Sailing Spot: Mangrove groove

In northern Madagascar, Donal Conlon hitches a ride on a traditional cargo carrier for a cruise down the Loza Lagoon

The Loza, pronounced Lush, is in northwestern Madagascar and is an estuary connecting the town of Antsohihy to the village of Analalava at its mouth and the Indian Ocean.

It is reachable only by boat in the rainy season, when the track through the hilly, wooded terrain becomes impassable. For one guide book, the estuary resembles a fjord.

There is a boutre at the quay being loaded with bags of cement and granite stones. The captain, Mustapha, agrees to take my motorbike and me down the 110km - the six-hour trip costing à7.

Three young men load my bike onto the boutre with some hilarity. These boats, the workhorses of the Indian Ocean for centuries, are large, wooden cargo carriers, ideal for plying the coasts of this huge island where roads are few; as well as for working the river, as it has a small on-board motor.

"Slow but sure," says Mustapha.

He is in his 40s, has a swarthy complexion, jet-black wiry hair and a generous moustache, buccaneer style.

His tillerman has the air of a pirate and his shirtless three-man crew have bodies that look gym-moulded.

The massive tidal difference in the estuary has to be respected. At low tide, the estuary is just a trickle of muddy water along the quay where now, at high tide, the boutre rocks gently in deep water. We push off as the tide turns.

Mustapha is mayor of a local commune, an important man locally. Our cargo of 25 tons is supplies to set up a drinking-water system in his village. I express my admiration for the initiative but then comes scepticism. There are local elections next year. Mustapha buys the materials, sells them to the local authority, transports them and gets some credit - it all makes commercial and political sense.

We pass through a narrow channel densely fringed with mangroves; the estuary is busy, with pirogues carrying goods and produce to or from the town. They are piled high with green bananas and bags of charcoal going to market; with mattresses and bicycles, boxes of provisions and many unidentifiable things going home.

Against the tide, paddlers' backs glisten with sweat. At times, pirogues are lashed together for shared effort or colourful lambas are tied to masts trying to catch some breeze. Water, for these people, is as much their element as land. Pirogues disappear into and emerge out of narrow channels in the mangroves. Houses and homes are somewhere away in the distance, invisible; soft folds of mountains are far away.

I take a photo of a couple in a passing pirogue. She stands and, with a smile, extends her hand for money. I throw her a kiss and her husband catches her as she almost falls overboard with laughter.

I watch the mangroves slide by on either side, the trees with their rubbery leaves indistinguishable from each other. Their distinctive roots - they can grow both vertically up or down and horizontally and can twist into intricate Gothic shapes - are hidden by the swirling waters.

Our tillerman, wearing large, red ear-mufflers, stares fiercely ahead or at the mangroves as if expecting spear-wielding natives in dugout canoes to appear from hiding places. I think of Conrad's Heart of Darkness but we pass in peace.

Towards noon, a tarpaulin is draped for shade and another is spread out as a table cloth. We share beans and rice.

The kitchen on deck, with its two permanent wood fires, is furnished with three large, black cast-iron pots: they simmer with something or other throughout the trip.

After lunch, the "fierce" tillerman shows his sensitive side - he makes coffee gravely and tenderly. He drips boiling water into a muslin bag filled with local coffee. He watches the liquid drip into a large plastic plug which, when full with the strong black brew, he then tosses back into a pot of boiling water. He spoons in sugar, watching it sizzle and dissolve, tasting continually. He smacks his lips then serves me, with his pirate's grin, a deliciously sweet back coffee in a small, pink plastic mug. As he grins I notice he has but two teeth, a right-sided top one and a left-sided bottom one. They are long, yellow and fanglike; I think they suit him admirably.

The mangroves thin out and disappear slowly and thatched wooden huts and small villages begin to appear on muddy banks. The water is full of unloved jelly fish with their pumping motion. Mustapha, who has never tasted alcohol in his life, chain smokes, squinting towards the horizon or brooding on the cloudy water.

The estuary widens into a great lake 10km across, the water becomes choppy and Mustapha has one of the crew step gingerly out along the bowsprit to unfurl a double jib but the breeze is lackadaisical. As neither tide nor wind is favourable, the boutre anchors in a sheltered bay near the mouth and will make for the village pier in the morning.

The two other passengers and I are paddled ashore and we cross a small hill and follow the path into town. We walk down the main street, its dust and sand quickly filling our shoes.

The passengers and I are befriended by a girl on the way into town. We all have a drink in a wooden shack in the centre of town. One passenger is prospecting for blue agate for a Chinese man in the capital; the other is visiting family. The girl is looking for a drink and some company.