amazing people and beautiful nature

Before leaving Europe for Madagascar, I was pretty nervous. Will volunteers and staff be friendly and fun? Will the diving be an good? Will I get sick? All these worries were blown away on arrival in Andava, the little village where BV has its camp. The huts (4 person huts, we were 3 girls sharing) are overlooking a beautiful bay. They are basic but totally sufficient, each hut even has a flushing toilet (luxury in that part of the world) and a salt water shower.
Volunteers were amazing. The age range on my expedition was from 18 to 60 and we all bonded instantly (being on the overland tour at the beginning of the trip was helpful). Staff was very helpful, cheerful, knowledgabe and seemed to enjoy their jobs. Malagasy people were always friendly and welcoming, even with the language barrier (French might be helpful but not as much as I thought). And shopping trips to the village for our daily sugar rationing in the form of bocu-bocu, a local kind of "donut" were always fun, people interested and open.
The first couple of weeks were lots of studying: fish, benthic, diving. But being right next to the ocean, having sand everywhere, being salty all the time, going diving every day: for me it was mind-blowingly beautiful! Not even the adminittedly basic, monotonous food (white bread and honey for breakie; rice, beans and fish for lunch and dinner) could harm my enthusiasm. Special treats were trips to the baobab trees, to the seacucumber pens in another village, to go search spider tortoises, sailing trips in pirogues and party nights on saturdays.
The diving was very diverse. We had everything from 2-30m visibility, saw lots of broken corals from the last hurricane and lots of beautiful hard- and softcoral. Of course also lots of fish, and we were able to ID most of them ;)
I learned so much from this expedition. I learned a lot about life in the ocean and about living with the ocean. But also what it means to live in a third world country, where people still live without electricity, bathrooms, or any other kind of luxury. (don't worry, the expedition huts have power for 7 hours a day from a generator and as mentioned, they have bathrooms).
I loved staying in such a remote area, being around awesome people and living right next to and with the ocean. I would definitely recommend this program. It was a wonderful, rewarding and live-changing experience.