A friend of mine once said that the trouble when you get older is that, “ no one sees you anymore”. This was rich coming from a very tall woman with really strong body language and warm expressive eyes. Being visible, or should I say invisible, reaches new heights here.

I commented the other day that in village life, Nosy Be style, I was largely ignored, allowing me to sneak a few pic’s, but the place I am staying now, in Belle-vue, just up the coast, takes this to a new level.

It is a first for me, to be lying on a sunbed on a tropical island, clearly an outsider, and no one even glancing over at me. Where are the normal smiley colourful beach hawkers? Selling shell anklets, colourful sarongs and – where was it – the Caribbean- where a man walked the beach with a 2 metre wooden galleon for sale? A man clearly unaware that his prospective clients only have a 23kg baggage allowance.

Here there is none of that. The scene passing before me is simple village life. The beach is just a short cut to what would normally be the route along the tarmac road running parallel to the beach. Girls all in navy blue school aprons chattering on their way back from school, boys knocking around a football, a couple of women walking through with a baby in arms, a woman carrying a clear plastic tote box of wares on her head. A boy running the beach with light weight dumbbells in his hands. Then lots of people foraging for food in the low tide and, late afternoon, a couple of wooden sail boats heading to the fishing grounds.

Hardly a busy day at the beach. If it wasn’t for the overactive scurrying of large crabs up, down and across it felt strangely post apocalyptic.

The solitude, and silence, are so special.

You know that you are spending too much time alone (not) when you lift your head and say, out loud, “ oh my god…the view is so beautiful here.”

It is a family joke that wherever I go, I want to buy a house. Well that’s just silly. I am not buying a house here. Of course I’m not.

….I’m thinking to buy an island. Nosy Tanga – opposite – uninhabited.