I'm writing this entry as I sit here in the very last seat on the first class cabin, rocking methodically back and forth, destroying my handwriting. I'm surrounded by French tourists and a group of men playing cards for small Ariary notes. The railway was opened in 1936 after ten years of construction and is an improtant economic link for the banana- and coffee-producing villages along its line. We have passed rice fields, tea plantations, barren hillsides, virgin forest, eucalypt plantations and stopped at the platforms of numerous villages where an amazing array of foods have been offered to us.
Bright purple chinese guava in baskets; bunches of yellow locuts; piles of carefully arranged mandarins; ruby red freshwater crayfish; meatballs and sausages, ready to be piled onto baguettes; and the usual array of fried bread, samosas, green chilis and the like.You never go hungry on this trip! The train passes through numerous embankments and a whopping 48 tunnels, covering 163km from an altitude of 1100m in Fianar to sea level at Manakara. It's a pretty amazing journey.
We passed mountainsides cleared of most of their vegetation on the last leg of the journey, bar the beautiful traveller's palms that grew back more quickly than anything else, before spending hte last hour or so in the dark before arriving in Manakar on the east coast of the country.
And then ... the onslaught of pousse-pousse drivers at the station. They were certainly pushy bastards and eventually we chose two of them to cart us across town towards the beachside hotel we'd chosen; what then ensured was really frustraing. Frist the two drivers wouldnt accept the agreed price and wanted more $. then all of the hotels on the beachside were booked out, and as we were so annoyed with our drivers we didn't want to pay them any more mondy, so we spent the next 2 hours wandering around in th dark, looking for hotels that were either booked out or closed. Crap!
Eventually we stopped in at La Guignette Hotel and asked for some help - were ther ANY other hotels open at this time of night (9:30pm) where we could stay?! The lovely Madame Rose, the restaurant's owner, then proceeded to take us in and drove us around town to various hotels before La Flamboyant took us in, in the centre-ville.We were very grateful once again for the kindness of locals who helped us out when we'd arrived late at night with nowhere to stay!
So, the next day, we vowed that we would return to La Guignette to repay Madame Rose through patronage of her restaurant. We spent the day wandering the town, which wasn't a big place, but was so spread out it was extremely easy to get lost! I think we basically covered one end of town to the other by the time we'd walked across the bridge to the beach, eaten some rather average lunch NOT with Madame Rose (she is a good Christian woman who goes to church on Sundays!), strolled along the huge beach wall with its gushing openings, watched the fishermen in their pirogues, looked for the Jardin Tropik and its amazing insects - to no avail! - and walked all the way across to the other side of town to book a taxi brousse for the next day. Manakara certainly is a massive sprawl! But we kept our promise of patronising La Guigenette for some dessert of banane flambe and a G&T which we taught the waitress how to make - the bottle had never even been opened!
It was a nice way to spend our last night in Manakara, and the next morning we set off toward Ranomafana. Our taxi brousse only departed half an hour late, it wasn't even full, and vazaaha were the majority of passengers. WEIRD! In fact it was a very comfortable, and speedy, journey on a good road - something we'd rarely experience during our time here. Eventually the taxi brousse became quite full - but at least it wasn't packed with 25 adults and 8 children...
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