The Living Journey

We spent yesterday at sea making our way north. We filled our day with lectures, music, and even managed to get to the gym. Our first stop was Nosy Tanikely, an uninhabited marine reserve island with a lovely beach and a small lighthouse.

Today we visited the Barren Islands which are a small group of 9 coral islands about 15 miles off the coast of mainland Madagascar. We specifically visited Nosy (Island) Andrano (water).
 
 
 
Today the sea was a bit calmer,

We dropped anchor early on Saturday morning and headed out with the first group of zodiacs. We had been warned that it would be a “wet” landing, and they weren’t kidding. A rogue wave surged in and completely washed over the zodiac,

This morning we arrived at Toliara located on the Southwest portion of Madagascar. It is the capital of the Atsimo-Andrefana region founded in 1895. They have a reef barrier offshore, which provides one of the few natural bays in the southern part of Madagascar. 

Jamestown, the capital of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha, is also the historic main settlement of Saint Helena Island in a V-shaped valley on its north-western coast; it is the island’s only port and the center of the island’s road and communications network
 

Since we left Senegal, we have spent twice as much time at sea as on land as we trek south toward Cape Town, visiting two remote islands positioned about halfway between Brazil and Africa. Ascension and St. Helena Islands are both British Overseas Territories and definitely are among the most unusual communities we have visited.

We spent several days at sea sailing from Dakar to Ascension Island. I did a lot of reading, spent some time talking to people I hadn’t seen in a while, caught up on the blog, and even participated in an escape room event the Ship put together.

Right after breakfast, I took a trip out to Lake Retba. We drove through the countryside and through busy outlying suburban areas with lots of traffic and bustle. There were horse carts and trucks fighting over road space, roadside stalls selling fruit and housewares,

Restaurants line a street in Vegueta (Old Town), Las Palmas, the capital of Gran Canaria in the Canary Island
 
We embarked on this journey (heading down the west coast of Africa) in Las Palmas, Gran Cararia, Canary Islands (part of Spain) – our second visit there on the Ship in 2018.

Leaving Rome, we set course to Palma de Mallorca, which we have visited before, but enjoyed again. Here, the Catedral de Mallorca is the star; its flying buttresses and towers seem to be visible from every corner of the city,

Le Macchiole (winery) is in Bolgheri, Italy, on the Etruscan Coast — “in this magical place, where rolling hills are blanketed by forest, where vineyards and olive trees meet with the Tyrrhenian Sea”
 
From our dock in the port of Livorno,