Mora Mora in Madagascar Part II

So I am a wee bit behind on our travels. Finding an internet cafe with a decent connection in Africa is nearly impossible. Mix dial up connection with a large dash of power outages sprinkled with some overpriced hourly rates and you get a unsavory dish of pure frustration.

Last I left off we had become blood thirsty savages feasting on the spoils of our sacrificed turkeys. Despite our savagery we had become too soft in Tana and needed to experience the thrills of the open road again. We not only wanted the challenge of the unknown we also wanted to get a flavor for the true Madagascar outside of the bubble world of diplomatic life. We should have just stayed home and nibbled on the exquisite local chocolate that Sugar Daddy brought us home after work. But no, we wanted to be super stars and brave public transport all the way to the south to a city called Toliare.

As soon as we left Aaron's apartment and hit the road for ourselves our trip in Madagascar took on a whole new dimension. We were no longer tourists but warriors locked in an epic battle of wits.To say it was us verses the Malagasy would be going too far. Madagascar is a country that has few if any predators in the animal kingdom and the people have naturally adopted a non-predatory attitude. Madagascar has alot to offer a tourist with their national parks and dancing lemurs but they also offer quite a few pitfalls . There are plenty of organized tours that are getting fat off the spoils of the holiday traveller looking for an exotic trip. Since Matt and I were travelling on a tight budget we were in a different realm of travel being preyed upon by hustlers who have tactics that are not quite as refined as the slick packaged tour guides.

What also made the second part of our trip tricky was money. Madagascar was banking nightmare for us. Our ATM card didn't work! After 7 months on the road it was the first country where we couldn't just walk up to a ATM machine and pull out dough any time we wanted. We tried to wire money to ourselves over Western Union but they won't allow you to wire yourself money. There are few if any places in the capital that actually take credit card, cash reigns supreme, so we didn't have our plastic to fall back on. We felt like complete idiots for not checking ahead on the money situation and we assumed like everywhere else in the modern world that ATMs would be as plentiful as Pringles. Luckily for us Aaron loaned us some cashola for the road so we had to be extremely frugal with our spending habits or risk getting stranded with no money.

Did I mention the fact that Madagascar is a French speaking country and that neither Matt or myself speaks French? Well, I do speak some French. I don't actually speak French as much as I understand that I have no idea what people are saying to me and can't conjugate a verb to save my life. Matt speaks the universal language of money and knows enough to flash money in front of people to get what he needs. Besides we've found that if there's money to be made from a foreigner someone will come out of the wood work speaking just enough English to help us out of a jam. And we were in plenty of jams during our time in Madagascar. We've found in our travels that people are mostly forgiving of us if we at least attempt to speak their language even if we butcher the life out of the words. Keeping it lighthearted is the key to any interaction.

Our days were spent squeezing into mini-vans with 14 of our closest friends some of which had a unique fragrance of campfire sweetened with body odor which with closed windows made for a noxiously fun ride. The roads in Madagascar are some of the best we've seen anywhere in our travels but that doesn't say anything about the drivers who are some of the most reckless maniacs we have ever witnessed on four wheels. What astounded us most was not necessarily how many people could fit inside the mini-vans but the amazing ability the drivers and touts had for stacking bags, boxes, electronics, produce and just about anything under the sun on top of the vans at heights double that of the vans themselves. They had a pure gift for defying gravity.

We visited three national parks that were wildly different in their climate and landscape. Our first stop was at a rain forest park called Ranomafana. We power walked in circles with a German man we met on the mini-van through the park looking for lemurs in the rain. We stayed an extra day in the little outpost town just to soak our bodies in the hot water springs. We then booked a two day trek to the second highest peak in Madagascar, Pic Bobby, and with our shoeless sherpa and waif woman guide we charged up to the top to see some of the most awe-inspiring views, when the clouds we're hovering below us to block out line of vision, and bask in unspoiled land that lay so far down below us. Our final park was in the high desert at Isalo where the sky seemed to have no beginning and no end. There we finally laid eyes on the ring-tailed lemur the official mascot of Madagascar. We rounded off our journey down south on the beaches of Ifaty where the water was too hot to even enjoy entering. The hundreds of pink jellyfish were a bit of deterrent too.

On our way to Toliare from the beach the truck we were traveling in broke down twice. Thanks to a pen, a rubber tube, an empty water bottle, alittle tape and some tough stomaches they were able to MacGyver the car and deliver us safely into town. There we caught a flight back up to Tana. We were beat down from our days on the road and relieved to get a few more days of pampering with our good friend.