast expanse of shallow water to a public swimming baths) and eating the fruits of our labours (kindly barbecued by the crew of our small boat) on a secluded beach whose waters were so hot it actually hurt to put your feet in. The upshot of this day in the hot sun was an all-over sunburn which took days to disappear (or as I like to think of it, to turn into a tan).

I have to say that this Frenchman was fascinating: as I learned over dinner that evening with him and his Malagasy wife, he used to work as a professional forger and art conman. He gleefully told me how he would dupe gullible Germans with too much money into buying his "art". He even managed to ensure their silence by convincing them that it was genuine art that had 'fallen off the back of a lorry' - no questions asked - rather than the work of his own fair hand! But more recently, after certain problems with various police forces, he had given up his vocation to work as an estate agent. And now, after meeting his wife in France, he was going to emigrate to Madagascar with her. They were both very pleasant people, and I enjoyed whiling the evening away with them over good local food and wine and several "rhums arrang?s" - local rum that has had various food items steeped in it, such as vanilla, ginger or banana.

After this, I moved into Diego Suarez itself in order to save money. It was in this period that I got to know Jorge, the German Spaniard. Together we saw the many marvels of the national park at Montagne d'Ambre, including its sacred crater lakes and glades; and we travelled into the special reserve at Ankarana, which is home to so many splendours on a micro- as well as a macro-scale (the majority of which can be seen in my photos, now on the main pages of my website).

But hang on, I've covered all this already in more detail in an earlier entry! So that's where I'll leave it for now.