Who would have thought that in the seventeenth century, on a tiny island in the Bay of Antongil in the north east of Madagascar Dutch sailors would be carving the rocks and leaving long detailed messages for one another. The’ post office’ at Nosy Mangabe is on the tourist trail, but it is also a site of great archaeological and historical interest. Sites like this with remaining evidence of human presence give insight into the ways that remote areas were used; as refuges from the wild winds and storms of the monsoons along the African coast; as resting places; as repair yards; and as nodes of communication between sailors mostly plying the trade routes to southern Asia.