LANIRANO RIVER TRIP

This could possibly be an award winning photograph showcasing this amazingly, beautiful magical island of Madagascar! It is taken from our "rubber ducky" boat looking towards the beautiful serene mountains in the distance with the Coco Beach Restaurant on the water's edge.

Quite tricky maneuvering the boat through the narrow winding channels and watching out for fishing nets. But oh so beautiful.

Moving through the channels we were greeted with the wide expanse of the river. Thank goodness we had a depth gauge, meter. The water becomes extremely shallow without warning and then a little further on drops to quite an incredible depth. We had to be careful not to get caught up in the reeds in the shallow areas.

My Captain Hilton in his element! The next photo shows him making sure our depth gauge is working!

Just before we found our island I decided to test the waters by swimming from the boat! I love swimming in rivers and lakes and just had to try it out. Well it was hard work, first of all the boat nearly raced away from me and I was something like a "beached whale" trying to get back into the boat and the laughter didn't help one bit!!

Sorry, no photos of the attempt to get back on board!!

Then we happened upon this little island which Hilton decided to annex in the name of: Princess Tiara Heather Natalie Gigi Gilfillan!! Our girls, Tamryn, Kelly and Amber know all about the Princess Tiara bit seeing as though it is our "sisterhood" name!! So girls, we have an island!! (We'll allow the guys to vist, 'cos it's rude not to share!!)

To celebrate we opened a bottle of Fresh (our local low-alcohol beer shandy), chomped on a Mars bar and popped open a packet of M n M's!!

We spent a good few hours enjoying our swimming from this island, as I said before, blissfully unaware of legends and crocodiles!!

This river is also the scene of the story I wrote for my grandies called The Pirate Boat.

Truly an inspiring trip in more ways than one!