Day 15, Tuesday, May 13, 2008 We set off for the southern portion of our Madagascar visit. We drove to Antsirabe in two 2 hour trips. In the middle, we stopped at Ambatolampy for lunch which was a typical Malagasy affair and took about 1.5 hours. When you combine the slow French restaurant style with Malagasy mora-mora, meals can take forever. After lunch, we went to see an aluminum smelting operation. They bring in bags of metal scraps and hand sort them for the aluminum parts. They then melt them down in big outdoor melting pots heated by wood fire. They [View Full Entry]

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March 25 - March 28 Time to get started to update you on what has happened for the past two months. With luck I can get at least one blog entry done before I have to sign off and get something to eat. So, I left Canada on March the 25 - starting with a snowing, blowing and frankly awful drive to Pearson International from Grand Bend. There Mom and Dad (can I get a collective "aawwww" here?) paid for the KLM lounge so I could wait in comfort for my flight. And comfort it was. Thanks guys! The KLM flight [View Full Entry]

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Well, guessing by the volume of emails in my inbox, everyone is wondering where I've been since the last post. The answer: Madagascar! Home to chamelons, lemurs and baobobs, the spiny forest and huge freaking spiders. For those of you who don't know, for the last eight weeks I've been travelling and volunteers in a small village on the southwest coast of Madagascar called Andavadoaka (Andava for short - lots of names get shortened in Mad). This place is so remote, there aren't any phones there, let alone internet, and it takes a 12 - 36 hour camion (French for truck, [View Full Entry]

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Day 9, Wed, May 7, 2008 We were supposed to go to ANGAP today, but were given a rest day instead. ANGAP is the organization in Madagascar with the task of protecting the national parks - I hope we get there eventually. I went to an internet café in the morning while Josh and Stu went for a run which required an elevated level of situation awareness. Later, Josh, Stu and I ran some errands and got multivitamins at the pharmacy. It rained for the first time today and it was spectacular. There were intermittent torrential downpours then drizzling on and [View Full Entry]

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Day 8, Tuesday, May 6, 2008 We left early to go to the University of Antnanarivo to meet the University President and department heads and then visit with some of the departments. Unfortunately, once we got there the President had been called away, so we met with the Vice-Dean and someone from the English Department and the Forestry Department. The University is in the process of switching from the French system to the British system and converting teaching from French to English. The University has 25K students, the majority of which are Masters students which is apparently something diff [View Full Entry]

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Here qre some more photos from our first week. [View Full Entry]

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Just to let you all know, I am currently in a private game reserve with my parents in the Transfrontier Park (which includes Kruger) in South Africa, sitting in the most luxurious lodge I have ever, and most likely will ever, stay in my entire life. But taking you back almost a month now, things weren't so luxurious. We began our first adventure in Madagascar on a 5 hour minibus ride with our guide, cook, and other trip-mate Markus on a road that took us from Antsirabe to Miandrivazo, a small town 160km from the west coast. The first night was [View Full Entry]

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Day 3, Thursday, May 1, 2008 We didn’t have anyone scheduled to come get us until 12:30 so we wandered around the area. The house has a large wall around the property and so does every other nice house on the block. The street is more an unpaved alley between these large walls. The streets are clay with large gullies formed by runoff. Once we got a block away from where we were staying, the nice walled estates gave way to shanty towns built right off the road. Two blocks away from the house is the local dump where adults, children [View Full Entry]

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Our month in Madagascar will be blogged extensively, however with these french keyboards I would get too frustrated and short change what has been an amazingly unique experience. So when I get back to South Africa, I will write all about being deathly ill while lying in a canoe in 46 degree heat, and posing as a french photographer to get full backstage access to a massive outdoor beer/music festival. Hope all is well at home, I miss you all very much. [View Full Entry]

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This country is wild!!! I can't exactly write an extensive entry, because this French keyboard drives me up the wall, but I thought an update was necessary. The city of Maputo was fantastic. Very functional, affordable, and had many western comforts it felt that we had been without for far too long. We ate well, caught up on the sporting world (mostly negative for Vancouver fans), and went to a jam-packed nightclub to dance the night away. Our bus ride into Johanessburg was a piece of cake, because a relative of Will's was there to get us from the infamous Park [View Full Entry]

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