Southwest coast — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

To get to our next destination, we needed to catch a speedboat across a large bay. As we drove through town on a Sunday, everybody was dressed in their best. We’re guessing the matching clothes probably signified singing groups?

At the “office” of the boat company, we found that the tide was way out -

I didn’t get a picture of it, but the wheel in the bottom R corner above belonged to a tractor that pulled a large cart in which all of us passengers and our luggage rode out to the speedboat. The zebu carts were used to ferry goods and locals.

As we neared the beach where we were meeting the car to take us to our hotel…

… the water was really shallow, and the boat had to stop short of the beach. Guess how we met our car?

Luckily we were wearing shorts and sandals!

As we drove down the coast to our hotel, we could see we were definitely in desert country, and the housing was much simpler than it had been up north -

The local vehicles were even more packed (I didn’t think that was possible!) -

We arrived at our beachfront hotel to find that we were the only guests! (we didn’t complain)

The next morning we visited a large salt lake (Tsimanampetsotsa) because it is home to a large population of Lesser Flamingos…

… that migrates here to breed and bear young before returning to Tanzania in October, after the rainy season arrives.

We saw the “Grandmother” Baobab, which is said to be 1,600 years old. Here in the desert south, baobabs don’t grow as tall as they do in the north, but they have a mighty girth.