 Norali's Mahajanga Travelogues | | | | Title [Click to view] | Travel Year | Pictures | | Misc pics... | - |  8 | | The Bombetoka bay - somewhere West | - | 3 |
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| Page Views: 166 Last Visit to Mahajanga: - | The Bombetoka bay - somewhere West by Norali - last update: Nov 30, 2005 |
| (c) earthobservatory.nasa.gov |
The octopussy bay
This is the photo that uses to fascinate me for some days... The Octopussy photo.
OK.. it is a satellite view of Bambetoka Bay... Bambetoka is a bay on Madagascar's West coast. It is sometimes referred to as Mahajanga Bay as it is the bay where lies the city of Mahajanga (Majunga, on the right bank).
Mahajanga is the second port of Madagascar, a city that used to be a trading area for cloves, spices, crustaceans...
For it being granted with a warm weather all year long, the Mahajanga area uses to welcome influxes of holidaymakers who go there to seek for some warm amidst the Malagasy winter. The West coast is warmer than anywhere else on the island, the Boina region in this Mahajanga province is the hottest.
Anyway, on the picture: the blue octopussy is the salted water mixing with freshwater from the inland. The Betsiboka river (that springs up in the North of Tana, then joins the Boina and Sakalava regions to end up in Canal de Mozambique) falls into the sea hence the everchanging colour of the octopussy and the banks.. sometimes blue, sometimes muddy, sometimes green.
That makes the sea in Mahajanga urban area look sometimes deep blue, red, ochre... anything but the crystal blue you'd appreciate further North of the Bay. The pink shades on the picture are due to the higher concetration of sediment.
Those green parts are islets or sometimes sandbanks.
How amazing that this picture uses to fascinate me (I saw the octopus in it !), yet, is showing the effects of erosion and landslides in Madagascar. The sediment that is trailed by Betsiboka into the sea is growing. That is because of the deforestaton: less and less trees to hold the soil, so rains and torrents just bring the sediment down to the sea... it's a signal, it's a warning.. and Madagascar has to face this type of phenomenon regularly, it's a challenge for its inhabitants, its politicians, its humans.. after all, what did the lemurs and the zébus do to trigger the erosion ? Nothing ! It's all due to humans.. humans, humans, humans...
However the image hypnotises me, I insist, I see an octopussy here. Don't you see it ? It's a blue octopussy, no ?
Needless to say, the estuary area is rich in mangrove. In some parts, it's under threaten as well. Broadly speaking, it's in a relatively sane situation. In the mangrove, we extract salt, we breed crustaceans (octopussy included ? ;-)), we cultivate rice and coffee.
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| (c) earthobservatory.nasa.gov |
|  | Same area, different events...
Floods in Boina region.. when Betsiboka river get flooded. Click on the picture to see the initial river bed (green). When got flooded, the waters get out of the bed, stocked up in the inlands and creating floods... The floods are those green-blueish surfaces at the right of the picture... and even at the left also (darker green-blue). You can't see it but within a week, the hopes of the thousands of peasants to harvest very soon have just vanished. A hurricane passes by and it has razzied everything: the crops, the hospitals, the houses... It uses to be so since moons and moons ago.
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| View on Katsepy bank from urban Mahajanga seafront |
| | Sunset on Bambetoka bay...
This view on Katsepy is mythical, for me. I was a kid when I first went on holidays in Mahajanga. I think I was 4 at that time. I even have a picture of me at that time, panicking on a tree along seafront. I was afraid of falling from the tree so i asked to step down. My dad (or probably one of my uncles) took advantage of it to snap something ... anyway, i'll scan it. If it's not in Mahajanga, it's Toamasina. Anyway...
The view on Katsepy is mythical because this is the only thing I remembered of the Mahajanga I saw at 4, so that when we returned there when I was 25, I was seeking for this view again. How do I remember it ? Katsepy is this land you see far far away at the horizon when you admire the view from seafront (click to see). I rememberd exactly my Dad saying "This is Katsepy". When I returned there at 25, I remembered about the view but not about the name of the other bank: Katsepy.
On the main picture, Katsepy is on the left.. It's the bank across the bay. |
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| Norali's Mahajanga Travelogues | | | | Title [Click to view] | Travel Year | Pictures | | Misc pics... | - | 8 | | The Bombetoka bay - somewhere West | - | 3 |
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 Comments for Norali about Mahajanga | | | | |
fabrice Fri Oct 19, 2007 09:22 UTC
ces baobabs et banians sont incroyables | AnitaJRT Sun Jan 22, 2006 17:15 UTC
Fabulous photo -- what a great "eye" you have!!! Great page. | Helga67 Fri Jun 24, 2005 06:35 UTC
There are some peculiar trees and I love the frangipani. Good tips | ukirsari Fri May 20, 2005 10:26 UTC
hi noor :) a nice page also here!!!! i am awaiting for summer hols :D |
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