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Published: January 10th 2017
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We got to Antanaranivo, or Tana, as Madagascar's capital city is thankfully abbreviated, in early December. It was a busy place. Especially between 12:00 and 3:00, when everyone travels from work and school for lunch and siestas. We found the traffic, smog, and constant tropical heat and humidity made exploring the city a little challenging. At least the cars drove on the "right" side of the road-- both Peru and Tanzania were left lane drivers and often made for some adventurous street crossings for us. Not that crossing the street in Tana was easy though, we still had to be wary of the ubiquitous speeding yellow tuk-tuks and endless old French cars.
One of the first things we did in Tana was to take a guided walking tour, where we learned lots. It turns out Madagascar is one of the 10 poorest countries in the world, which is saying something. Our tour guide gave us an interesting perspective: Malagasy folks are either poor or rich. Poor meant they made the equivalent of $1 US a day or less. They were able to buy rice to eat three times a day and that's about it. He told us the 'rich' made
about $2 a day, they had enough resources to eat three times a day, and were able to buy some luxury items such as food that wasn't rice. Coming from our spoiled Canadian upbringing we saw it as poor, or dirt poor. About 40% of the population is under the age of 15. A big question we couldn't help dwelling on was why so many families would have so many children when they could hardly feed themselves, let alone any children.
But enough philosophizing and back to cool things we've seen and done. One interesting highlight of our African travels is how often a taxi driver stopped to get gas while en route to our destination, even on very short trips. Or even better, once we had to give some cash to our motorcycle drivers so they could go buy gas for our journey first, and then they returned to pick us up. We were pretty worried we've never see them again but it all worked out!
Our travels here have coincided with the mango season, which has been fantastic! We've decided that the unofficial national pastime here is chucking rocks at tree branches to get at the
mangos. We could hardly count the times we heard leaves and twigs being smashed by a thrown rock, and then saw a smiling child after he had successfully dislodged his target.
The official pastime here may actually be pétanque, a sport that closely resembles what we would call bocce ball. It seems to be played everywhere! While we were in Tana, the national team won the world cup and we saw them being paraded through town. It was a very big deal, almost like when Team Canada wins the Olympic Hockey gold medal!
After a few days of exploring Tana (the markets were spectacular and the fresh lychees, 1 kg for 1000 ariary or about 50 cents, were particularly delicious despite their disturbing resemblance to eyeballs), we caught a bus to head to Majunga, on the west coast. For a change we splurged on a "luxury" van, it was relatively spacious and carried only 5 passengers. We could stop on demand for road-side washroom breaks too -- all of this is the opposite of the taxi-brousses we've mentioned before where we never knew how long we'd have to hold it or how many people we'd be squished against.
The van made for an enjoyable 10 hour drive, where we drove across part of the island interior and were pleasantly surprised by the stunning landscape along the way. The red soil, rolling hills, and some super-green grass made up for the almost complete lack of trees. Some of the valleys were a brilliant green, maybe made more brilliant green for us because of the endless fields of brown we'd seen in the dry Serengeti recently. Nifty rice terraces followed many of the rivers and creeks that wove through the valleys. Mud homes, made from the red mud bricks were very square and basic but picturesque.
When we arrived in Majunga, the second largest city in Madagascar, happily we were not engulfed by a hungry school of taxi driver piranhas. It may have had to do with the van dropping us off at a hotel rather than a bus station. Another good reason to take the luxury van! We had a straightforward easy walk to our hotel, which had lots of space for us (despite what one of the locals had worryingly told us on the bus). We had a huge room, private bathroom and two portable fans! The
fans were key, due to the oppressive heat! We actually tucked the mosquito net around a fan so it cooled us all night long. Our hotel was a little bit outside of town so we ate dinner at a rather fancy lodge across the street. We were worried it would be pretty expensive, but we didn't really have many options that late at night. We were in for a pleasant surprise -- we had an incredible seafood meal with more shrimp than one really needs to eat, including olives as an appetizer (!) and a home-made bootleg aperatif for a mere $20. It made having to spend a little more time in the town well worth it!
As we had arrived late on Saturday night, everything was closed on Sunday, so we could not get to the park we wanted to visit until Monday. There wasn't much to report about Majunga, other than the Corniche, which was a really nice walkway along the sea. The Corniche was super quiet during the day, but everyone and their dog went out during the evening. At first we thought it had to be some special event, maybe something to do with Christmas.
But we soon found out that it was just the place to be on a weekend evening. There were balloons, all kinds of street food, a small carnival with some ancient rides (we had thought that our pop-up fair rides at home look sketchy...), and those mechanical toy jeeps that children can sit in and drive themselves - only they didn't actually work so some poor guy had to push the kids up and down the Corniche.
After a visit to the local tourism office we hired a guide to take us to Cirque Rouge for a hike. Cirque Rouge is a photogenic canyon created by rain erosion, it had almost a rainbow of different coloured layers. Our guide and taxi driver, Fidel, was great. His car, not so much. Nothing worked quite right, yet somehow it got us where we had to go! We were not used to getting guides, but we've found it mandatory in most parks here and have come to realize that they are usually well worth the money. We stopped along the way to the canyon to learn about 'sand in a bottle' art, and we stopped again on the way back at a
beach bar and had time to talk with Fidel and learn more about Madagascar. He was so kind, not to mention desperate for work (as most people here are) that we ended up hiring him the next day to drive us to the park 2 hours away. The original plan was to take a taxi-brousse for a fraction of the cost of the taxi, but Nancy was hit with some stomach troubles and we could not fathom being squashed into a 12 person minivan with 20 other people....the repercussions could have been disastrous for all aboard!
Our time in Ankarafantsika National Park was wonderful. We spent two and a half days exploring forest. We can't really say that we were hiking, because we were on a mission to experience the diverse flora and fauna Madagascar is famous for. We could easily spend 3 hours walking 4 km. Our guide here, Gildas, once again proved to be invaluable and went above and beyond. He even took Fraser to a local lunch spot and also brought us back to his village for dinner and a night hike. It was really rewarding to know that there are still so many people in
the service industry that want to work hard for their clients.
Here's a sample of the wildlife we saw at Ankarafatsika: Western sportive lemur, mongoose lemur, coquette sifaka lemur, common brown lemur, mouse lemur, paradise flycatcher, crested coa, giant madagascar chameleon, rhinoceros chameleon, hognose snake, crested hoopoe, whitebreasted mesite, and the Schlegels asity. So many critters!
Fraser enjoyed pointing out to Nancy all the great wildlife living in our campground bathroom. These included, but weren't limited to: a land leech slithering around the floor; numerous geckos large and small; ground lizards of all sizes; bats hanging on the wall; a scorpion in the shower; and various impressive spiders. Nancy was not sure if the knowledge was helpful. Needless to say she went nowhere without her shoes and headlamp and maybe had Fraser conduct a pre-shower inspection. Other highlights included seeing some baby birds up close in a nest, seeing two song birds nestled together sleeping on our night hike, and (Warning -- some may not wish to read this next piece) an enormous 10 foot boa living under the park bungalows across the road from us!
One of our quintessential Madagascar experiences that happened at the park
was eating fresh mangoes just knocked out of a tree by overhead lemurs. Another favourite lemur experience was watching lemurs bound through the branches of a nearby tree while we ate breakfast at the campground restaurant. Funny that after several long treks around the park some of the best wildlife we saw was within 100 metres of the park office.
After a couple nights at the park we were ready to move on. Ankarafatsika Park was hours from any real town, so the only transport option for us was a taxi-brousse to head north. We had prearranged for a pick-up in the park. This turned into a much bigger adventure than we imagined and deserved a blog entry all of its own.
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