There's a crow-flies route from Kasane to Maun through Chobe National Park but the road is poor, so I find myself having to use Botswanan public transport to traverse the other two sides of this 300km equilateral triangle. We leave before 6AM, the fiery newly-risen sun a Stop sign for the passage of night. The leg to Nata has been described as "appalling" but this is by Western standards, not African ones, and the average speed of 80km/h that we achieve is essentially warp factor 3. For free, we see buffalo and the largest herd of elephant I've ever set eyes on. The child sitting opposite me regularly coughs with vigour in my direction, the spray of particles no doubt a cocktail of the swine flu and TB germs that posters in my Kasane hotel had ... read more

From a flow point of view, now is the worst time of the year to be visiting Victoria Falls. It's the dry season, and hot, so the Zambia side of the falls is a mere trickle, though the Zimbabwe side has some decent volume. One advantage of coming now though is that you can actually see the falls, as they're not obscured by spray. Though neither the widest, highest, or having the most volume, they're the "largest" in the world if your definition of size is multiplying width by height. Since I don't feel as though I can be in southern Africa without seeing the falls, and with the greedy governments of both Zambia and Zimbabwe making it excessively costly to visit both sides, I plump for the Zimbabwe side. Corrupt and incompetent leadership has been ... read more

I have to return to Tana in order to get transport to the last national park of my Madagascar visit and, despite being only ~400km from Fianar on the best road in the country, an eight hour journey time by taxi-brousse is considered exceptionally fast. The problem lies in the winding nature of R7, plus the fact that it's single-lane so slow-moving vehicles create hold-ups. One highly civilised aspect of taxi-brousse travel is that there are frequent loo breaks, often passenger-initiated. Our lunch stop gives me more French confusion - the waitress says they have no legumes but then admits, when prompted, that they do have haricots blancs. My taxi from the taxi-brousse station to the Hotel Niaouly is a 39 year old Renault 4, another awesome vehicle from the streets of 1970s Paris. Tana has ... read more

After my difficulties obtaining transport for the 6.5km between Ranomafana and Ranomafana National Park, it's a relief that it takes only 45 minutes to snare a taxi-brousse for the 30-odd km back to Fianar. During the journey I see many of the handcarts that seem popular here for moving produce - heavy on the uphills, they become luges for the downhills. At one stop I see a kid with a leaf on a stick. Running into the wind, the leaf twirls like a propeller, causing the child to gurgle with delight. Who needs a PS3? I arrive too late in Fianar to catch a further taxi-brousse with a sensible arrival time in Tana, so have to overnight. One feature of Fianar is that much more English is spoken here than in Tana - even the postcard-selling ... read more

I continue south from Fianar through another landscape of rice paddies and terraces, the former reflecting the fleecy clouds in the blue sky above. Ambalavao is only a short distance away and soon I'm settled into the most expensive room yet of my stay in Madagascar ($15), though it's arguably the most comfortable also. Inevitably my arrival pings on the radar of the resident English-speaking guide, but he respects my statement that I'm not looking to take a tour, and is happy to dispense information without expecting anything in return. Ambalavao is a small town of narrow streets, filled with the colonial architecture of balconies and shuttered windows. I've already seen that Madagascar has a good selection of arts and crafts of varying degrees of traditional authenticity, and one of the most famous is made in ... read more