To the roots of the schooner building

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Geo: -20.7401, 44.0081

...Well...It was clear to me right on arrival on the outskirts of Morondava...haha, outskirts, sounds like I am approaching a big city...no, but I remember from 2009 that around 40km before Morondava, people where walking the streets and carried along anything they could carry in order to sale it in Morondava on the market.

What become clear immediately on arrival in Morondava itself...Hell, the entire road has been paved all the way down to the beach...Gone are the good days...From now on people's mind will get manipulated by the bad city people...A paved road into a village, be it any village in the world, will change the mindset of the locals to the bad...

Indeed it already happened in Morondava...I basically decided to leave that town almost right away...Well, I was very tired from my 500km motorbike ride from Miandrivazo to Morondava in one day.

I decided to stay at my old favorite hotel, Les Philaos...Well, what has happened here...The hotel has been entirely renovated...with the renovation came a price increase of about 400%...Ciao Bella...no longer for me...Besides that, the hotel owner died on "mysterious" reasons...Ok, I will not get into that...

I decided to stay at the neighbors place, Morondava Beach...As usual, I am the only tourist at the place...Be it high season, low season, whatever season...It's always empty

Next morning arrived...I took my motorbike and decided to check out the road towards Belo Sur Mer...Did I say road? What a laugh...Sure, the first section is now paved but as soon as I turned to the south into a small path that is leading through forests, rather deep river sections, saline fields, knee deep sand stretches...did I forget anything...yes...kneed deep sand everywhere...what a joke it is to ride with any bike...No fun at all and certainly no fun with my cheap chink bike...

Ok...I agree...it's about time I am explaining the meaning of "chink bike"...I have met many, many, really many seasoned travelers during my 30+ years of venturing...Only about 3 people understood the meaning of chink right away as I mentioned it, the rest looked puzzled into the air.

Here it comes...My explanation, the meaning, which evolved over the past 20 years into the real understanding of the word chink and anything associated with it, such as chink bike.

The word evolved during my many years in Vietnam, even so the Chinese are actually meant with it.

A chink in Vietnam, be it female or male is associate with being extremely greedy, extreme egoistic, extreme bad manners within their perimeter...hmmh...not all captured yet...If you read this and like to know, leave a comment and I will elaborate on it further.

So I came to the river you see in the video where the car is just passing through...Unfortunately I haven't recorded the entire passing...Their are extreme deep pockets, my bike would simply submerge entirely...After already going through 10km of deep sands now passing the river just to get to another section of deep sand...I decided to abort...abort entirely...

On my way back into town I met a french guy...The french in Madagascar are very friendly, not so much like the typical french and what you would associate with them...We talked a bit and he told me that he is leaving to Belo Sur Mer the very next morning on a cargo schooner...We went down to the port to meet the el capitano and inquired if I could go along on the passage together with my beloved chink bike...

Sure I could...Nect morning at 4am we started...The bike got loaded onboard already the evening before...Funny...Being in a very alien country...dirt poor people all around you...One thing I have learned during my travels...You can trust poor people way better than a good situated person...I did...I entrusted him my bike and truly knew it would be there the next morning...Indeed there it was...Nice to see you again my little chink...

The boat ride was smooth and absolutely on schedlue, amazing, leaving in the morning and arriving in paradise at noon.

Yes...paradise it was and druring my passage I talked with el capitano that I am perhaps interested to built my very own schooner, about 18m long, 2 mast and discussed a bit the details and pricing...

Nice boats they are building but more suitable for cargo boating rather than luxury cruising...I declined finally...I will built my boat in 2017 in Kalimantan, Indonesia all to German Lloyds standards for wooden cruising boats...Look out for a thread in the future to elaborate about it.

I remained in Belo Sur Mer 2 nights and decided to leave with el capitano to the very next destination of him, Andranopasy...yes, absolute in the middle of nowhere...Madagascar being already in the middle of nowhere, nowe being in Madagascar in the middle of nowhere truly tells you...

The boat ride was not going at to schedule...We planned to leave ant midnight, which we did and planned to arrive on aftternoon...We did, just a day later than planned...Being in such an uncomfortable ship for about 40 hours is truly painful. There is a German song "Wir lagen vor Madagascar und hatten die Pest an Bord", I truly felt like it...Google it and you will understand the meaning...

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