Madagascar: Tana the Terrible

October 2007

I have grown to dislike Tana a lot.

Maybe this is completely unfounded, but I have spent a lot of time there, none of it particularly fruitful and not half as functional as I would have liked.
It is expensive and oozes hassle and there really isn’t anything to see.
Tried to go for a walk once, but found the only lake, which was surrounded largely by unsavouries and exhaust fumes, a let down. I feel trapped, like I should be able to get things sorted and organized, but everything ends up more of a mess and I seem to have spent more days that I would care to think about sorting nothing.

In Tana’s defence it might not be Tana at all, but the functions I am trying to accomplish. I blame Air Madagascar for much of this. It seems to take them 2 hours to see you, they are then ultimately unhelpful and rude and send you off only to not get an answer and have to return the next day and go through it all over again. It isn’t even as if they are a cheap airline, they are ridiculously expensive for the distance, routes and capacity of the planes. And the monopoly. So they are the only way you can really travel coast to coast and always have to go through Tana. Hotels as well, seem always to be busy, there never seem enough rooms available. This trip alone we have had to change room nearly every night and get thrown out of the hotel the following day despite our patronage for 4 nights (based on fullness not raucous behaviour on our part).

I will be pleased to leave Tana and all that it stands for in my head, however, prejudiced it might be.

Loving the ice cream though, sooooooooo goooooooooood.