My friend Lou and I were hired to do a trip around the world on a cruise ship documenting the whole trip on video. We went to places I never would have imagined going, like Madagascar. We arrived to the port of Tôlanaro with no real expectations but to see some lemurs(mission accomplished) and then had a few hours to kill before we sailed away. We both saw that people were renting some motorcycles and we knew we had to get involved in that. We asked some locals what the deal was and then were stormed by individuals that wanted us to rent their personal motorcycles that they use everyday. We each chose our vehicles and then took off, no paper work, pre-paying, or helmets…they just let us ride off. They knew we had to get back to the ship since it was our only way out. Our goal was just to get onto some of the side roads and possibly into the mountains if we could. We headed out and just turned onto a dirt road that looked like it lead into the hills. We ended up passing a swimming hole that some local kids were swimming in and stopped to take some photos. They enjoyed the fact we were there and were intrigued in why we even came. We could not speak the same language, but smiles and thumbs ups were enough. We took some video of them making funny faces and showed them the playback on the back of the camera and the whole bunch was absolutely loving it. One kid tried on my sunglasses and then the rest did as well. It was a great time of smiles and laughs. Our time was running out and we headed back to the port to return the bikes. We arrived back with about an hour left before we took off and still had the itch to explore. We saw from the top of the ship earlier a beach on the other side of some sand hills so set off for there. As we peaked the top and looked into the ocean we saw some perfect waves lining up…and bolted for the beach. We always had swim fins with us in case of a situation like this. On the beach was a local fisherman and we asked him if it was safe to swim and he nodded his head and decided to join us. There were some solid waves and we both caught a few before we had to book it back before our ride left. Wished we had more time on that deserted beach, we were beyond stoked that we even had to chance to go swim in the ocean and catch some incredible waves. We went bolting back to the ship barely making it in time, but having all this happen we could not stop smiling. It is a day I will remember and be stoked on for a very, very long time.
