August 2007
Plans never really go according to ‘plan’. So after spending a lot of time
in Tana organizing our trip down the river and to Tsingy National Park, and
arriving in our departure destination we found out that really there was no
way we would be able to get back to site at the end of it all. The roads had
been washed out and had not been repaired at all. A few days on the pan and
start re-thinking all over again. Thankfully there are many parks on the RN7
route south, so we were able to make our way slowly back to Tulear instead.
Travel by Taxi-brousse can be very frustrating in Madagascar, not so much
because they squeeze 4 people onto 3 seats or that you find you are always
in the slowest van as everyone overtakes, but mainly because they take
forever to leave. It is pretty common to wait for at least a few hours
before the van is full and will leave. Then 5mins into the journey you will
stop for a toilet break as everyone has been waiting around for hours
already, and so it goes on.
To summarize in 10 days we spent 6 on transport and 4 in national parks!
Found that our first port of call: ‘artesian markets’, weren’t open because it
was Sunday, so headed on straight away after a cold beer and on to another
taxi-brousse.
Early to rise to make it to Ranamafana NP, first we found that it was
raining pretty hard, looked set in and no doubt would continue all day
(reports on how it was lovely the day before not really helping too much),
dumped our bags, picked up a guide (reasonable fees we thought), but then disappointed that the Blue Ventures discount was not going to work.
Day consisted of walking a lot through the wet, dripping forest and were fortunate enough to see a few lemur species despite the rain. Returned wet and cold to discover
that the guide was asking for an extortionate 50,000Ar rather than 15,000Ar
(£14 not £4, total shocker considering average daily wage is: £0.60),
couldn’t thumb a lift into the village to find a place to stay, so eventually
walking in the rain in the village we found a place but far too expensive. Cut
our losses and spent 3 hours on the side of the road trying to get a lift
back to the city whilst I was freezing and desperately trying to dry myself
off a little against the warm coals of the mini kebab stall.
Ready to call it all off we managed to pay over the normal rates for a taxi- brousse to take us back to Fianarantsoa and drop us off at the only place with rooms.
Very long cold wet expensive day, with the only saving grace that we were able to see a few lemurs.
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