April 14, 2023

I can’t believe it but we have reached the halfway point in our Around the World cruise. Tonight there will be a “Halfway There” party in Horizons. Yes, it is day 90 and kind of hard to believe that we are at that point already.

Today we anchored at Mayotte, Comoros. It’s a place that we haven’t visited before and actually never heard of! Unfortunately our tour was cancelled and we know that others were too. Apparently the tour operators here never answered phone calls to confirm the tours. Some of the tours did take place, but since we didn’t have one, we chose to just go ashore and explore.

Mayotte is an overseas department and region of France. It is part of the Comoros archipelago. It is located in the northern part of the Mozambique Channel in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Southeastern Africa, between Northwestern Madagascar and Northeastern Mozambique. French is the official language here and is spoken by an increasing part of the population but there are native languages still spoken too. 95% of the population is Muslim and most of the women dress in the conservative Muslim clothing. It is still Ramadan so we weren’t sure what might be open. The town was not at all crowded so that might be why.

Here are some pictures as we sailed toward the main city, Mamoudzou. We didn’t arrive until around 11. It is a tender port so we had lunch here and took a tender to shore around 12:30.

Once on shore, we were greeted by these people who were singing in their native language. The island is very lush and green and there are beaches but not near where we docked.

The day was hot and humid. I did get some shots of the ferry that runs constantly between the main island and the smaller island nearby.

We were on a mission to back up our phones since we haven’t had fast enough wifi since March 4! We first stopped into a cell phone provider (Orange) and the employee put their password in for us. It wasn’t fast enough. We then found a supermarket to purchase a couple of things we needed and went on to the tourist bureau where we again tried to do our back up. Norm was successful, but I was not, probably because of all the pictures on my phone. I will try again in Dubai next week. I am quite sure I will find fast wifi there.

There were two local markets that had mostly childrens clothes and some for adults, but nothing we wanted to buy. And they only took euros anyway – we didn’t have any.

I don’t know how or where I took this picture, but I think he is quite cute so I am including it!

Tomorrow we head to Madagascar where we do have a tour. We saw the lemurs last time we were here so I am not sure we will see them again. I am sure it will still be pretty hot!