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Published: June 25th 2017
Geo: -21.25, 47.45
We're still cleaning the Lemur footprints off of our clothing and getting ready for our next encounters, but, as a form of personal stress relief, I need to address the trials and tribulations of bus touring. As with most of these off-the-beaten path trips, many of our fellow travelers are hardcore- there's The Gang Of Six (far flung friends who frequently get together for trips like this in order to sing Top 10 songs from the seventies and pose for jumping photos), a Dude from Salt Lake City (didn't know you were allowed to be a dude in Utah), a couple from Regina (who picked up a stomach bug on the second day and gave new meaning to the word perseverance on a bus tour although they missed out on many of the trip highlights), and singles from Calgary and Australia. All good so far but there was also a couple of more experienced ladies and while the trip was not physically challenging, it was clearly beyond their limited mobility. A lot of time was chewed up trying to accommodate the ladies but even that wasn't the real issue- these two were on a mission to cure the poverty
ills of Madagascar by handing out empty water bottles, bars of soap they had stolen from hotels, candies, and various other forms of trash and trinkets. To his credit, our guide tried a number of times to explain the dehumanizing aspect of handing out this junk but the ladies just went clandestine (I suspect that they got an enormous thrill out of being the centre of attention for their 15 seconds). This probably shouldn't bother me as much as it did but I just hated being associated with these pinheads who gave no thought to the implications of the begging culture they were helping to foster in a country already struggling with enormous problems. The sum total of their 'generosity' likely didn't amount to much more than $10 from their own pocket and they were conveniently distracted anytime the guide described local charities that one might make a meaningful donation to. These human fingernails-on-a-chalkboard would continue their bad behaviour for the duration of the trip and I never did figure out how to handle it. Since they weren't harming wildlife, DH was able to maintain her patience and wouldn't allow me to rationally explain the error of their ways to
the two octogenarians.
Our guide had obviously picked up his English at the William Shattner School of Languages (for the non-Canadians in the crowd, he's the guy who played Captain Kirk on the Star Trek series) where ev-er-y syl-la-ble is pro-nounced dra-ma-ti-cal-ly as if it were a word un-to it-self, "or some-thing like that" (which was our guides favourite way to end a sentence). He was probably informative but I found I was focusing on the staccato delivery before e-ven-tu-a-lly drift-ing off. And unfortunately someone had given him a whiteboard and a Sharpie which he would pull out after getting the driver to park directly in the blazing sun, and he would then get us pronouncing various Malagasy words in much the same way he spoke English until the heat forced us from the bus.
Madagascar itself made it easy to overcome the bus tour challenges. It's the fourth largest island in the world (for Deb P, the only larger islands are Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo).The country and its people are a very unique mix of Africa and Asia (the first humans to settle in Madagascar came from the islands of Indonesia) and to a large extent the local population
do not see themselves as African. And in addition to that, almost all of the animal and plant species found on the island are also unique to the island- these plants and animals have evolved into some of the oddest forms found on earth. Not strange/unique enough- consider that in the 1970's, Madagascar produced 70% of the world's most labour intensive crop. Vanilla was imported (native to Mexico) years ago but its pollinators were not meaning that each individual vanilla blossom has to be pollinated by hand. Coca-Cola was the single biggest customer and when this one company changed their formula the economy for the country of Madagascar tanked (and when they were forced to re-introduce the old formula, the economy bounced back).
For DH, the fact that before the French colonial forces came in and introduced ashtrays, the last sovereign of the Kingdom of Madagascar was a woman (Queen Ranavalona III who ruled from 1883 to 1897), was further proof that when men take over, things get screwed up .
The landscape was constantly changing and since most of the 22 million people seem to live/work/play within 10 feet of the main road, a slow moving bus was a pretty
good way of observing day-to-day life. On this leg of the journey we also got to disembark for a much needed hike to a remote village which was to be our home for the night. It was more of a rustic hostel than a genuine homestay but the walk to get in and out was a nice way to see rural Madagascar up close. For our lemur fix we were able to track the golden and greater bamboo lemurs (both endangered) in Ranomafana National Park.
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Marlene S.
non-member comment
Pretty....