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Ma Dernier journee de Madagacar, Afrique...
Here I am in Antananarivo (Tana), incredibly - I now i keep on saying that, but this time it really is true, really really!! - on my last day in Africa I am actually sending this from the airport as I await my flight to Bangkok to meet Pete. Its hard to put into words how excited I am about meeting up with Pete, so I won't try! I have also just realised that I am heading to my last continent that i have not as yet visited which is equally exciting. I have heard so many different stories of Bangkok - and how much of a shock it will be to my system following close on 2 months more or less living in the wilderness of SW Madagascar. Still it is with much anticipation that I board the plane now.
So myself and Vicky hopped on the pirogue bound for Morondava. There had been a lot of hullabaloo the previous three days of the expedition so it was with tired body (having been forced out of my 2100-0530 sleeping routine!!) that we left Andavadoaka 6am, and with that I think we both promptly fell asleep. This, might I add, is no mean feat on a pirogue on top of bags, where if one were to inadvertently roll over it would be into the Mozambique Channel! Consequently it seemed like no time before we arrived at Morombe,, some 20km north, and infact the winds were so good that it was no time - only 3 hours had passed! So our "piroguers" informed us that this would be the stop for the night! After much persuasion, they finally agreed that, us being in something of a hurry, maybe we could keep pushing on.
Push on we did, until the sea really started picking up and so we pulled in at surely the most remote village I have ever been to. The sense of remoteness was only added to by the now heavy winds as we brought the pirogue ashore, and the associated sand that it blowing absolutely everywhere! In attempting to get from a peninsula-type sand bar where the pirogue had been beached, we took the shortest route to the village. mistake. While the boys, being of a slight build, and moreover not carrying a 20kg rucksack just about managed to get across what can only be described as the softest of soft mud, yours truly here promptly sank! To the extent that while trying to put one foot in front of the other , the supporting foot only sank further and by the time the mud was past my knees I decided enough was enough and I was going nowhere, except down! Eventually though the boys did a few runs and unladen, i managed it across. This place was so remote that to get water to wash the water from all our legs (the tide now being well out) the villagers had to dig down in a "well" just back from the beach for about half an hour to get some water. Incredibly - from what we were led to believe - this was the only source of water in the village! After a while the boys made a makeshift tent from the sail and we settled down for the night at about 7pm after having the local delicacy of rice and parts of fish I would rather not think about...
Now, maybe it was those fish "parts", maybe it was the excess sun, or the lack of sleep and general feeling of being a little run down, or maybe all of the above but I think it is fair to say that the next day was the worst travel day of this trip, and moreover of my life thus far! After leaving at 5am, at about 8 or 9 - when the sun's strength really began to take hold - i felt a rather random shiver. That was the beginning, and my health deteriorated rapidly over the next few hours to the extent that by about midday I was shivering, hot, freezing, sweating, and with an absolutely pounding headache. Of course it was impossible to escape from the sun which is all I wanted to do, and of course with this the inevitable happened and I began to clock watch. When the sight of a zebra shark and a pod of dolphins swimming by cannot arouse my spirits thats when I knew I was in bad shape! I think the longest hour and half of my life was from the moment the boys informed us they could see Belo-sur-mer, until the point when we finally landed on the beach at about three thirty in the afternoon. Upon disembarkation, we crashed in the hotel were we landed - despite it not really fitting into the budget my strength would not bring me any further. So despite our urgency to get north, I knew it would be attempting suicide to travel again the next day in my state, and so for the next 36 hours I slept and ate myself to a level resembling health for us to get on the "road" again. Randomly, and definitely worth mentioning here is that I had one of the best fillet steaks I have ever had here for a whole 4 Euro!
Following a 4am start the next day a much healthier John, Vicky and Crew landed in the Morondava ta about 3pm. After settling into our Rastafarian, Hotel Oasis, we promptly headed to the place described in the guide book as having the best pizza and ice cream in Morondava. How right it was and I think we were both in paradise for an hour. We then quickly sorted out a 4x4 for the tour north to Tsingy National Park, bartering as best as possible in the short time period before having the one of the best fish dishes I have had to date and calling it a day. The next morning, with no time to spare really, we headed off in our rather the worse for wear, yet operational, Jeep Cherokee with our driver. Fortunately when stopping off for lunch (in another town called Belo) I spotted a few back packers wondering rather aimlessly down the street. Plucking up my courage in my best Francais, I asked them if they were bound for Tsingy and if so would they like to come with us to share costs. They sure were and sure did and so of we went. It was actually really refreshing that the two ladies had absolutely not a word of English and so I was forced to really push my French to converse. I quickly discovered that I knew a lot more than I thought, and while I'm quite sure my grammar was absolute rubbish we had some good old chats for the next 4 or 5 hours. This has only served to reinforce how desperate I am to become in some way bilingual and strengthened my resolve to see through the now (rapidly!) approaching Buenos Airies experiment! Should it be a success I need to get back to French as I am sure with not a huge amount of study I could become more than conversational in it. Still one thing at a time!
We had a great few days in Tsingy, see photos attached and it was great to finally get to our ultimate destination and have even just one day not traveling. The place is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and rightfully so, as the limestone formations are ones to marvel at and the "sportif" tours up, down, over, around and even under them were fantastic! The highlight tho was probably, whilst on a river tour, when our guide spotted something clinging to the side of the rock river bank. I had my fingers crossed I was finally going to see that elusive crocodile that i still haven't seen, but upon closer inspection it turned out to be a Lemur! It was the nocturnal sportif Lemur and it seemed that it got its sums wrong for a jump the previous night and had fallen into the river! The poor thing was terrified, but the guide was great with it and the rescue mission was something of a success; the reason I say something of a success being that the guide brought it to land on the other side of the river and so the poor little b***** had to start a new life in a new land!
On the way back down we broke up the journey by stopping again in Belo sur Tsiribihina, where we stayed in the most dainty and exquisite little hotel that traveling could have been pulled straight out of France. I love when the world pulls out random surprises like that! I had the biggest prawns I have ever seen and a great breakfast the next morning to boot! We spent the next night camping at Kirindy forest park where we went Lemur and Mongoose spotting and the next morning we left Kirindy for Morondava at 6am in order to catch a taxi-brusse to 'Tana which "depart" at midday.....
So after much loading, unloading, and reloading the same things only in a different order, we finally pulled out of the gare just after 2, i.e. more or less on time. Some 2 hours, and a colossal 45kms later we pulled in for a coke break for us and a water break for the brusse. That a leak in the radiator had surfaced already wasn't a huge surprise given the age of the old thing, but we quickly got on the road again only to have a more enforced (i.e. actual break down!) in the middle of the desert! We thought we had it bad until the other taxi brusse - we were traveling in convoy(ish) - pulled up beside us, and proceeded to strip their left front break as they had let the pad run to non existence. I think maybe they had been talking to Dublin Bus about getting the most out of ones parts!! 1 km later I was even more grateful to be in our taxi as we descended I am sure 500m in not 5 km!
Queue several pit stops through the night to top up our old horse and arrival in a town some 150km south of Tana at around 630am. So that was our 24 hour marker since traveling commenced the previous morning. We were starting to decipher that our arrival in Tana by 9am by the latest wasn't quite going to hold true at this point. The town, Antisarbe, was to be our switch to a new taxi brusse, with only 4 of the remaining passengers continuing onward to Tana. To cut what is already a really long story a little shorter, after much bribing police officers to get confiscated travel certs back and to and froing up and down Antisarbe we left, now with some 22 passengers in a 14 person van. At somewhere close to 3pm we finally landed in our budget hotel for the night, all in that a brief calculation leaves us at about 750 km travelled in 36 hours, coming it a lovely average speed of about 20kmh! And that my friends is traveling in Madagascar!!!
Plans to try and catch the Ireland-Kiwi game - which in themselves were a long shot - were put to an abrupt end when after returning to the hotel for a quick nap around 6pm I woke up at 11pm! Just aswell from what I gather already. Some 12 hours later of very much needed deep sleep followed before Vicky departed to the north of the Island to meet Fleur (a fellow volunteer) for some more diving in Nosy Be and I spent the day at leisure catching up with what the world had gone on with during our absenteeism from it for the last 7 weeks.
A great place, met some great new friends and many I can call into in all parts of the world. Superb getting to meet a lot of proper malagasy and know their ways. This place is off the charts and you literally spend months exploring it (as you can see you need them!) but all that traveling is more often than not so rewarding. So I bid a happy farewell to Africa and travel with bated breath for what South East Asia, and moreover SE Asia combined with Pete Mac is going to bring my way.....
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