24/02/19 I met Fanny, a nice Swiss girl who stayed in Antsirabe for 6 months. She kept me company during dinner and gave me some tips about where to go.
Today Liva the driver is taking me to Ambohimanga (‘the blue hill’ gets its name due to the vegetation which gives a blue colour to the area, similarly to the Blue Mountains in NSW) to visit a temple with a view on the city. It was built in 1710, but King Andriantsimitoviaminandriana lived here in the 15th century (I bet you are still reading his name ?).
City taxis here are light beige colour and are old cars, mostly Renault 5.
We also went to Cotisse, a bus transport company to reserve a seat to get to Morondava in 13h later in the week, in case I don’t find anyone to join me on a week trip to get there. I can always cancel if plans change.
Back at the hostel, I met Amelie, a French girl who will spend a few months doing some volunteering work in health sector in Antsirabe. She is studying to become a doctor.
25/02/19 Amelie had some time before leaving at 11am so we went for a walk and explored the city centre. We climbed up to the Queen’s palace, stopped by the presidential palace and a few churches on the way. A group of running military soldiers passed by while singing.
Later in the day I asked Liva to come by to explain the Morondava week trip to Sanni, a girl from Finland who might be interested as well.
Andrea, the Italian guy from day 1 showed up as he had to leave his Airbnb.
Sanni decided to join the week trip so I found my companion to go to Morondava and see the baobabs alley ?! We are leaving tomorrow morning. We shared a meal for dinner and she told us a bit about herself. She works on the road infrastructure during the week, does shifts in a bar during the weekend. She travelled to Tanzania recently and experienced the worst train trip ever. Cockroaches, brake downs, hot temperatures without shower, sharing a cabin with a lady who carries fresh fish for 52h. Paradise. She decided to register for the tv show Survivor while she was on that train, thinking she has been through hell and would be ready for anything.
26/02/19 I packed light and left my big suitcase at the hostel, as we will do some camping and use small transportation (like zebu car!) for 5 days.
Liva the driver agreed to stop by the bus station so I could exchange my ticket to get a bus back from Morondava in 5 days instead. Sanni ended up booking a bus too to travel towards the south after this trip. We had to cross the city traffic for 2h, it was crazy.
We stopped by a ‘convenience store’ and Sanni ate some fried veggies as a snack. I was still so full from breakfast I could not eat anything yet. In the morning I ate all the leftovers I bought from the supermarket as I was supposed to stay another day, as I didn’t want to throw food away.
We stopped for proper lunch at 2.30pm on the way to Antsirabe where I had a goat cheese pizza. Sanni started to have stomach issues, probably from the street food she had earlier, as we had the same pizza and I was fine.
Our last stop was at the hotel for the night. As we had one hour left of daylight we went for a walk in the city centre of Antsirabe, the lake and the thermal centre before resting for the rest of the day.
The hotel was very nice, little bungalows surrounding a garden and a pond. I took a shower and when Sanni went to have one, the tap broke and would not stop running so we had to ask the staff to fix it. The guy tried for 1/2h then taped it to make sure it wouldn’t run until it can be replaced tomorrow.
27/02/19 Sanni and I went to the bakery Liva recommended and we had delicious viennoiseries. So good that we took some away for the trip. On the way back to the hotel, we found Liva who introduced us to our guide Yves for the next few days.
We said goodbye to Liva and left Antsirabe at 11.20 after meeting Sara and her son Luca from Italy. They live in Malaga now. We all jumped on a van that smelt like fish, we opened the windows but that didn’t really helped.
Antsirabe is called the city of pousse-pousse as there are about 5000 of those bicycle taxis in the city, a way for the locals to make money. Farming is the main source of income for the majority of people here and it is often not enough to make a living.
We passed the THB (thee horses beer) beer factory that you can visit only once per week. They are famous for their 3 day party during Easter, when singers and musicians come and when you get buy 1 get 1 free beer deal.
Next we stopped by Lake Andraikiba, a volcano lake formed in the crater. Its last eruption was 400 years ago. Many little shops wait for tourists and I spotted nice sculpted baobab trees but didn’t buy any, thinking I will find some later on.
On the road the guide told us about the exhumation celebration that a local tribe organises every 7 years. They take all the corpses from the tomb, as all the family members are buried together and they pray for blessing before returning the corpses to the tomb.
We passed many rice hills extending so far you can’t see them all, as rice is the main dish of the Malagasy people.
We had lunch in Ankazomiriotra where we had to choose between spaghetti bolognaise or cantonese rice. The pasta came with a chicken broth and rice tea, a weird mixture made with the cooking rice water, a way for the locals to avoid wasting precious water.
While driving we saw many ‘hotely’ which are often confusing for tourists. They are not hotels, but little restaurants where they mainly serve rice and beans to the people on the road, but do not offer accomodation.
We stopped in Miandrivazo for the night and pick up our crew. Our rooms were rudimentary but clean. No toilet seat or shower head but a mosquito net and a fan, and a blackout at dinner time.
28/02/19 It was around 30 degrees inside the room and a lot of thunder last night so I didn’t sleep at all. Melinda, a 70 years old lady from Washington DC joined us at breakfast. She will join us on the trip to Morondava. We had another blackout this morning so no electricity or running water. I am glad I took a shower last night!
We were ready at 5.30am as requested but we only left just before 7.30. Melinda took a taxi brousse last night for 12h straight from Tana to meet us at the hotel at 2.30am, so not much sleep for her either.
We drove to Masekampy village where our pirogues were waiting for us for a 2 day journey on the river. On the way, we had to stop and a small group of little kids came to say hi around the van so I gave them a pack of coloured pencils I still had in my bag. They instantly went into a fight to get it which attracted other kids and soon an adult had to catch the pack to split the pencils among the kids.
We kept driving and finally reached the river. A lot of kids came around us again while the crew was loading the luggage on the pirogues, hoping we would give them anything, they were quite pushy and even stole a book from Melinda’s bag while she was looking for something to give them.
Once the river trip started, we all felt much cooler and more relaxed. The crew built us comfy seats on the pirogue using the thin camping mattresses and our bags, they gave us umbrellas to protect ourselves from the sun which was really hot. Thanks to a breeze while we were rowing it was very enjoyable. We had 2 tour guides, 2 cooks, and 2 rowers, to take the 5 of us on this adventure.
Just before jumping on the pirogues, we had to put our feet into the muddy river to get close enough. This was the last time I remember being clean. From that time onwards, we started a long 3 day trip in the dirt.
After a few hours of rowing, we stopped on the river bank around lunch time to eat. The staff pealed the veggies on the boat and cooked everything on shore. I must say that when I saw them washing the veggies in the river, using no disinfectant whatsoever I started to worry about getting food poisoning. But I knew this trip was not their first so decided to trust them. After all they boiled most of the food so hopefully this will be enough.
We stopped at a nice little waterfall in the afternoon, some of us could not resist swimming in, even the guide. The rocks were quite slippery and as I injured myself enough in the last few weeks I decided to stay out of the water.
We were back on the boat for a few hours then as the weather started to change quickly, the guide knew we would not be safe camping in the wild so we stopped by a village along the river just before a storm with heavy rain started. We borrowed the village ‘market place’ to put our tents on, but the wind was so strong we had to build them inside. The market building, sharing its space with chickens and gooses running around, had just enough room for 3 tents so Sanni and I shared one, and Melinda used her own which was smaller than the ones provided by the guide so we could all fit inside. Definitely not a waterproof shelter, but a shelter. The crew cooked around us, in the dark, on the ground made of dirt. We shared some of our torches to make their work easier. It is incredible how much they can achieve in those poor conditions. And as always, the food was great!
The village kids were very curious so they kept lurking through the walls made of tree branches to see what was happening. they loved all the attention we could give and wanted us to take selfies with them.
The rain got really intense so we opened our umbrellas inside and covered our bags with all the plastic we had, as the roof started to leak. A family of skinny puppies separated from their mother during the storm started to cry out loud in the rain so the girls took them to dry them and feed them. They were all shaky and we realised later that their poor sick and underfed mother didn’t have the energy to take care of them. The girls made a nest with a hat, long sleeve T-shirt and scarf to put the puppies back outside under a tree for the night, and all those items were gone in the morning. I guess the villagers could reuse or resell the items.
01/03/19 Early morning, while the crew was preparing breakfast, chickens started to explore our ‘bedroom’. It was fun to watch their shadow walking around the tents while we were waking up, before someone scared them away. We gave some food leftovers to the kids and a grandma showed up very angry at them and at Melinda who was preparing some bread with jam for them. We didn’t understand a word if what the grandma was shouting but we know that usually kids end up fighting when foreigners give them anything. We also fed the mother dog hoping she would regain some energy to feed the puppies.
As there are obviously no bathrooms here, villagers wash themselves in the river, and the toilet is whatever piece of bushy land you find with enough privacy. No need to mention that foreigners can’t easily find privacy while being the curiosity of the week. ?
Our guide was apologetic but we all understood that with a severe storm there was not many alternatives than staying in the village for the night. It definitely challenged my idea of hygiene but I remain optimistic.
Back on the boat we stopped on a little beach along the river for lunch, but as there was not much shade, we all heated up pretty quickly. We had the umbrellas but as there was not much wind none of us could really cool down. There seemed to have a lot of shade available on the other side of the river, but when the crew told us there were crocodiles on that side, we thought we were OK on this side ?.
While some of the crew were cooking, others were washing themselves in the river (which is dense orange-browny colour). Our guide built a little shelter with some bed sheet on top of 4 paddles planted in the sand. There were a lof flies coming around probably attracted to our successive layers of sunscreen, mosquito repellent, dirt and sweat.
A crew member collected ‘clean’ water by using a local technique. He dug a hole in the sand close to the river and let the water filling the hole, while the sand acts as a filter.
We stopped before sunset for the night in another village where we put the tents up under a big tree.
The crew made us pasta, rice and veggies and fresh pineapple for dessert. There was also chicken, thanks to a poor chicken carried all day alive on the pirogue from the last village we stopped. He made some noise a few times during the day I felt really bad for him. No need to mention I could not eat it, despite the team trying to convince me it could not have died for nothing.
Once the daylight was gone, cockroaches (as big as the ones we have in AU), giant crickets, micro frogs and other flying bugs started to show up around us. Melinda peed in her water bottle that night as she was to afraid of walking on the poo field with all the cockroaches around.
Today was particularly hot (I got sunburn even with sunscreen on) so it was even harder going to bed in a tent without having a proper shower, with our feet full of mud. Luckily I still had some wipes to remove some of the dirt. Our mattresses, clothes and bags were humid and didn’t smell like flower but we didn’t have much choice. Adventure they say…
02/03/19 A driver left Morondava very early in the morning (must have been like 2am) to meet us at the village around 9.30am. Only a 4×4 could reach the village in this season. We loaded our bags on the roof and drove towards Morondava. The drive on tracks was really bad, luckily the vehicle went through all the rough holes and we didn’t have to push the car in this heat, which was likely to happen. Our average speed? 20km/h. There were thousands of butterflies on the way surrounding us at every hole filled with muddy water (we passed hundreds of them), that was very nice to watch.
Yves told us the story of a certain Malagasy tribe and how the boys have to steal a zebu for the family of the girl they want to marry. It became a real issue for the local farmers as there is a real zebu mafia organised to sell stolen zebus.
We arrived at a reserve park not far from Morondava hoping to see some wildlife and lemurs at 2.30 where we had lunch (spaghetti bolognaise or with tomato sauce were the only options, for an expensive price). Yves paid the park entrance fee but thought we may not have enough time to explore the park with a guide and still be on time for the sunset at the baobab alley which was something I really didn’t want to miss, so he tried to get the fees back without success. We were all very hot and exhausted, 4 out of 5 voted in favour of the baobabs if we had to choose only one option so we took the road again for about 2h and made it just in time. We stopped very quickly to see the sacred baobab, a tree of 800 years old, 7m of circumference, used by the locals to pray for having babies if they are having issues conceiving. They sacrifice all sorts of things like rhum, zebu blood or cloths hoping for a miracle.
The last stop before the baobab alley was the tree lovers, a baobab separated in 2 then twisted to form a braid up to the top, as there are none of those visible on the alley.
There were very few tourists at the alley and we had nice opportunities to take photos. Thanks to our guide, we knew where to go for the best spot. I also bought a baobab tree made of palissandre wood – I am glad I waited as per the guide’s recommendation, prices were reasonable here. I didn’t see pictures of the alley before coming here so I didn’t really have expectations, it was something special as I never saw those trees before. I think there are quite elegant trees, looking a bit like Malagasy girls, skinny and tall body with buns or braided hair at the top. The sun behind the trees was a very nice scenery before driving to Morondava, half an hour from the alley.
A total of at least 8h of driving with a majority on flooded tracks, it was quite a day. We were all dead tired and could not wait for a shower and a bed after 3 days camping in the poorest conditions without any water facilities. We dropped Sara and Luca at their hotel then the driver took us 5 min further to ours. The room looked nice and we all had a shower (cold and with low pressure, but a shower!) before meeting all again for dinner.
Around midnight I was the first to go back to the room and realised there were little white insects on the bed, under the linen and the pillow. I suspected there were bedbug larvae and could not imagine sleeping here. I checked under the mattress and you could see it was never vacuumed on the frame so I decided to request for another room. The last thing I wanted was to carry bedbugs to Mauritius or back home. The owner was already asleep so I had to wake him up. I knocked at his door and a typical French guy in his forties came out and said there was no other room available so we had to go somewhere else. Yves was out and as we didn’t have any way to contact him Sanni and I decided to sleep outside. She had a hammock and there were chairs outside. I had a towel and mosquito net, enough to keep us alright for 4h as we had to leave at 5 in the morning anyway. We realised that even if we found another hotel, by the time we would be ready for bed over there it would have been for something like 3h of sleep so we didn’t bother. After 3 days in the dirt it was no big deal, the temperature was probably around 25 degrees at night outside.
03/03/19 Of course I didn’t sleep on that chair, as the people on the street facing the hotel were making a lot of noise all night, and the staff decided to clean the terrace area where I was sitting.
Yves was out for some drinks with Fred the other guide and when he came back around 4 am, he was embarrassed to find us sleeping outside. He tried to talk to the owner who denied the bugs (he called them ants and had a terrible attitude towards Yves who was sweet and just tried to understand what was going on).
I heard the owner being mad at one if his staff member, as he didn’t show up soon enough when he tried to call him from the other side of the property. What an ass**. This guy treats everyone else like crap.
We were ready to leave on time and as the owner ‘kindly’ suggested Yves to not come back we were on our way to the bus station with bicycle pousse-pousse.
We left the station late, thanks to a group of French people who showed up late and we stopped once for bananas and toilet in the wild before lunch.
Once in Antsirabe, I only had 2 minutes to say goodbye to Sanni, Melinda and our guide, as I still have a 4h drive to Tana. Around 4.30pm we had a flat tyre but the driver kept going.
I caught a cold in the last 2 days and now everyone starts to sneeze on the bus, it is possible that I gave them my germs. I feel very sorry for them but there is not much I can do ?.
We got stuck in traffic and arrived in Tana at 7.30pm, after a journey of almost 15h on that bus. I took a taxi back to Madagascar Underground, the hostel I stayed in a week ago. This time I booked a single room, to have room to dry my stuff and avoid contaminating everyone else in a dorm with my germs.
My yoghurts and milk bottle have disappeared from the fridge so I borrowed milk from the hostel kitchen to eat some cereals I still had in the suitcase I left here a week ago.
04/03/19 I slept like a baby until 9 and chilled for a day. How much happiness can a clean bed and a shower provide? Priceless.
