We passed Reunion during the night. I did have quick squint through the window and could see no lights. It was also rather windy, reaching force 8 according to the captain, rather more than forecast.
I don’t know whether it was our location, or the sea state, but there were a few birds around in the morning while we were still in the Reunion (= French) Exclusive Economic Zone. Most were Barau’s Petrels, which only breeds in the mountains of Reunion. There were also singles of Wedge-tailed Shearwater and Brown Noddy.
In the late afternoon, we entered Madagascar waters. A beaked whale sp. surfaced once, but there were no birds to be seen.
We had a new celebrity speaker on board, Nigel Marven, most famous for his time travelling dinosaur shows. He gave a talk on Wednesday 27th. He started with Gerald Durrell’s involvement in Mauritius in setting up breeding programmes for some of the critically endangered endemic birds. Durrell’s book, My Family and Other Animals, had been an inspiration for him while he was growing up, and he was involved in the filming of the BBC adaptation in the 1980s.
He then discussed some aspects of his career in wildlife documentary making, a lot of it involving reptiles. He admitted that he was a birder and he pitched programmes about birds but “National Geographic want snakes and sharks” and his very hands on style was because he was told in his early programmes that they wanted “a British Steve Irwin.”
It was funny watching how discomforted US talk show host Conan O’Brien was when Marven took some reptiles on to his late night chat show. “Look at that face,” said O’Brien at one stage: I thought exactly the same but I was looking at O’Brien’s taut plastic surgery, not the monitor lizard.
Afterwards, I went for an onboard haircut. It was the most expensive, and most touchy-feely, haircut of my life. Never have I had my beard stroked, my head tilted and my nose lifted so often in my life!
Outside, in Madagascan (or is it Malagasy) waters all day, it was the second birdless day of the trip.
The next day was little better. The only birds I saw were 40 distant Sooty Terns in a flock just before sunset, when we were still about 250km from land.
When I Grow Up I Will Go There 