Jeffothy’s Keyings

On Friday June 27, Sarah and I had a flight to Maroantsetra, which is in the northeast part of your map of Madagascar. For once our flight was uneventful. Actually the smaller twin prop airplane was nicer than most of the Air Canada planes I have been on.We arrived in to the small airport (one small building) just before lunch and grabbed a taxi into the village after the usual haggle for price. This local guy helped us get a right price and actually came in the same cab as us too… didn’t know who he was, his name was Rakoto. Turned out he worked for the hotel we were staying at “Le Coco Beach”. We came to the river, where the hotel was supposed to be and the bridge crossing had collapsed, apparently last September. So they dropped us off next to the river and took a Pirogue across to the hotel on the other side. We had a choice of rooms, the bungalow with it’s own toilet was 50,000 Ariary ($29 CDN), or the bungalow with only a shower and sink, shared outside toilet, was 16,000 Ariary (less than $10). We took the cheaper one and settled.

Rakoto the hotel worker and tour organizer met with us later in the afternoon, and we discussed our options for visiting Masoala National Park. This is the only National Park in Madagascar where the rainforest comes right down to the beach. There are marine reserve parks here too. Our plan was to go by motorboat to the peninsula, staying in a bungalow with a guide, boat driver, and private cook. It wasn’t going to be the cheapest but it was definitely something we wanted to do.

Then we asked how we could pay. Cash only. No credit card? No, but the bank in the village takes MasterCard. No visa card? No, not here, not anywhere near here. Argh. So we’re stuck here on the footsteps of a truly beautiful place, but no way to pay for it? Crap!

We spent the whole afternoon trying to figure out ways we could get money to pay for it, or at least a way to pay back Rakoto if he agreed to lend us the money. Painfully, we spent almost 2 hours at the Bank of Africa, exchanging our only extra cash, Euros and American we had brought for later on in the trip. The total we had was only enough to pay for half of our trip to the peninsula, but after many what if’s what if’s we got Rakoto to agree to let us pay half now and arrange to pay him the other half after.

Cool, so we left the next morning on a motorboat with our guide, Armand. We had met Armand the day before. Trouble, Sarah had spent all night up and down to the toilet and back, terrible stomach pain and diarrhea. The boat ride was no fun for her, but some tablets seemed to allow her not to have to need to toilet for the ride. I was trying to keep positive and no worry too much.

We arrive at the peninsula at this beautiful beach (Tampolo) and walked up to our bungalow in the camp. We were the only 2 people in this place, surrounded by jungle and beach. I was stoked, and also wished Sarah was feeling better than she was.

Oh I forgot to mention that it was the rainy season now, and that is almost always rained. We awoke to bright sun and blue sky.

Sarah and I went with Armand for a walk in the Park, we walked along the beach a bit, and then into the jungle, in search for the Red Ruffed Lemur. Walking through the jungle is such a cool thing. This was primary forest we were trudging through, checking out the seemingly hundreds of plants you can see at any one moment, looking for chameleons and lemurs. We spotted the second species of lemur we had seen in about an hour, the Red Ruffed Lemur, which is endemic to Masoala.

We got back to the “lodge” (small clearing in the jungle where the bungalows were) and Sarah needed to lie down. She couldn’t eat the awesome 3-course lunch that we got served: vegetable salad and bread, big roasted prawns and rice, and yogurt for desert.

After a couple hours break, Sarah felt up to doing something so Armand and the boat driver took us up the coast a bit to find some place to snorkel. The snorkeling was fun for us, saw some fish, some cool coral, an eel, and other see life. We were happy, thought it was decent, but Armand insisted there were no fish, comparatively.

We took another break in the bungalow before going for a night walk in the jungle with our torches (flash lights). Never having done this before it was spectacular! The sounds of the tree frogs, birds, insects, amazing. We spotted one of these loud frogs, tonnes of giant spiders and also a chameleon. The first chameleon we’ve seen, it was about the size of a finger or thumb and its colour was white changing to brown.

Dinner was yummy again, zebu was the main course, which is the endemic cattle here in Madagascar. We slept pretty well and got up easily as it just happened to be another truly rare sunny and blue-sky day.

We hiked for about 4 hours that morning seeing more Red Ruffed Lemurs and also some White Faces Brown Lemurs. The Brown Lemurs were quite a bit closer to us than the other as they weren’t as high in the canopy. After lunch we breaked for a bit, and then walked through the small autonomous village of 70 people there, and then along the beach and trail south. We watched the sun set and swam in the Indian Ocean before setting back for another beach/forest walk in the dark.

On this night walk we spotted 2 types of nocturnal lemur, the white fronted and a striped brown I think. We also spotted a striped civet, which is a cat like carnivore. Walking along the beach by star/moonlight was pretty spectacular.

That night while we were sleeping, it rained for about 1 hour, and we awoke to beautiful blue skies and sun again! We took the boat back to Nosy Mangabe (Big Mango Island) in the morning and took a hike with Armand. We saw more brown lemurs, a new black and white lemur, and more cool creatures. The leaf-tailed gecko was especially sweet, which we couldn’t spot with Armand pointing right at it.

We ate another great lunch on Mangabe and were joined by a pack of brown lemurs interested in our food… meant good close up views of these primates which was cool. The sky clouded over as we boated back to Le Coco Beach Hotel that afternoon.

So it was Monday evening at Le Coco Beach and we were getting a flight back to Tana on Tuesday. To Be Continued.

We have finally found another opportunity to use the internet. Internet access was far more difficult to find in Madagascar than we had anticipated. We are no longer in Madagascar, we arrived this afternoon to Nairobi, Kenya! Some of you know of our kaffufles with Air Madagascar in Maroantsetra - but we will write more of that later and start where we left off at the last blog.

The day after returning to Toliara from Ifaty we went to the Taxi-Brousse station and began one of the craziest taxi rides of our lives! We got to the station at 8am and watched as they loaded our baggage onto the top of the 15passanger van we were to travel in. The baggage was piled about as high as the van itself! And of course the live turkey was put on the very top. We waited for about an hour and half as they tied everything on the van. We carefully guarded our front seats next to the driver. Finally about 9:45am (only 1hr 45min late) we left on the road for Fianarantsoa (Fianar) - only about 500kms away. It was crazy! The 15passenger fan had at least 20people in it as they add extra fold down seats that only work with the door closed and if there are extra people they sit on the floor (”No Problem!”). We drove through the village spotted country of Madagascar. The highway also acts as the main street for many of these villages, so as we drove through at 80kms an hour chickens, dogs, ducks and people ran for their lives. The breaks are used as a last resort if and only if beings do not move to the sound of the horn. We were surprised at the decency of the road given our previous experience driving to Ifaty. During the whole trip we only had to stop 5 times to go over what would be considered in Canada impassable potholed road. We stopped at about 1:30pm in a small village. It took us a few minutes but we finally figured out we were stopping for lunch (no one in the van spoke English or French). It was a pretty sketch little restaurant/decrepid building… but I just closed my eyes and ate what was in front of me. We stopped a few hours later in a larger town to drop off about 7 or 8 of the passengers. Slowly their luggage was unstrapped from the roof - we watched carefully to ensure our bags stayed up there! Interestingly when we all piled back into the van it was still full. After this our drivers spent about an hour going about town trying to recruit new passengers. Jeff and I played with some little kids at the bus stop, giving them candy and empty pop bottles. Finally we were on the road again. At this time it was starting to get dark (remember Madagascar is in Winter season now so starts getting dark at about 4pm). We watched anxiously as the sun set and the speed of the van got much slower. Once it was dark we saw many fires in the hills. Turns out this was the eve of Madagascar Day and people were celebrating with hand made sparklers and lanterns. In the villages it was complete chaos. Children were running around with burning torches throwing them onto the road in front of the van. It was quite frightening to watch the kids standing so close to the road. Suddenly, we were in Fianar. As we drove into the taxi-brousse station, taxi drivers were sticking their heads in the windows and opening the doors begging us to chose their services. When we finally got our bags of the roof of the van and found a taxi to take us to our hotel it was about 9pm. Next time I think about complainibg about how long it takes to drive to Kamloops - I will just remember this trip.

We checked into the Tsara Guest House. We were thrilled to hear it had hot water showers! We scheduled a trek to Ranomafana National park the next day and then hit the hay, completely exhausted. We woke up early the next morning and headed to Ranomafana (means “Hot Water” in Malagasy for the natural hot springs nearby). The park is about 45min outside of Fianar and is staffed primarily by people from the nearby village of the same name. We were fortunate to have a guide who spoke English. He guided us on a 4hr hike through the mountainous park. It was pooring rain at the time so we got completely soaked, but it was awesome. Ranomafana is a secondary forest that was made into a park in 1991. It is home to several Indigenous species of bamboo, hundreds of different palms, and 12 different species of lemur. We saw many very cool plants and some birds. After lunch and about 3.5hrs of trekking we finally spotted our first lemur! We were lucky to see the Golden Bamboo Lemur. He was very high in the tree, but we took pictures regardless (:

When we returned to our hotel we exhausted the hot water tank with a very long hot shower. We were so cold after our rainy hike. After this we ventured out into the city to try and find an internet cafe. Unfortunately due to the holiday, nothing was open. We had a really fun walk through the town seeing the different way that people live in this rainy cool area. We played with some children - who were more excited about the candy that we gave them than the money! Thank you Brentview baptist for the candy you sent with me - we’ve so enjoyed seeing the excitment on the kids’ faces when they recieve it. Once again we had an early dinner (with our new favourite drink: coco punch) and early to bed as we had the second leg of our taxi-brousse trip the following day.

We arrived at the taxi station at 7am (which is like a big muddy parking lot filled with hundreds of vans in various states of disrepair). We went to the booth we had booked with only to find it empty. Which was quite disconcerting. An older man grabbed my ticket and said “oh yes come come”. And I angrily replied “No! We already have booking”. So he left us and we wandered around trying to find our van. The man came back again and said “Oh, you are Sarah, you come over here”. I thought he was just trying to get us to use his company instead and he knew my name because he already saw my ticket, but we followed him anyway. Apparently we were going with a different company… we struggled with our broken French to explain we had already paid for the front seats. Once again we went through the same ordeal of loading on the bags as high as they would go. About 2hrs late we all piled into the van and started the trek. I noticed a sign that said Antananarivo 390km. I was happy because I figured since it was closer we would get there sooner. Ha! Our driver was the most cautious third world taximan I have ever met. We went about 40-60km/hour the whole trip. I was thankful for his slow driving however when we were held up due to an accident between two taxi-brousses. We finally arrived in Tana at about 10pm. We arrived at an empty station with no taxi in site. It was scary as a drunk man bothered us and no one else seemed to come to our aid. Luckily we found someone who knew someone who had a taxi. Finally we made it to our hotel where they cooked us a fantastic Malagasy stew and rice.

Well, I think this blog is long enough. We will tell more tales of Tana in the days to come.

We’re now in Madagascar, and this posting is coming straight from Antananarivo, the capital of this interesting country.
Since we last posted… Internet has been hard to come by. Between lack of availability and it being the national holidays this last couple (many things are closed), just haven’t made it. We have so many photos to share with you guys, but the connection isn’t great so you’ll have to wait.

Hmm, now where to start. We had a day of diving in Cape Town before we left South Africa. It was great, pretty much a full day, with 2 dives in False Bay, 2 different locations. There was lots of active coral, anenomes, sea urchins and even a seal. We swam through kelp and a couple caves (with light at the end), took some cool under water photos too! We finished the day with a delicious seafood platter at the waterfront in Cape Town, sitting outside at the Hildebrand restaurant while the sunset sipping local cabernet sauvignon. We called that our anniversary and birthday dinner… it was awesome.

The next day, don’t worry you divers, it was a full 18 hour interval after our multiple dives, we had 3 flights. Cape Town to Joburg (SA), Joburg to Fort Dauphin (Mad), and Fort Dauphin to Antananarivo. We weren’t expecting to have to fly through Fort Dauphin to get to Antananarivo (Tana), but that’s the way it went. We had to clear Madagascar Customs there and get our Tourist Visa’s. It was all fine, we were glad we didn’t have 3 surf boards to carry through customs as some of the South Africans on the same flight did. We stayed in Ivato that night, which is the small town where the Tana Airport is. We paid way too much for a taxi that was falling apart, to get to our hotel which was only a few meters away, well, you have to learn somehow. Another thing we learn that day too, was to either try and buy Malagasy currency in SA, the ariary, or bring a lot more smaller euros when arriving here.

The next day we were to fly to Toliara at 11:45am so we made it to the airport an hour before. Well the flight had been changed now, to 2:25pm, argh! Anyway, we hung out in the airport as we couldn’t find anywhere to store our luggage in lockers, and we weren’t allowed to check in earlier. At 1:25pm we checked in no problem, passed through security. We waited a little bit extra to get on the plane but not too bad. We had read that Air Madagascar (aka Air Mad) was infamous for being late, slow, problems, cancellations, etc. Anyway, after taxiing around the tarmac and actually accelerating for take off we stopped and were told that there was “technical problem” and we needed to deboard. While we were sitting back at the gate, Sarah looked out the window, saw a bunch of people standing around our jet’s dismantled engine and laughing. Sarah and I were trying to figure out if we were ever going to get to go to Toliara, so we sketched out alternate potential plans. We re-boarded the plane a couple hours later and this time our fingers were crossed. We taxied, accelerated, and took off! Awesome, finally we get to go where we’re going, only 6+ hours after we had originally expected. That’s not the end of that story. About 5-10 minutes into the flight we circled back and we were told that due to more “technical problems” we were going back to land. This time we got off and they gave us indication that they were bringing in another plane. The next time we boarded, this is the 3rd try, we took off and actually arrived in Toliara! Yeah! Only 9 hours after we expected… alright Air Mad! Anyway, we stayed in the most expensive hotel we knew of in Toliara, which was about $60 CDN. We needed a comfort.

The next day (June 23) we took a taxi on a sand road North, to Ifaty, which is a string of 3 fishing villages on the coast. The road was very poor-giant potholes strung together by mounds of sand and who knows how old chunks of asphalt- to be precise, it took more than 1 hour to go the 25 or 30 kms. The hotel we checked into in Ifaty, well it was in the village of Mangily, was called Hotel Vovotelo. It was awesome, we had a little bamboo bungaloo (read shack, nice though) right on the white sand beach in front of the torquoise water of the Ifaty lagoon, Atlantic Ocean. Sarah woke up the next day with a terrible head cold/clogged nose so could not dive, with the shop next door, Le Grand Bleu. I (Jeff) went without his lovely wife, she was in bed resting. The dive was a sweet 26 metres with just the owner of this dive company, Richard, originally from South Africa. I saw some sweet line fish, a scorpion fish, some cool coral, and a giant potato bass which was huge (40 kg!). We hung out on the beautiful beach for the rest of the day, before taking another bumpy taxi ride back to Toliara. Oh, so this taxi ride was amazing. We got to see how most of the people in this province live… in tiny villages of huts made of grass and branches from bush. Fires, mostly naked children running around, chickens, mangy dogs, zebu (Madagascar’s Cow) pulled carts, many women carry more than I think I could lift up on top of their heads, like a different planet.

So much more to say, so watch for the next part posted here.

Today is our third wedding anniversary and we had a great time.

This morning we got up and purchased tickets for the ferry/tour to Robben Island, which is the island near Cape Town where Nelson Mandela spent 17 years in a prison. We then drove out to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point, there’s a cool park there.

The drive out was cool, through small beach towns the whole way, about an hour South of Cape Town. We walked up to the old lighthouse at Cape Point and had lunch on the rock at the Cape of Good Hope, which is the South-western most point of Africa. On our way there in the park, we saw an Ostrich, he crossed the road right in front of us, cool!

We hurried back to catch our ferry, and had to run from the parking lot to catch it. Made it just in time. The view of Cape Town from out on the water towards Robben Island is nice.

The tour guide on the bus that drove around the island told us about the island, it’s landmarks and also about some of the political prisoners that were treated so poorly there. He made an appeal to all of us to stop racism, and it was very touching as he shared his experience having been a black man affected by the apartheide system here in South Africa.

Tomorrow we are doing a couple scuba reef dives from the shore of False Bay. Should be pretty fun, I’m excited to try out our new skills and test out my new diving camera case.

Cape Town has been really great to us, we’re having a fantastic time. At the same time, we’re stoked at the change it will be to check out Madagascar which should be quite a lot different.