Having spent two weeks in the village of Mahambo, the time came to move on to Sainte Marie Island. Our original plan was to get the ferry directly from Mahambo. But this changed because it turned out that, during low season (January in our case), there was only one boat per week, plus that it was almost twice as expensive as the boat from Sonierana Ivongo (150,000 to 80,000).
We found online the timetables of several ferry companies operating daily routes between Sonierana Ivongo and Sainte Marie. We tried to get in touch with them all by email but received a reply only from Melissa Express. They wrote in English and were very polite and helpful.
We had to prepay the tickets by phone transfer to reserve our seats for one of their daily routes. Our trip got postponed for two days due to bad weather (it didn’t stop pissing down for a second). And then, on the next lovely sunny morning, we left our place at Onja Surf Camp to make our way to the port.
The ticket agent had said that we should be there at 10 am but the boat will maybe [sic] leave at 11. The guy at our hotel said that we should be fine leaving Mahambo at 7. We left at 6:30, walked up to the main road, and waited for the first taxi brousse. It passed by 7:30 and went only as far as Fenoarivo. It was too slow and at first it seemed impossible that we’d make it before midday. But the second bus we took from Fenoarivo was much faster (mostly due to fewer potholes on that part of the road) and dropped us off in Sonierana Ivongo at 10 am sharp.
The dock of Melissa Express wasn’t straightforward to find. We had to ask directions to its location, some 200 meters up-bank from the main port along a plank-and-sandsack path over the mud. The dock’s coordinates are -16.9176, 49.5839.
We confirmed our tickets with the staff, passed on our backpacks for storage, and waited. There was a stall on the spot serving food and drinks. We were the first to arrive. Most other passengers came right before eleven. We boarded and eventually started at 11:30.
For the first part of the trip, until we passed the waves at the river mouth, the staff for some reason shut the windows. It felt like an oven inside. But after reaching the open sea, they opened them for the soft breeze. This combined with the boat’s soothing rocking, put me to sleep after reading a few pages. I woke up as we were arriving on the island by 1 pm.
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