Antsirabe

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On our journey North we spend a night in Ambositra. We visit the restaurant with the supposedly 'best' pizza in Madagascar, awful! We are also subjected to a Nigerian evangelical TV programme too, where the women scream as the devil takes over their body and they attack another woman! The weather has turned to rain so we don't do much in this town. It is famous for crafts so I buy a silk scarf but then we continue North.
We visit Lake Tritriva, this is supposed to be naturally the shape of Madagascar. There is a Malaasy legend that two love crossed lovers drowned themselves in the lake and many people come to perform sacrifices. While we are there we see a sacrifice where a couple are praying for their newborn baby, they have a live chicken next to them which is about to meet its end...
We spend a night in Antsirabe as it is close to Tana for our next flight. There is not much to do in the town and the lonely planet's 'pick' hotel is not our cup of tea so we spend a while viewing rooms in other hotels, finally finding one with hot water! We visit the ArcoIris restaurant for dinner, it's packed so we can only just fit in and we finish both their flavours of planteur. We do return to the 'pick' hotel, it's a Chinese one stop shop, hotel, restaurant, casino and nightclub... The nightclub is the standard, white men, local women possibly prostitutes. Strange music mix though, up to date pop, then 60s medley, then French music, you just don't know what you're going to get! We arrive there in a pousse pousse, the Malagasy tuk tuk, pulled by an elderly man. Andrew decides to have a go and pulls us most of the way there, while me and the driver relax in the seat. We make a deal for him to pick us up later, but due to intoxication he has to pull us all of the way back to the hotel.
The next day we drive back to Tana, picking up two of Rivo's brothers on the way. After we've filled the tank for his return journey we're off to catch our flight to Mauritius.

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