{"id":1189,"date":"2007-01-04T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-04T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/?p=1189"},"modified":"2013-09-08T20:49:56","modified_gmt":"2013-09-08T20:49:56","slug":"day-20-ile-sainte-marie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/?p=1189","title":{"rendered":"Day 20 &ndash; Ile Sainte Marie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today we had hoped to rent a nice covered boat to cruise around the island of Sainte Marie.&nbsp; Unfortunately, this didn&#8217;t happen.&nbsp; First, nobody would cruise up the eastern side of the island in the open Indian Ocean, saying it was too dangerous, but that we could tour the other side.&nbsp; This would have been fine, but they didn&#8217;t have any boats with a top, which meant we would not have any protection from either sun or rain, and we would have to share with 6 other people who had also asked to do the same thing.&nbsp; Who would have thought that boats would be so hard to find on an island populated around tourism, and we&#8217;re not even in the high tourist season&#8211;I think there are more vacant cabins here than occupied ones at the moment? <\/p>\n<p>In the end, we decided to stay around the resort for the day and relax.&nbsp; This turned out to be a very good decision, as we found out some interesting news later in the day during dinner.&nbsp; It would seem that the boat they had offered us, ran into some misfortune!&nbsp; Nothing tragic, but the boat did break down way out in the channel and they had to call in a tow boat to get everyone safely back into shore and end the tour early.&nbsp; So not only are boats difficult to find here, but apparently the boats they do have are not in the best condition. <\/p>\n<p>Our day around the hotel was relaxing.&nbsp; We spent a lot of time swimming, enjoyed a nice lunch, spent some more time swimming, enjoyed a nice dinner, had another game of pool, and then it was time for bed. <\/p>\n<p>The food here at the Soanambo has been fabulous.&nbsp; I had a wonderful seafood pasta plate for lunch today.&nbsp; My dinner was an incredible peppercorn zebu steak that was cooked to perfection. <\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t take many pictures today, but here are a few&#8230; <\/p>\n<p>Dave\u2019s lunch.&nbsp; Dinner was even better, but I didn\u2019t get a photo\u2026 <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"IMG_6874\" style=\"border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"IMG_6874\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/wp-content\/pictures\/Madagascar2006\/IMG_6874.jpg\" width=\"574\" height=\"432\"> <\/p>\n<p>This might be tomorrow\u2019s lunch wandering around the guest cabins?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"IMG_6872_edited-1\" style=\"border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"IMG_6872_edited-1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/wp-content\/pictures\/Madagascar2006\/IMG_6872_edited-1.jpg\" width=\"574\" height=\"432\"><\/p>\n<p>I spotted this crab on the pathway at night on the way back to our cabin\u2026<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"IMG_6878_edited-1\" style=\"border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px\" border=\"0\" alt=\"IMG_6878_edited-1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/wp-content\/pictures\/Madagascar2006\/IMG_6878_edited-1.jpg\" width=\"574\" height=\"432\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today we had hoped to rent a nice covered boat to cruise around the island of Sainte Marie.&nbsp; Unfortunately, this didn&#8217;t happen.&nbsp; First, nobody would cruise up the eastern side of the island in the open Indian Ocean, saying it &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/?p=1189\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-madagascar","tag-ile-sainte-marie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1190,"href":"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions\/1190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hodson.ca\/Travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}