Blogs from Belo sur Tsiribihina, Madagascar, Africa

Goodbye tarmac! After a short drive towards the coast from Miandrivazo we turned off on a sandy track to transfer to a 4x4 pickup truck. That is the last tarmac we will see for 10 days. Our destination was a shallow draft river cruiser moored to a sand bank. They have the look of a faded royal barge with a top sun deck. The engine at the back is Chinese made (isn't everything) and is designed for milling rice. The petrol and cooling water are fed from plastic jerry cans. The accelerator is a piece of string. The noise when steering is deafening. It is the end of the dry season so the river is at its lowest. The captain has to carefully steer to stay in the deepest part of the river and when he ... read more

So, we finally made the flight and arrived in Antananarivo (Tana for short), where our guide Nolavy was waiting for us once we left the ridiculously time-consuming immigration formalities. Nolavy recommended we change our money there, about $150 - $250 USD. So, I had $160 to change. We were taken out to a pretty nice red bus that was quite comfortable, much better than our transport in Zimbabwe. We loaded up on snacks at a nearby gas station, the nicest one by far we saw the entire trip. Since we had missed a day due to our missed connection, we had had to condense our schedule, which meant a 9 hour drive to our destination. 9 hours. It started out well enough, we were chatting and getting to know each other, listening to music, enjoying the ... read more

Fortunately 2.5 days of increasingly uncomfortable seating in the pirogues has prepared us for what comes next - a ride on a zebu cart. Zebu are the cattle with lyre-shaped horns that originated in south Asia - they're ubiquitous in Madagascar and on Madagascan menus. We need to cover several kilometres to a village and initially we walk behind the carts on which the zebu are pulling our luggage. However at a muddy part of the track we're encouraged to jump on. Needless to say, sitting on lumpy rucksacks while being jolted over rough terrain loses its appeal quite quickly, even more so when you get spattered by the mud/shit mixture that the zebus' hooves are constantly flicking up. We pass through a small settlement where, depressingly, the adults want money in order for pictures to ... read more