Exploring Ranomafana – 31 October.

We had guessed before we left the UK that this would probably be one of our favourite days and it didn’t disappoint. I had taken my Wellington boots for protection vs leeches but we didn’t really see that many (only Roberto got ‘done’... he seems to have a knack for attracting them). We set off from the hotel at 7.30am to start our jungle walk. The goal was to find at least 4 different species of lemurs and the giraffe beetle which is unique to the park. In fact, many species are endemic to their specific park as Mada is so incredibly diverse.

We did find 4 species of lemurs and my favourites were the ones that looked like koala bears (the male being very grey). They had such adorable little faces and I had a guide with me who was very good at spotting them for me. We also saw some b/w lemurs whose babies looked like little bears – all black with a round face. I realised that if I lived in Madagascar, I’d find it impossible not to want one as a pet... they just looked irresistible.

We then drove on to Fianarantsoa but were not able to enjoy the famous panaromic view due various demonstrations on the streets. So, we tried to press on not to be too late arriving at our next destination: Ambalavao.

They had said in our Bradt guide that “it’s the prettiest town in Madagascar” (according to Hilary Bradt who has visited 25 times), however, we couldn’t enjoy a stroll in the evening as we were staying quite outside of town (about 5 miles away) and though we tried to go for a walk, we didn’t go very far as it soon got quite dark and there was no lamp-post to lighten our path. Strangely, it did feel very safe though, to give people credit where credit is due.

Everywhere we went kids asked if we had any plastic bottles as they are precious to put oil in it. Local people would never buy any bottled drink as they won’t be sick drinking from the local wells, whereas tourists have to buy bottled water and soft drinks. At least nothing goes to waste in this sense

Antsirabe to Ranomafana – 30 October

The 2nd day was far more scenic as the rice fields looked more elaborate. On the way we even stopped at a Lemur Reserve for lunch so that we’d have a nice break doing some trekking. However, this reserve was little a green oasis among miles and miles of nothingness where burning the ground is common practice to plant new crops. The smell of burning wood was lingering in the air everywhere and we could even smell it when we were trekking in the reserve. It smelt almost ‘too close for comfort’ and I can’t imagine the distress that the poor lemurs must be feeling sometimes. All of these fires have actually affected the weather pattern and it now rains less & less. In the South, sand dunes are now the norm. Since there are no tree left in some parts, it’s impossible to stop the desert moving in...

Whilst at the Lemur Reserve we also saw some lovely chameleons and wild b/w lemurs with babies on their back. As the forest was quite dense, the only way to be guaranteed to see them was to put collar on the dominant female. Two guides had also gone ahead of us with a tracking device to pick up the signals from the collar and then they basically kept an eye on the lemurs for us. Then they can help the guide locate them for the tourists by pointing us in the right direction. It wasn’t easy to get to them (totally off the beaten path – no track whatsoever), but it was a nice little adventure with interesting insects and mangoose too !

We got to Ranomafana for 6pm and stopped along the way for many pictures as it was getting lusher and lusher by the mile. This beautiful park wasn’t supposed to be on our itinerary but I had asked for a detour to be included and I was so glad to have done so as exploring it turned out to be one of our most thrilling days.

We even took a nocturnal walk to look for chameleons (they prefer to come out of of the forest by night so you can often find them hidding under leaves). We also saw the microlibus lemur which looks more like a jumping rat but ever so so cute. However, they were moving far too fast for pictures, sadly. But I was absolutely mesmerised by them, seriously, seriously cute.

Travelling South towards Antsirabe – 29 Oct

We had a 9am pick up to start our journey South. The jacarandas all around Tana were in full bloom and were truly spectacular. I really liked Tana, having seen it in May, it was starting to look very familiar already and, to make it extra familiar, some areas of it did look very French in their architecture. The many jacarandas dotted around the central lake made it look like a fairly pleasant town to live in. It is, indeed, one of the nicest capital cities that I’ve visited in Africa. November is many tourists’ fav time of the year to visit on 3 accounts : (a) it is the season of babies, (b) the jacarandas are in full bloom, (c) the fossas are much easier to spot as they try and mate up in the trees (when they are usually nocturnal).

We drove to Antsirabe and though we did see lots of nice paddy fields I must confess I had hoped the whole drive would be a lot more scenic. We also finished the drive quite early and at 1pm we were all checked into our next hotel.

With a whole afternoon to spare we decided to go for lunch to L’Hotel des Thermes, which is the nicest hotel in town with a colonial style architecture (unique in the whole of Mada). It had a pool too that one could use for a small fee and at least it had some green surroundings so that we could eat outside.

The walk from our hotel (Le Trianon) to L’Hotel des Thermes only took 5mins but it meant being constantly harrassed by people wanting to take us places on their tuk-tuk (Antsirabe being the town that has the greatest number of such ‘vehicles’).

Thankfully our hotel had wi-fi access so when we got back by 4pm we managed to catch up on our emails and start downloading our photos and putting them on F/Book. Mayotte already seemed ages away though it had only been 48H. The notion of time always seems altered when we travel... I guess it is true that ‘time flies when you’re having fun’.

In order to avoid being harrassed some more on the way to dinner, we chose to eat in the nearest restaurant, geographically – just across the road from le Trianon. It ended up being a good choice. Lovely staff and a great choice of food for vegetarians.

Mayotte to Madagascar – 28 Oct 2010

We had to leave the Jardin Maoré at 7.45am even though our flight was after noon because they feared we’d get stuck in traffic in rush hour + they also had strikes in town, just as they did in France (for the same reasons).

It was another enjoyable drive all the way to the harbour and I had a very interesting chat with our driver who had lived on Mayotte for 10 years but was starting to think that it wasn’t as idyllic as he’d hoped. He still felt there was a great cultural shift between the local peope and the French ones and said he was fed up with the African mentality of wanting ‘everything for nothing’. He said the locals just want to be fully French to be able to cash in on benefits but have no interest in anything else. Corruption was still a great problem too. He said that Madagascar would have been his first choice for settling in as the landscapes are more spectacular, but it was too unstable politically. But he said it was hard to find hard-working local labour and a survey was undertaken recently that showed that you need 2.5 black people to do the same amount of work as 1 white person will do in the same circumstances, hence the bills at the hotel being so high as local people were paid the same salary as in France but 3 times more were needed.

He also mentioned that one of Madagascar’s growing problem was the Chinese barons. They don’t have enough food for everybody in China so they buy some land here to cultivate crops. They even bring 300+ of their people (so the locals don’t have a chance to earn wages from the land exploitation), they exploit it as much as they can and once nothing will grow on it anymore, they go back to China, leaving behind hectares of desolated land. And the Madagascar government didn’t seem to be willing to do much about it because, well, they get the money for the selling the land (back to corruption).

He also explained that today’s strikes in Mayotte were mainly from teachers though they are paid 4,000 euros for just working 18 hours a week. This inflated salary is to give French teachers an incentive to ‘move over to Mayotte’.

He also said that 40% are illegal immigrants. Each year they send 20,000 back to the other islands but the moment a child is born here, he will be instantly entitled to French citizenship and so they won’t be able to send the mother back. So: many pregnant women try to make it over on time for the birth to get dual nationality.

The ferry back was a 20min journey and then another 10min drive to the airport. Our flight to Nosy Be was on time but I didn’t dare go and see Pepette (my flurry friend from the May trip) because drivers kept claiming they needed a 4x4 to get there and wanted to charge me 5 times the recommended rate. I couldn’t even call the lodge to ask them to send me a taxi as there was no call box. Come to think of it, there are no coins in Mada anyway, only bank notes. So it was a long 3h30 wait with absolutely nothing to do.. No wi-fi there either. There is a cafe just across the airport but it doesn’t have a lot to offer.

We got to Tana at 7pm and it was another hour until we made it to the hotel (le Chalet des Roses). It was comfy and nice but the pizza place was at the back of the hotel and it looked a bit unsafe. However, we had no problem. We’d been travelling all day (one of these days that you have to ‘write off’ basically) and I couldn’t wait to get to sleep but it did feel rather hot in the room.

Mayotte – 27 October 2010.

Our last day was a full day out and was our favourite by far. The guy who ran the programme had lived in Mayotte for 8 years and knew where to find a delightful secluded white islet, away from the crowds. Just getting to the one he’d chosen was thrilling. The water colour kept changing deep turquoise to deep blue, and you could see the coral reefs very clearly from the boat even when we were miles away from the shore. Even in the impasses, we could look right down. They called these areas ‘piscines naturelles’ (natural swimming pool). The lagoon truly had one of the most striking colours I’d ever seen. Pictures just did not do it justice. In fact, instead of swimming in it, I spent the first hour near the islet just sitting on the boat, taking it all in visually to try and imprint its vivid colour on my brain.

We then just had to wait for the islet to come to the surface at low tide. We got there about 40mins beforehand so it was quite neat to watch the island come to life and watch the sand dry up so that we could step on it and have a quick picnic. One of these days that I’ll remember forever.

The next stop was another island where there was a waterfall on the beach and a bamboo forest on top (I cannot remember the name of this specific island but there can’t be that many with a waterfall on the beach so the local tours would know the one). It was beautifully lush. We didn’t have enough time to explore the forests (too many mosquitoes were biting anyway) but the waterfall was very cool and refreshing. There were also some wild makis just to add a touch of exotism... and though it looked as if there was no one else at all on this small island we were strongly advised to take our belongings with us at all times as sometimes people did hide in the bush to steal things. Around the island with the waterfall the water colour was more emerald than turquoise. We totally enjoyed that day, and for 65 euros (with picnic) we felt it’d been a bargain.

Mayotte - cont.

The following day we’d booked an excursion to swim in an ‘impasse’ but the corals weren’t great, nor did they look very healthy (more bleached than colourful). There were not many fish either. I was seriously disappointed as Mayotte’s lagoon is supposed to be ‘The Pearl of the Indian Ocean’ and it has the unique geological feature of having a reef within a reef making the water very still. Only one other place in the whole world has got this unusual feature (New Caledonia or Papua – can’t remember which).

We then went back to the lodge for lunch and went on another water excursion in the afternoon. We passed some turtles that were swimming nearby but we never saw them laying their eggs (you have to stay about a week to be guaranteed to see that). Mayotte is supposedly famous for its ‘dozens of turtles, so many that you will find them from knee deep’ but I didn’t find it to be true late October.

The next boat trip, however, was much nicer, the water was more shallow and its colour was just a mesmerising turquoise with much healthier corals. I really wished I’d had an under water camera to remember it all. I felt hugely frustrated as I know that my memory won’t last very long ! We didn’t see a huge variety of fish but many different types of corals and long stretches of them too. The sunsets at the end of the day, were also truly amazing.

We’d been really lucky with the weather because prior to our arrival it had rained non stop for 3 days with some pretty heavy downpour and it would have seriously limited what we could do. There, with glorious sunshine, visibility was down to 35m deep with just naked eyes. Unbelievable.

In its best areas, the reef was truly spectacular and one of the healthiest I had ever seen. Ever. Relatively unspoilt. We came back at 4.30pm and the makis were waiting for us in the car park (they know the times the boats come back).

MAYOTTE– 25 October 2010

We landed in Mayotte on time. However, the airport is on a separate island so we then had to get on a ferry to get to the mainland. As it is French territory, French nationals only need their I.D.s (Mayotte will be considered fully EU territory as of Dec 2010).

It was an hour’s drive to get to Le Jardin Maoré and it was a beautiful coastal drive with dramatic mountains caused by old volcanic eruptions and lush surroundings. It was also very humid and already 28C by 8am !

The local makis (lemurs) were there to greet us and they were incredibly cute. Mayotte only has one species of maki, with a brown coat.

I should have wanted to go swimming but I really didn’t have the energy. I just took it easy all day. I mainly enjoyed the surroundings, the cute makis and the food (absolutely divine !).

MADAGASCAR - getting there (24 Oct 10)
There had been strikes all over France all week so I was feeling rather nervous... The roads leading to major airports were usually blocked, etc. However, on D-day, we didn’t encounter any problems. The main itch was my mistake... I had left for St Pancras with 45mins to spare, hopped on the tube... and when I got to Euston I realised I’d left my hand-luggage at home (with my train & flight tickets, food, drinks, medication AND my ‘baby’ – my camera). Shock & horror. Thankfully I know Euston station pretty well so I quickly made a dash for the taxi rank... grabbed one that was just pulling in and we got to my place and back in 20 mins... 10 mins before they closed check-in on the EuroStar. PHEW. I’d never done this mistake before and, believe you me, I don’t intend to do it ever again... I almost caused myself a heart-attack.

Roberto & I boarded the EuroStar on time and then everything went pretty smoothly after that. Paris was fairly quiet... we went to a pharmacy to grab some more medication, then had a leisurely lunch opposite Gare du Nord and then took the RER and OrlyVal to Orly airport. We got there at 4pm and our flight wasn’t until 8.45pm. Having left home at 9am, it already felt like a long day. But flying to Madagascar from London would have cost twice as much and just wasn’t an option.
We just tried to kill time the best we could... Roberto had his laptop so he was ok