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.
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.
posted by Sylvie at 9:44 PM
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