Blogs from Madagascar, Africa - page 29

So here we are. Mango town. We have never seen so many mangoes in one place. Ever. On the trees, strewn all over the floor. Mangoes are eaten for breakfast & lunch, the after-school game was throwing mangoes at the mango tree and eating the fallen mangoes and dinner was.... Mangoes! Raay! Inevitably it stank of fermenting fruit. The local bin men were obviously on strike or something. Following the river trip, the second half of the tour was a visit to the Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park in western Madagascar. The journey there was quite nice - initially driving along tracks past paddy fields, then lunch and a river ferry at Belo Tsribinha - Eric had to get out of the "ferry" and help push it across the river, much to the amusement of the ... read more

Numero trois Sunday 1st December 2007 Tulear - Chez Lala 13:42 (UK) / 16:42 (Madagascar) Oh my goodness it is hot. Really hot. Tulear may be only 500km south of Tana, but it is also at sea level and thus it is 10 degrees warmer - approaching 40ºC! At least there is little humidity, making this a walk in the park compared to my trip to Goa. The last two days have been slow. My brain and body are finding it hard to adapt; from being on full on the accelerator since August I have been forced to stop because everything is shut here! Don’t get me wrong you can buy a mango / sweet potato / bottle of THB at ant time of day but banks, internet places and office are open infrequently (9 - ... read more

On arriving in Tana we had booked ourselves into what turned out to be an awesome hotel called Sakamanga, Malagasy for Blue Cat, with the intention of shopping around the city for a few days for a canoe trip down the Tsiribinha river. "It's never a good idea to jump at the first offer to come along" is our first travel motto. So when the taxi driver who picked us up from the airport (and also the first person we met in Madagascar) happened to mention that his cousin had a trip leaving the following day for the river we jumped. "Never pass up an opportunity for a cheap river trip" being our second travel motto. Our rough (and extremely open to change) plan was to do a fairly standard river trip down the Tsiribinha river ... read more

Tana Banana After freezing in London, it was quite a blast to get out of the airport in Antananarivo after 23 hours of travel time, out into 25 degrees... or so it felt! Tana. What most people seem to call this bustling city of rolling hills covered in houses and people. The ride in was a lot of green to me...green rice paddies, green trucks carrying green bananas, but not a very green country environmentally...or higienically! Bel Zebu, Bub Well done, please. It is actually the local buffalo, served everywhere, often cheaper than pork! Zebu steak, delicious! In some local places it costs actually less than a Euro, with rice and broth...the beer costs more! 6 Horses, 4 Fish, 1.5 Lobster Okay, I am a firm believer in coincidences (not!), so when these things happen, I ... read more

Heading Getting ready and already dealing with fotoana gasy (Malagasy time) Now that our trip is officially one month away, Jessica, Wendy and I are trying to book our plane tickets to Diego- so we either pay 50 dollars on top of the tourist price to get them sent to the US, or we very kindly ask Wendy to get the peace corps travel agent to book them for us and hope that the dollar becomes stronger in the next 2 weeks. I think we are doing the latter. ... read more