#49 - Highland villages on the RN7

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Anbositra and the highland villages 22-25 June 2008

Well, do we have some stories to tell about our 2nd week in Madagascar! Bush-taxi trips, pousse-pousses, wild weather, village chiefs, bandits and a unique national celebration made the past week one to remember.

Choosing to give the pricy tourist busses the flick, we quickly got the gist of the local bus (aka taxi-brousse/bush-taxi) system and left Antananarivo in our wake, heading south on the smooth and pleasant RN7. Our first stopover was Antsirabe, a large highland town that was in colonial days a weekend destination for the upper class, and today retains only the touts, souvenir industries and pousse-pousses....thousands upon thousands of them. A bit like a backwards wheelbarrow with a seat for passengers, the pousse-pousse provides employment (in other words an alternative to unemployment) for around 10,000 local men. Barefoot and unwashed, they swarm like flies to a BBQ around anything on legs that might need a lift somewhere. A tourist, even better. A tourist carrying bags, look out! Don't bother trying to outrun them, they're super fit. Don't try to hide, they know where your staying and which restaurant you're in. In Antsirabe all you can do is let them win, because the only peace is in the back of a pousse-pousse.

After a night there we continued to Ambositra (pronounced 'Ambushed'), which is a friendly, picturesque town where we spent Julie's birthday and organised a trek to a few traditional villages of the Zafimaniry people. The trek was magic. We did a 35km circuit, starting and ending in Amboetra, and overnighting in Sakaivo, a drop-dead gorgeous village on the side of a breathtaking green valley of rice paddys, waterfalls and moss covered granite rock faces reaching to the sky. On the afternoon of our first day we were hit by a ferocious hail storm while trying to cross a narrow granite outcrop no more than 3 metres wide and with a sheer drop on either side, which for us was a damp but thrilling obstacle, but for the Italian group in front of us was pure hell! Our guide carried with him a live chicken for the whole day and at night we watched him kill it, prepare it and share it between us and the 95 year old village chief. Emanuel, or 'Monsieur Chef' as we called him, told us all about the history of his village and was very interested in where we come from and, in particular, how we breathe underwater using bottles of gas (refering to our recent scuba diving trips in Africa). For Julie's birthday, he presented us with a 600ml coke bottle of local rum, which he helped us drink after making an offer in the traditional way to his ancestors in the North-Eastern corner of the smoky timber hut. In return, we presented him with my new straw hat, a necklace and a badge from Australia.

Speaking of his timber hut, it was absolutely amazing. Built using traditional methods unique to that ethnic group, it contained no nails or other fixing implements and had apparently sustained cyclones and all for the past 73 years. Each house is put together and intricately decorated by local sculptures, who also craft the furniture and, of course, try to sell you their other handywork at every opportunity. The down side is that they've stripped the local area of trees and are facing a rather grim future if the government doesn't deliver it's promised (and perhaps far-fetched) hydro power station.

Returning to Amboetra through apparently bandit infested country side (being the local market day in town), we dined with our guide's parents before heading back to our hotel in Ambositra. Being the eve of Madagascar's Independence Day celebrations, we were invited to our guide's house for a dinner of freshly killed duck, and then again for breakfast to finish the leftovers. For Independence day, us two 'BAZARs' (as the local kids call white people) joined the crowd of onlookers at the Centre Ville for a medal ceremony and parade of every school, club, institute, association and armed body in the whole district, before jumping on a bus to the next major town, Fianarantsoa. So, after 4 hours in a 15 seat minivan packed with 26 people, one chicken and one duck, I found myself here, in a town at the end of a railway that tomorrow will take us to the ocean for our last week in Madagascar. Who knows what surprises are in store. Stay tuned for more.

Dreaming of an adventure like ours? Find out how we did it at JulieAndDariansWorldTourGuide.com

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