Interesting characters on the RN7

The Route National 7 is probably Madagscar's best road. And it's the one that most tourists frequent. For good reason, too; follow the RN7 and it leads you to some of the most easily accessible, and beautiful, national parks in the country, and if you're a gem hunter, straight through Madagascar's sapphire fields. We'd decided to travel the RN7 in reverse - direction, not gear, stoopid; its slow enough already! - and headed to the taxi brousse station in Toliara, planning on going to the little town of Ranohira.

Now if you go to the taxi brousse station in Toliara at 11:30am, you'll find that none of the taxi brousses actually leave until 2:30pm. You'd think we would have learned our lesson by now, and done our research into departure times - so that we wouldn't have to sit around at the taxi brousse station all day, especially as 2:30pm departure time actually means something more like 4pm.

So, we waited.

... and waited. For what seemed like an eternity. Because it was. Luckily the goings-on around the station kept us interested and amused for the first hour. Especially the four guys trying to put a sheep with a long tail onto a pousse-pousse (rickshaw).

Naturally, the taxi brousses don't leave until they're full. Unfortunately they don't fill one up, then send it on its way and start on the next one; whoever can get the business of each traveller does so, and you have a whole bunch of half-filled taxi brousses that then never leave, even when they have "14:30" plastered all over their windscreens. [end of rant about the joys of local transport]

And then, Interesting Character Of The Day Number One turns up. Initially a chatty, friendly soul, this naturalised old Frenchman became increasingly agitated when by 3:30pm we still had five empty seats. Letting everyone know his growing frustration about not departing, he stormed up to the office, smacked down a bundle of cash and paid for the remaining seats himself, demanding we depart tout suite. Deal. After a lot of yelling and carrying on, much to the dismay of the reserved Malagasy, our French friend cajoled the driver into leaving ... only to get stuck at the first police check point, the staff of which found it highly irregular that a taxi brousse was departing when it wasn't full, and loaded a couple of extras on board. We were now thoroughly pissed off with our fellow vazaha who we rapidly tried to distance ourselves from, especially when he continued to carry on at every opportunity, and expected everyone else on the bus to thank him for paying for the empty seats so that we could leave. He was extremely rude and we hated the whole situation - and him.

Didn't make things any more enjoyable when we got a flat tyre... ahh the world of public transport in Madagascar. Didn't make our French friend any happier either, who flew into yet another rage at the driver. Grrrr. Thank god the RN7 is beautifully paved, so that when we did get going again it was smooth sailing. That one, simple thing made me happy. And we were making good time, and looking like hitting Ranohira by around 8pm. Sweet.

But no! things are never that simple! hehe... a strange noise started coming out of the front of the vehicle, and we slowed down to crawling pace for ten minutes, our driving seemingly happy to just crawl along. Finally, after howls of protest from the passengers, we stopped off in Manambo, in the dark of night, at a gem merchant's office. We were in the middle of sapphire mining territory, and scattered around these parts are plenty of signs advertising gems for commercial sale.

Enter Interesting Character Of The Day Number 2. Mr Falil of Ahmet Gems Pty Ltd. Mr Falil was a Sri Lankan gem merchant who was living out here in the middle of nowhere, supporting his family back home through the gem trade. Upon finding out I was Australian, he proceeded to get very excited about cricket, the subject of our conversation for the next hour. Mr Falil organised for his 'best friend,' a certain Mr Mark - who he gushed over before and during his brief visits - to drop by to sort out the taxi brousse's axle problem and to placate our still-irate Frenchman. Mr Falil assured us that as he was the boss of his company, and VERY well connected, it would be completely safe for us to stay in his plush white office with its cushy leather lounge chairs and 'full guest facilities'. He also had security with guns (in fact the head of the district police... huh? well connected indeed!) patrolling his property, so we should not feel unsafe, but consider ourselves VERY LUCKY that we had stopped there. (did I mention that we should consider ourselves VERY LUCKY that we had stopped at Mr Falil's place?).

Mr Falil kept disappearing inside to, as we soon realised, get a swig of local rhum or other intoxicating beverage that he had hidden out the back, returning to chain smoke cigarette after cigarette. He because increasingly more free in his criticisms of Madagascan life, its 'poor people', its corrupt government with no respect for human rights, of being a foreigner in such a dangerous place. Apparently as two women travelling alone, we were taking A LOT of RISKS.

So, drunk as he was, Mr Falil was probably a good guy with a good heart. He repeatedly invited us to come to Sri Lanka to meet him, where we would experience first class hospitality - and of course, he would greet us personally at the airport; all we had to do was make the call and he would jump on the next plane - and we would discover paradise. YES!

Eventually, our Malagasy friends fixed the problem with the axle and we were able to go on our merry way. At some point during all of this our French friend had departed on the back of Mr Mark's motorcycle, to our relief, and we were able to proceed without having to listen to any more of his carry-on. When we finally reached the tiny town of Ranohira my heart sank when I saw everything closed up and no-one in the street (this happens when it's midnight in rural Madagscar). Eventually we found our bed for the night via Chez Momo, and luckily our host of the same name was up watching a football match and was able to accommodate us! We decided that being undecided about a trek early tomorrow morning - to nearby Parc National d'Isalo, the reason we'd come - was the best option, and promptly went to bed.

But it didn't take long for us to decide the next morning, after waking to the beautiful sight of the sun shining on the sandstone massif in front of us, and a decent breakfast to fill our empty stomachs, that a trek was definitely in order. We planned our route over our coffee; a four day trek into Isalo it would be, and an hour later we were setting off into the savannah-like countryside, led by our guide Bosco. It was nice to be on the move again - on foot. Enough taxi-brousses for a while.

Weird and wonderful Malagasy vegetation

Madagascar certainly is home to some weird plants. The south-west of the country is very unusual in its botanical inhabitants and we saw many of them while travelling around, as well as in the Reniala Nature Reserve near Toliara.

We met loads of baobabs, those iconic giant trees that look like they've drunk too much water and grow so slooooowly that 'saplings' can be already 50 years old. Madagascar has seven species of baobab, some with beautiful red bark, and they are important to people because they hold water, the fruit is edible, the bark is used for construction and the leaves are used for medicinal tea. Many of the trees are also sacred. The fruit, called 'renala', is oval-shaped, brown and fuzzy, with seeds inside. The baobabs at the Avenue du Baobab are estimated at over 1000 years old.

We also came across some arid-tolerant, cactus-like plants called alluadua, with their long, spiky stems with vicious looking spines, and tiny green leaves growing between them.

Another unusual, and endangered plant that we came across was the pachypodium, or elephant's foot, which also grows in the arid areas of the south-west. I loved this one...

Apparently 30% of the plants in Madagascar's forests are medicinal, and for this reason alone, preserving its native forest is extremely important. For example, the Madagscar rosy periwinkle was recently discovered to possess anti-cancer properties and has since been used to produce anti-cancer drugs.

Unbelievably, over 80% of the country's forest has been cleared and continues to be cleared at an alarming rate. This is due to human pressure - for planting rice, creating grassland for grazing zebu, timber for construction and making charcoal. Interestingly hardly any of the forest is replanted, and as a result there are miles and miles of barren landscapes; gully erosion is rife and one of  Madagascar's most serious environmental issues.

In some places though, there are hillsides of plantations - but guess which species? Eucalypts! (yet another marauding Australian species...) Apparently over 120 species have been planted here because they are good for their timber, are fast-growing and their leaves are used for medicinal purposes. Scarily, they are begining to take over the landscape. There are some pine and silky oak plantations too, but eucalypts dominate the landscape (in the few places where people have revegetated the miles and miles of barren, cleared hills. Its really disturbing how much has gone).
The national parks that protect much of the remaining forest have only secondary forest - most of the big trees are gone. It's a very fragmented system too, so there's no connections between most of them.

In many areas the traveller's palm is a dominant species, which grows rapidly and has flourished in areas where the forest has been destroyed. It's so named because it apparently always grows in a northerly direction, providing navigation, plus stores water inside, which can be accessed by thirsty travellers! This beautiful and unique plant is a national symbol of the country.

We continued to be amazed at the unique flora and fauna of this beautiful country. I just hope that the government sees fit to conserve it ... because if things continue they way they are, there soon won't be much of it left. And that makes me really sad.

Easter in Mangily & grossed out in Toliara

Besides having to sleep in its hospital, Mangily was a nice place to be for a few days! We had our ocean-facing bungalows; a champion host called Maurice that liked a drink or ten; hammocks to lounge about in; a beautiful beach to swim at; and G&Ts to slurp in the Mangily hotel up the road. We wandered around, up to Ifaty town, teasing the kids on our way, admiring the brightly painted pirogues, collecting shells, finding random things along the beach.

The main beach was packed on Easter Sunday - everyone was there: the beautiful young Malagasy girls in their bikinis; kids splashing around in the surf; families strolling along the beach; the pirogue captains making a week's wages in one day ferrying people back and forth from Ifaty village; young men impatiently awaiting the boxing match that day; the vazahas watching it all from their pricey hotels while they ate their overpriced food.

We headed to Toliara, a major town on the west coast of Madagascar, our jumping off point for heading east up Route Nationale 7. This town is nothing spectacular but we liked it - it was busy, colourful, with a bunch of old, weathered buildings and broken footpaths but a vibrant market and city centre. It was also useful for topping up the cash supplies and anything else we needed. A bit of civilisation was also good after our 'rural' adventures...

But 'civilisation' attracts vazaha. And there are plenty of them living in Toliara, as well as many other major Madagascan centres, as we soon found out. Most of them are old, fat, disgusting French men that drive around ON QUAD BIKES. What the?! Shorts and sneakers seem to be the normal attire - even to go out for dinner - and even worse, they get around with no shirts on during the day. They look ridiculous! Surely they must be aware of how they appear to the outside world - especially to other vazaha. But unfortunately the women they attract clearly don't. It made me feel so mad, and sickened, to see beautiful, young, willing Malagasy girlfriends (or prostitutes? I could never tell) hanging off their arms, dressed to the nines, clearly taking any opportunity they can get, but having to sacrifice any taste in men that they may have had.

When I compare the young, fit, good looking Malagasy men with these horrible, wrinkly old Frogs, I feel sad for the women; but of course they do whatever they can to improve their financial situation, for their own benefit and their families'. Most Malagasy men just don't have any money, which is what they need to attract a wife. And these vazaha, while gross, provide that for them - and of course are more than willing to accept offers of companionship from these beautiful African women. What man wouldn't? 

The truck ride from heeeeeellllll!

What started out as a nice, early morning ride, watching the light gradually come on as the sun rose over the spiky silhouettes of the euphorbia in the surrounding landscape, interspersed with magnificent baobabs, turned into a fun little adventure... of epic trucking proportions! (hmmm ... sorry for using the word epic, it's way too common these days).

First up, it took us around 1 1/2 hours to actually leave Morombe, the driver doing a few laps of town in the dark (4am!) to pick up the various passengers, the truck still quite empty. When we eventually left, the road was rather sandy and bumpy in places, and we rattled along, stopping here and there to pick up other passengers along the way, our driver getting out to chat to just about everyone in every little village. Eventually we reached quite a major town, where a number of people boarded - but we were grounded there for over an hour, loading onto the truck what seemed like over 50 bags of rice. Many of them were piled onto the roof, but once its capacity was reached, the bags were loaded underneath the seats. Not so good for our already cramped seating arrangements! The little wooden benches with their metal edges weren't so comfy, and we now had very little leg room for the remainder of the trip - and we completely underestimated how long that would be...

The scenery between villages was quite beautiful and helped to take our minds off our rapidly numbing legs: rice padis smattered with hard-working villagers, busily thrashing out the valuable seeds; large swathes of dry, prickly forest dotted with pregnant baobabs. But it passed quite slowly as we seemed to stop so frequently to pick up passengers, our socialite driver who knew anyone and everyone paying scant regard to getting on the road. Soon the truck was full, not only of people but of ducks, chickens and turkeys in large round cages. These also went up onto the roof, along with the other large items such as crates of bottles, suitcases and bicycles, and any spare feathered creatures were stuffed under the seats with the rice. At a guess there were around 100 chickens travelling with us! We had to stop a few times to make them a bit more comfortable, when their squawking became loud enough over the din of the reggae music blaring out of the speakers, the general chatter of the passengers and the revving of the engine.

From here we were really starting to feel the seats biting into our arses, the roughness of the crappy road, the whipping of the trees reaching into the windows, and the repetitiveness of the same reggae record being played over and over again. We asked our fellow passengers how long it would be til we reached Mangily, and they said 'only three more hours' - to our dismay. Night was falling and we were starting to feel a bit worried ...

A half-hour stop for an invisible obstacle that grounded 5 trucks on the road, a dinner stop and mechanical tinkering, and after what seemed a million years, we reached Mangily; not that we would have known it - in fact we almost missed it, the driver not realising we wanted to get off! - and we were dumped unceremoniously on the road in the middle of the night, our bags thrown down from the roof top. It was 1am on Easter Saturday. And what faced us? Darkness. Everything closed. A pumping nightclub, not the place we really wanted to sit until daybreak!

So we decided to head towards our the hotel and see if they would take us in. There were no street lights or signs, and we felt a bit lost about what to do next. We heard some singing coming from a nearby church, and headed towards it in our dazed and confused state, asking if anyone could help us with somewhere to sleep for the night. Thank goodness it was Easter Saturday, and that they were practicing for the big church service the next dayotherwise no-one would have been around at all! 

We were very grateful when one man came forward and said he was the security guard both at the church and the hospital up the road, and that there was a guard's room that we could stay in til sunrise. But we'd have to leave then, as foreigneres aren't usually allowed to crash there! Given it was 1:30am by this time, and all we wanted to do was stretch out and sleep this was a Godsend. (literally? Who knows.)

So we followed him up the sandy path to the hospital. It's not every day I can say that I spent Easter Saturday night sleeping in a hospital. They even had foam mattresses, a candle and a bathroom that we could use. Sweet!

We got up at first light the next morning, packed our bags, profusely thanked the security guards, handed them 10,000 Ariary and headed toward the beach. To our dismay when we arrived, the hotel was closed. Noooooooooo....! But to our delight, the old man watching the place said he could open up one of the bungalows for us; while it didn't have running water or electricity it was perfect - it looked out over the ocean, and had a well for water just up the hill. SOLD! We were happy with anything after our little trucking adventure. And so we settled in Mangily for a few days, to rest our weary bones. Phewwww....

More pirogue-ing - ocean style!

I've gotta say, I'm not so good at this relaxing caper. I get sick of it after about a day. It was time to leave Morondava; we clearly hadn't had enough of sitting in a cramped little wooden boat, so we decided that we would make our way down the coast to the little fishing village of Morombe in an ocean pirogue.

Farewell, Morondava, place of drunken evenings and lost cash ...

And so I find myself lying on the sail of our ocean pirogue, having set up camp for the night in a little fishing village called Ankevo. We are almost at the end of day one of a 3-4 day journey from Morondava to Morombe.

So, you think a sailing trip on an ocean pirogue, its white sail billowing in the wind while you cruise down the coast, past boat-building workshops, estuaries, sand dunes and villages, sounds nice and romantic?

Think again. When the wind has died, you're not going anywhere, the midday sun is beating down on your narrow boat with no comforts except a life jacket to sit on and your backpack to lean on, and little room to move, it's rather unpleasant! But... when the wind picks up, you're skipping along with the breeze at your back, watching the coastline pass slowly by, the small fishing pirogues out getting their daily catch, a dolphin or two leaping out of the water, it's simply grand.

Spending each night wrapped up in the sail of your boat, looking up at the stars, the wind blowing across your face while you drift off to sleep, is also a pretty special experience.

What I didn't expect was to see a fleet of fishing trawlers out raping the ocean, their metal arms protruding out aggressively, dragging their massive nets behind them. But I've forgotten about them now that we've landed, and Silver and Eric (our piroguese) are cooking the prawns and fish that we bought off the beach when we arrived.

We spent three days in our pirogue, cruising along each day, keeping an eye out for flying fish, pods of dolphins and jellyfish bobbing along the surface, watching the distant shore change slowly from small villages to coastal shrubs to huge sand dunes. We finally made it to Morombe at nightfall on the third day - and were we glad that the journey didn't last for four days! It was quite enough, thanks. I'm not sure my butt would have survived another day on those hard wooden planks. I was happy to stretch my legs in the knowledge that our next form of transport would be by road.

If only I'd known that this road journey would almost be as excruciating as three days in an ocean pirogue ...

Guavas, avocadoes, persimmons ...

locuts (which i haven't eaten, nor really seen, since I was a kid and my grandma had a tree)
custard apples
Chinese guavas (red, not yellow)
mandarins
bananas
apples
papaya
pineapple
jackfruit
passionfruit
rambutans
mangosteens! (my absolute FAVOURITE ... but a bit too expensive. D'oh!)

...and of course other random fruits I've never seen.

Theres even the fruit here that looks like it has armadillo skin; i remember it from Liberia, but I can't remember its name.

YUM!

Morondava and rhum arrange

Rhum arrange (n): the (in)famous Madagascan fruit-infused moonshine, with an alcohol content to knock your socks off.

Morondava: the location of a number of days of lounging around by the beach, staying in beautiful wooden bungalows, watching the fisherman bring in their catch, swimming, reading and relaxing.

We enjoyed the company of our new-found Japanese friends Kenta, You and Rie and their wonderful cooking habits, including charcoal-barbequed prawns and fish on the beach, and chicken hot-pot cooked inside their bungalow, out of the wind, the feathery remnants of the chicken still flying around the hotel grounds.

"When exactly are you leaving?" the bemused hotel staff asked them after they had plucked their unlucky feathered friend and attempted unsuccessfully to dispose of all of the feathers.

A Madagascan personality I won't forget in a hurry is Rasta Jean. The quietly spoken, over-relaxed rasta Malagasy owner of L'Oasis Bar and Hotel had certainly put in a lot of work on that head of dreads of his, not to mention his pot smoking habit. He'd also clearly practiced his 'legalise' song quite a lot, which he played a number of times in between the jam session of his loyal followers, all the while handing out free rhum shots to his guests in the front bar. These guests included myself and You, who had stayed in the bar long after Anna had taken a drunken Kenta home, but soon the guest numbers dwindled - especially after You took off as well, leaving me none the wiser in the bar after returning from the bathroom. So in defiance, I decided to stay, hanging out with a lovely English lass and her beautiful, dreadlocked, tall, muscly boyfriend, and convinced them to take me to the local nightclub with one of the best names ever: My Lord.

On arrival, after carving up the dance floor, attempting to dance African style, I headed to the bar and made instant friends with the bar girl by ordering a way-too-strong vodka, and a drink for her, when really I didn't need any more alcohol after all the shots of that lethal rhum that Rasta Jean had handed out.

So, my memories of the place after being behind the bar and talking to the cute guy that had followed me to the club were basically nil, and I woke up in a random house the next day, the bright sun shining in the open door, no-one around, my bag still over my shoulder. Unfortunately someone - whether it be the bar girl, the cute guy or some other random - had taken the liberty of removing all of the cash from my wallet after delivering me safely to the couch. But THANKfully, they had left me unharmed, and spared me my camera and credit cards. So everything was intact except my cash - and of course my dignity.

I stumbled around for a while, the elderly inhabitant paying me no attention, as if the sight of a disoriented vazaha woman in his house was a normal occurrence, and finally walked out into the hot sun and the local market before making my way back to concerned friends and a comfy bed.

Thank goodness Morondava was a good place to chill out for the next couple of days. I gradually got my dignity back, after a good sleep, an explanation of what I thought happened, and then those dreaded flashbacks which filled in some of the gaps. But not all of them.

Note to self: watch how much you drink on holiday.

Noted. Gratefully.

A day-trip out to sit amongst the ancient baobabs was one way to take my mind off the events of that evening. Getting there by motorbike certainly got the pulse racing, especially when the roads are not of the highest calibre, being sandy in many places, and the chances of stacking it are rather high. Anna may be a very competent rider, but the road in one place was no match for her! So over we went, luckily escaping any injuries nor damage to the bike. We visited the Baobab d'Amour, an unusual sight of two baobabs that had grown very close together and subsequently entwined themselves in each other's romantic embrace. Awwww....! Giving it an embrace of my own, I hoped that I might be more lucky in love! And of course the few hours we spent walking amongst giants, this time in the bright sunlight, was again a highlight of the trip. The Avenue really is a magical place.