After another night in the cabins, the calves are aching and a cold is coming up. It must have been the wet clothes.

After breakfast we have to walk 4 kilometers back to the entrance of the park.It's not easy with the muscles aching, and again the leeches show no mercy on us. Luckily it ain't raining today, and the porters are carrying our stuff. After 4 tough hours we arrive back at the entrance. We take a rest but get instantly attacked by the mosquitoes, so we head on, another 5 kilometers towards Andapa. At such moments you sometimes wonder what in god's name you are doing, but once we reach Mandena - truly a beautiful village - with all the happy people and running children shouting "Salut Vazaha", the mood is instantly cleared up.

We stroll on for another hour until we return in the land of the living. We have a warm coke with the boys. Suddenly Eric drives by in his Jeep. I raise my thumb to get a lift but he drives on and i can just hear him calling something about cold beer...

We pass by a school consisting of 2 classrooms and a toilet. The head of the school comes outside and welcomes us. All kids in the class promptly rise and politely salute us. The teacher explains us something about the lessons he teaches.

When we finally reach the park's reception we find Eric awaiting us with a lunch and...ice cold beer! I instantly declare him god and mumble something about the cream on the pie after which we pounce upon the cold beer and the delicious pasta salad.

After an hour of enjoyment with Eric and his boys, who all want to have their picture taken, we walk back to the school to hand out a bunch of color pens which we brought from home to the head of the school. Desiré comes with us and urges the kids one more time the importance of loving the nature and to protect the Marojejy Massive forever. The kids repeat after him seamlessly. It looks as if Marojejy will be protected for future generations, thanks to people like the head of the school, Eric and Desiré.

It's time to leave and with pain in our hearts we leave with Jean Claude, who puts on a tape with sad country songs, a tape he keeps repeating for the coming 3 hours. In the Renault 4 we drive to Antalaha, situated on the eastern side of the Masoala Peninsula, from where we'll fly back to Tana tomorrow, a 3.5 hour ride.

Once we arrive in Antalaha we stop at hotel Chez Nanie, but the hotel looks like it's been abandoned since 2 years and the personnel is somewhere between uninterested and rude. So we open the Lonely Planet and ask Jean Claude to drive us to the nearby Momo Beach. It turns out to be a huge hotel on a beach with luxury bungalows and beautifully decorated rooms. We're all alone (even though there's place to house at least 100 people) and we have lobster and a bottle of French wine, allowing our soar calves a well deserved rest.

(NB: Later we learn that the owner of Momo Beach allegedly deals in tropical wood - so i can't really recommend the hotel)

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