Ranohira,Parc National d'Isalo, Madagascar

Once in Ranohira, we were the only ones to get off and the rest of the passengers continued onto Tana. We were greeted by touts happy to tell us where our hotel was and if we wanted guides or taxis we could let them know. We checked into Chez Momo where we got a rustic bungalow with an ensuite. Even though it was late Momo managed to cook us up a zebu steak and chips. We discussed our options for a trek the next day and headed off to bed as we had an early start. We would have been a day earlier and could have done an overnight trek but lost time with our passports being locked up and us having to wait for the owner to get the key to open the safe, and the bus being so late in the afternoon, out of Tulear.

We got a packed lunch and met Coco, our guide, who took us off on a six hour trek. We walked from the town through the rice paddies. The park was very dry with lots of sandstone landscape and towering massifs. The particular part of the park that we wanted to visit was closed because of a huge fire and not due to be opened for a week or so. We then chose to walk a circuit that ended at a waterfall and pools.

Coco informed us that Malagasy people wear different coloured clothes on different days of the week as they meant different things to the wearer. He also said that different days are for different activities. Wednesday was a good day to travel long distances where as other days were only for short trips. Some days were better for making important decisions etc. Monday was a day of mourning so Monday was suitable for funerals and to wear black.

We passed several tombs that belonged to the Sakalava people who used to live in the area before it became a park. We were told about the caves in the cliffs where the bodies were put in a temporary grave in a low down place. Later the body is removed from the grave and the remains exhumed before being placed in a higher permanent grave. Once this is done the ancestor is at rest.

Other than a couple of falcons and harriers we didn't see much bird life. There were several kinds of lizards and chameleon and even a small thin non-venomous snake.

The rare pachypodium or elephant foot managed to grow in the cracks in the rocks and are a weird looking plant. The weather was pretty hot and we enjoyed the swim at the watering hole where we were joined by about a dozen French families doing a short walk for a picnic by the waterfall.

Once back at Momos we met Karen, from the US and Joop, from Holland. They had both been volunteering with a Dutch botanist although Karen had been working with Peacecorp as well. As we chatted about our travels Karen asked us if we had a citrus orchard. She then realised that we had met before in July at Betty's Bay in South Africa. Is Africa that small?

Tulear, Madagascar

Stayed at the same hotel as we had previously and everything looked exactly as it did the last time. The same men and the same girls drinking and playing cards outside the same room we were given. This time we knew that the mosquito net was too short to tuck in the bed so we got out some string and made some alterations. The beds in Madagascar have wooden slats under and they can be warped so when one of us turns over the slat flicks up and sticks into the other ones back. The mattresses are usually poor quality foam that looks thick but after a while it compresses to a few centimetres and is pretty uncomfortable when your hips are in the gaps of the slats. To minimise the discomfort we sleep with our heads at the foot of the bed which isn't as worn as the head of the bed is. I am sure the cleaner was puzzled when she found we had rearranged things in the room.

In the evening we were able to find a restaurant with seafood, Italian food and pizzas, as well as Indian dishes. That was a pleasant surprise after not being able to find any food the first visit here.

Once again we hired two rickshaws to get us to the taxi brousse depot. Unfortunately we had a four hour wait for the next minivan to leave so wandered into the city to find somewhere cool to hang out. Spotted a cafe with lots of tourists and expats with their computers out and saw they had free internet. It was the perfect place to while away the time and catch up on lots of emails from family and friends wishing us well for the new year.

Although the taxi brousse was scheduled to go at 4 pm, it was late as the locals arrived with enormous bags and there was an argument over loading a goat. The customer was not travelling with the goat but had all sorts of official papers with red stamps to say the goat could go all the way to Tana. A trip that would mean it wouldn't arrive until early morning. We were told that the goat would be eaten for the New Year dinner as a special celebration.

The road was in very good condition and the driver was very careful and we felt safe travelling in the dark. We drove through a small town where every second shop was a gem store. It really looked like it had come out of a Hollywood Wild West set, with its wooden houses with small balconies on the top floos. There were no street lights but nearly everyone in town was out walking up and down the main street. Every shop in between the gem shops was a bar that had its counter facing the street and crowds of men standing on the street drinking.

We were told that these places boomed once sapphires were found here and people came from Thailand and Sri Lanka as they are very experienced with sapphires and other gems. Consequently a lot of the big businesses are owned by these people while the locals provide the hard labour in the fields.

We arrived at Ilakaka, a small sapphire mining town, where we stopped for the evening meal. Outside the restaurant was a boy of about 9 or 10. He called to a young girl of about 4 or 5, threatening her with a large rock if she didn't come to him. He had a few words with her and she returned to the doorway of the restaurant where she grabbed diners as they went in to ask them for money. When she was given some money she took it to him and he growled at her again to continue begging for more. He was obviously too old to beg and she was better able to get the sympathy and money from the passersby. There are just so many children in Madagascar. They work as hard as the adults and are often seen carrying their baby siblings on their backs and being left to care for them all day, while the parents are in the fields.

The bus trip went well but every time we went over a pothole or speed bump the goat would bleat so loudly we could hear her above the noise of the radio. When she was first tied up to the roof rack she was a beautifully proud goat which had obviously been well looked after. When it first rained she brayed and brayed. When we stopped for dinner she was not fed or given water and continued to bray and she looked terrible. The journey was not over for her and she looked done in. As we got back into the minivan we discovered that we were also carrying a small kittten to be a gift for the New Year but not for eating.

Ifaty, Madagascar

We piled into a medium sized Mitsubishi Canter truck that had the back converted with bench seats. The seats were designed to fit crates of the local beer called THB, Three Horses Beer, under them. As soon as the seats were filled with everyone sitting with one shoulder tucked into the back of the seat and the other towards the centre, they decided to load as many crates of beer as they could fit under the seats and in the aisle. All the late comers had to sit on the crates of beer and we had to squash our size 10 feet in sideways to fit around the crates. The sides of the truck were covered in canvas so we were unable to see out.

The road was pretty dusty and unsealed. In some places the truck struggled in the deep soft sand. It was pretty dry and the 32 passengers all swayed in unison as we bounced over the rocky potholes as we were a pretty tight unit. Some even managed to sleep which is always amazing. The 32km trip took us nearly 2 hours.

We found the Hotel Vovotelo along the dusty village road of Mangily. The owner is French and only spoke a little English. He gave us a discount as he hadn't had a lot of bookings for the Christmas / New Year period so was happy to have us stay even though we didn't have a reservation. With the recent attempted coup in Tana, and the start of the wet season and probably with the economic situation in Europe there has been a drop in tourists to Madagascar. The place was right on the beach and we had a small rustic thatched bungalow with an ensuite with cold water. We planned to rest up over the Christmas break here.



There is no electricity in Ifaty village and the generator was only turned on a few hours at breakfast, lunch and in the evening at the hotel. The rest of the village manages without electricity as it has done for centuries. This is always a worry for meat and seafood in such places. And of course the generator is not on long enough to make a really cold beer!

We were right beside the beach and the sea was lukewarm. The shower was the best place to cool down, but it there wasn't always water. The bead sellers, massage ladies, woven hat sellers, boatmen looking for clients to go to the coral reefs snorkelling or fishing spent all day in the shade of a tree beside the hotel loungers. As soon as a newbie arrived they would pounce on them before they could lie out their towels on the loungers. They too were suffering the lack of trade.
There were lots of hotels along the beachfront and many were closed so the traders spent a lot of time outside our place.

Face paint for beauty and sun protection

Ifaty has one of the world's largest lagoons but unfortunately much of the coral reefs have been destroyed. Everyday there was some activity to watch along the beach. In the morning the pirogues would head off into the wind for the day's fishing or take some of the tourists out for the day. We would watch them head off to put out their nets and then see them pull them in at the end of the day. Some of the tourists had their wind surfers with them and when the wind was right they would sail up and down the beach.



A French guy owned a flying boat that took tourists out over the lagoon and the village and its loud engine would roar into life as it launched itself out of the water and into the sky. All day the local kids were in the water to play or to wash, or sail their home made boats.



The majority of the tourists in the hotel were French and we were the only non French speakers so we never got to meet anyone to talk to. There were several families and a few with very young children. One day a ring tailed lemur swung in through the trees and into the grounds. The parents next to us took their children outside to watch the lemur and in no time it had jumped on the kids heads and shoulders and scared the life out of them. They were reticent to go outside after that and it probably gave them a fear of real lemurs for life but they did venture out to play with their plastic lemur toys.



We signed up for the set menu Christmas dinner with about 30 others. On the buffet we had lobsters (they looked like Morton Bay bugs and were tiny), seaeggs (kina, but with very little roe and not as tasty as ours in NZ), cockles (the size of a small fingernail), mussels (the size of a large fingernail), but no fish. After the seafood entree we lined up to be slices of goat which was cooked over a drum of charcoal embers. The meat was bloody and pink for us and we asked the only waiter who could speak English if it was OK to eat like that and he assured us it was "bon". However, he could see we were not goat meat eaters so he sent it off to the kitchen to be fried till brown. It was rather tough but I kept thinking about the plastic bags and decaying rubbish on the sides of the road that the goats eat as I chewed each piece! Dessert was a roulade Christmas cake with a peanut ice cream filling which was very nice.



To entertain us while we ate, the owner had employed a band and some local dancers. The instruments were all home made and sounded a bit like ukeleles. The girls tied a cloth around their butts and did most of their dancing wriggling their booty at us. As with all these things some one has to get up and join in and give everyone a laugh to give it that interactive theme. I felt for the dancers as we ate so much food in front of them and they probably have very little themselves at home.

During the day we would go into the village to buy fresh bread, papaya, bananas, tomatoes, lychees and mangoes as it was too expensive to eat in the restaurant everyday. Every second shop is selling the same things and several would also have cooked food that they sold. The day after Christmas Day, which was actually celebrated on the 24th as the Europeans do, we saw quite a lot of the children wearing the new clothes that they had got for Christmas.

A shirt walk from the hotel is the Raniala Nature Reserve, which is also known as The Spiny Forest or the Baobab Forest. As is the rule in Madagascar we had to hire a guide to walk around the park. There were so many baobab trees in unusual shapes and we learnt all about how the fruit is rich in calcium and holds a lot of water. One of the specimens was 1200 years old.



We saw plants used to control diabeties and help leukemia sufferers. There was also a plant used by the kings in the olden days to poison antagonistic subjects. It was also used to kill fish. There were a few birds and the night jay that blended in with the leaves on the ground was extremely well camouflaged. A few tortoises were kept in a fenced area but we saw tracks of lots of others that roamed freely. It was sad to see some of these beautiful animals stuffed and for sale along the beach.

This one is alive!

After a lot of walks up and down the beach, to get ourselves into some kind of fitter state to climb Mount Kenya at a later date, and a lot of reading and lazing around we got up early to head off to Isalo National Park. Although we had told the receptionist the night before that we would be leaving early, she forgot to get our passports out of the safe and we discovered that the owner had gone into Tulear with the safe key. We had to hang around until he came back and by then most of the taxi brousse had left for Tulear. We hung around in the heat and dust on the side of the road and watched several guys repair a broken down truck. Once they were finished we were offered a ride with the truck owner in his pick up. That was way more comfortable than the bush taxi and we were able to see the scenery that we couldn't on the way in. We were surprised to see salt ponds and mangroves along the way. Unfortunately we were too late to head off to Isalo so had to spend another night in Tulear.

Tulear, Madagascar

As soon as we left the airport it bucketed down with rain. There was a pricelist in the airport with the taxi rates so we were able to get an old Citreon taxi into the city. On the way into the city the electricity had shut down and the streets were full of people stripping off their clothing and taking advantage of the rain for a shower in fresh water. It was quite a sight watching them jumping around in ankle deep water in the middle of the road. Amazingly the taxi did'nt fill with water as it was pretty old and beaten up. Luckily the wipers worked as the water came down in sheets.

The hotel that we had chosen was fully booked so the driver took us onto another place that was in our guide book. We were able to get a double room with a cold shower. mosquito net, toilet and ceiling fan. Unfortunately we couldn't get anything to eat and had to make do with the small cake we were given on the plane. There were several retirement aged Frenchmen playing cards and drinking beer outside our room and there was a small group of very young girls with them. Sex tourists from France are a really big problem here in Madagascar. Luckily with the noise from the ceiling fan we were able to get to sleep without hearing the party noises.

The hotel opened onto a concreted area that was used for parking vehicles and was nicely laid out with gardens and fruit trees even though it was a tiny place. No one spoke English so we muddled along in broken French. In the morning we weren't able to get breakfast so headed off down the street looking for something to eat as we were pretty hungry. A young local lad who wanted to practise his English asked us if we wanted any help. He followed us pushing his bicycle to several restaurants but none were open for breakfast. Finally we settled on a Tea Salon. That was pretty much all they had to offer. So we had tea and coffee with condensed milk and some French style butter biscuits, and dry croissants. I don't know how they can make any money with so few items for sale, but they seemed to.

Managed to find a supermarket and stock up on some supplies to take with us as it seems there are often power cuts and not always somewhere to eat when we need to. We had to empty our fuel bottle before flying so we bungled along trying to work out what the French word was for the fuel we wanted and when we took the empty bottle to a shop keeper to smell, he was able to tell us where to go and what it was called. So we now would be able to cook up food if we needed it. The locals don't use gas at all for cooking and almost everyone uses charcoal which they put into small metal containers and light up on the sides of the street.



The only transport for getting to the taxi brousse (bush taxi) station was the pousse pousse (rickshaw). We hired two of these and the barefooted men raced us off to get a bush taxi. It was quite a long drive and it was pretty hot by the time we were ready to go. It is pretty hard for us having to accept someone pull you along in such a contraption but there was no choice and it provides a pollution free alternative to the smoky diesel vehicles on the road and it is also a great way for the locals to get employment. At all times of the day there will be crowds of rickshaw drivers assembled outside restaurants, bus stations, the markets and hotels ready to do a deal with you to take you where ever you want to go. The particular rickshaws we saw in Tulear look like they have come from India. You have to lean uncomfortable back in a semi reclined position and it felt to me like I may even tip the rickshaw right over.



We arrived at a dusty, rubbish strewn place where there were dozens of vehicles of all kinds. The only thing they had in common was that they had roof racks and bench seats to take as many people and as much luggage as they could.

Antananarivo, Madagascar

Had a good trip back to Tana in light rain with no mishaps.

Spent time catching up with family emails, and laundry and meeting new people in the guesthouse. This is always a good time to trade information.

When John was researching flights to Madagascar he noticed that they were offering 50% discount on internal flights if you purchased a flight with Air Madagascar to get to the island. We decided to fly from Tana to the south and work our way back to Tana overland using public transport.

Our flight was in the evening and we were able to contact the shuttle bus driver and were picked up at the door. I don't think they will make any money from the shuttle as there were only two other people on the bus to the airport. It was nice to travel the same route back in daylight and sunshine and with little traffic on the road we were early for our flight. We could see the rice paddies close to the city. Some had rice ready to harvest while other fields were being hoed ready for planting.

Sometimes I have to stop and think where I am as so many of the locals look Malaysian or Indonesian with their high cheek bones and women with long straight hair. When we hear local music it sounds Polynesian with its harmonies and even when accompanied by drums it doesn't sound African to my ear. The language looks Polynesian with its vowel and consonant mixes. About 1500 or 2000 years ago the first Indo-Malayan settlers arrived on this uninhabited island in their boats. They introduced terraced rice paddies to the island, as well as other Asian food crops. Cassava is as popular as rice. In the 9th century the Hindu-Sumatran empire of Srivijaya ran much of the sea trade in the Indian Ocean and so it is a place that doesn't look African as such.

Once we had got our gear sorted we took a flight to Tulear (aka Toliara).

Parc National d'Andasibe-Mantadia, Madagascar

We packed up our small day packs for a two day stay at the park. We caught a taxi to the bus station where we would catch our 'taxi brousse' (shared minivan taxi or bush taxi). The taxi was an old French Citroen. The fuel is stored in a recycled plastic water bottle in the parcel shelf in the front of the car with a tube going to the petrol tank! Sarah, in Tana told us she once got in a taxi like this and the driver had no key and had to join two wires together to get ignition! We will have to have a good check of the taxis next time we need one!

At the taxi brousse station the touts directed us to the right minivan. No one could speak English and we had difficulties understanding the ticket lady and the tout and with a bit of French we were able to work out that the tout wanted us to pay for the whole minivan's seats and the driver would take us directly to the park. The ticket lady was telling us we needed to change minivans as it didn't go directly. However, after a short wait we were all loaded and filled with enough people for the seats and each person had a numbered seat!

road was nicely sealed to the park and other than a lot of broken down trucks on the side of the road and a minivan like ours in a river being pulled out by a truck it was an uneventful trip. At Moramanga we had to wait for a big old bus to fill up and it was absolutely cramped. Entry to city commuter buses and this one are through the back where the door is in the middle and everyone piles in and fills up the bus from the front to the back as the folding aisle seats fill up. The conductor hangs out the back shouting and whistling to get more commuters when ever some get off.

There were a couple from UK, Jenny and Jon who were on the bus with us going to the same park.They had been volunteer teaching in villages in and near Diego Suarez (aka Antsiranana) on the northern tip of the island. It was interesting to hear their tales about life there.

Jenny

We all got off at a complex near the park with bamboo bungalows and a restaurant. Our bungalow was a climb up to the top of a hill with two beds, nets and a little deck. We shared the hot water showers with about six other bungalows. We could hear the indri lemurs calling to each other every morning at about 4.30-5am.

We walked to the park and met a guide touting on the way. His English was not bad so we hired him for four hours. It is compulsory to have a guide in the parks in Madagascar. His name was Richard and I was about to abandon him part way through the first hour as he stunk of alcohol and tobacco and spent the first hour and half on his cellphone! The noticeboard in the park had photos of all the 70 guides and as there are not many tourists it is getting more and more difficult for the guides to make money so the competition is tough. However we put up with him.

Indri

We saw several common brown lemur and yellow lemurs. The indri are Madagascar' largest lemur and they have no tail. Their calls can be heard 2-3 kms away as they tell other families to keep out of their area or let their families know where they are. There was once a lemur as big as a gorilla but is now extinct.

Richard broke up some saplings and managed to coax down a huge green chameleon to show us. It climbed off the short stick it was on and up my arm and over my head. It has a split between its toes where it spreads them out so it can wrap them around the tree branches. He, because he had horns, felt surprisingly cold to touch and his tail was so cute curled tightly like a mosquito coil.

The next day we decided to go with Jenny and Jon and their guide into the park again as they had a far more enthusiastic guide. Donna managed to find us a tiny owl that was camouflaged in the dry leaves of a palm tree. We also saw two different indri families and watch them mating close up. They were so close I could have reached out and touched them. He showed us a boa that had eggs and hadn't moved from the park office for two days that Richard should have shown us as well. At times he would show us things and then go looking for more lemurs or other creatures he had seen recently and then would come back and get us. Some of the chameleons that didn't change colour were still well camouflaged on the tree branches and took some identifying in the trees.

Madagascar has over 70 varieties of lemur as well as the world's largest chameleon and the world's smallest one. It also once had the world's largest bird, the elephant bird. Because Madagascar drifted from Africa it has developed so many unique plants and animals and is regarded as the world's number one conservation priority.

We had to rush back from the park to catch one of the last minivans back to Moramanga from the village near the park and wait for another back to Tana.

Antananarivo, Madagascar

Luckily we had been in touch with Air Madagascar and they sent us an email telling us our flight to Antananarivo, or Tana as it is known, was delayed by two hours. We slept in longer and then after a leisurely breakfast we were taken by the hotel taxi to the airport. We had read in a couple of blogs that the Air Madagascar flights are notorious for being late and sometimes won't fly until they are full, so we were not disappointed to find we had to hang around for a few more hours at the airport.

From the plane we were able to see glimpses of Mount Kilimanjaro covered in thick cloud and snow dripping like icing down the slopes from the crater. It looked cold.

We were prepared to fork out $50 or $60 US for a visa and were told our visa was free to enter Madagascar. We were able to get local money from the ATM machine in the airport. The information desk was open and the receptionist contacted the bus driver of the new bus service and he offered to drop us outside the guesthouse we had booked online. There were five people on the bus and we were the only tourists. We later learnt that with the drop in tourist numbers these were two things the government was trying to get the tourists back.

There have been several coups here and a recent one saw a few people killed and this has put tourists off visiting and the government safety sites online still say "No unnecessary travel" or "Avoid travel at this time if you can". As a Dutch guy here we met said "more people get killed in riots at football games between the two top Dutch teams than at any coups here, but that doesn't stop people going to football games or The Netherlands".

As soon as we left the airport the heavens opened and it thundered down. The locals ducked under eaves to shelter where ever they could. In no time it turned the streets into raging rivers of dirt brown. Every vehicle in Tana was then on the road and the twelve km journey took more than two hours and as we neared the hotel we saw the electricity had gone down too.

No sooner had we checked in when 34 French scientists also arrived. They were a group who had been six or so weeks in the forests in Maki. They covered different science fields and spent time gathering film and information for a 3D movie that is to be made for National Geographic.

As the guesthouse was full we were placed in a house next door to the main house but linked by 49 steps. It was another hike to the main house common room of about the same number of steps and then some of the scientists were placed in a third house on the opposite side of the main house from us. Tana, (means Town of a Thousand, after a garrison that was stationed here in 1600s ) is built on many hills so lots of the narrow houses have lots of stairs.

The residential part of the city reminds me of those jigsaw puzzles where everything looks similar and the pieces are hard to place as they look so alike and could fit on any of the 1000 pieces.

We met Sawyer, an American doing some research in Tana and as he had been here several times he was able to give us some tips. Sarah, was also in the guesthouse and had been doing some Peacecorp work for two years and had signed up to stay longer. She has written a guide for Madagascar so was helpful with places to stay. None of the French scientists spoke to us in English so it was only through an American guy called Bill who tagged along with the team that we were able to get any conversation. Every day the scientists cleaned and dressed their many swollen and badly infected sores that they had got in the rainforest. One man had to be helped up the stairs as he suffered debilitating pain in his joints that would move to different parts of his body. Sawyer thought it was malaria but no one knew what it was and he had to be flown out on a special flight.

Once the majority of the scientists left it was pretty quiet. We walked a lot of the hills around the city and one day watched a concert at the stadium with a whole lot of the locals from the top of a hill. The palace that we wanted to see was closed for renovations and there was not much else to see in Tana. The market was seething with people and they even took over part of the roadway so it was a major obstacle course trying to negotiate around their goods for sale and the traffic in the streets. The stairs leading down to the main road were also crowded with sellers and you couldn't move one step without someone wanting you to buy their fruit, vegetables, wooden carvings, rubber stamps, shoes and clothing. There were loads of beggars as well. We stocked up on fresh apricots and mangos but they also had bundles of lychees, bananas, plums and pineapples.

We were able to buy a local SIM card for our dongle here too and were lucky enough to hit on a cheap promotion by a new company getting into the market. We didn't need it for Tana as the guesthouse had free internet which was so handy, but we wanted it for the rest of the places we would visit.

It rained heavily everyday we were in Tana so had to plan our activities around the rains and powercuts!

Decided to store some gear at the guesthouse and head off to a national park nearby Tana.