Tana back to London – 7 Nov 2010
We had our wake up call at 4.45am, a quick breakfast with disgusting zebu milk. Roberto had had a very agitated sleep due to the side effects of Malarone but I was ok on my Doxycycline.
There was no traffic on the road at 5.30am so we got to the airport pretty quickly but there were lots of people on the streets already – many going to church for the 6am service !!! It was already very sunny though. The drive to the airport was lovely, with lots of very green paddy fields all along the way...
We then had to wait patiently at the airport, trying to avoid all the people who wanted to change euro coins for bank-notes. I made the ‘mistake’ of helping one guy out and then 10 wanted my bank-notes. I had to say I needed to draw a line... butI felt so bad about it.
The Corsairfly flight was fully booked and the meals were very boring (all vegan). The films weren’t great either and my seat didn’t have any sound ! I managed to swap with Roberto as the sound track for the movies was in French so he preferred to listen to his iPod.
We got back to Paris on time and got the RER pretty quickly. As a result, we managed to get an earlier EuroStar. They kindly let us swap our ticket though we had paid for ‘non exchangeable’ in view of the fact that we had travelled from so far and had our flight ticket to prove it.
It meant I was back home for 11pm and in bed by midnight... Thankfully, there wasn’t a lot of time difference between Mada & the UK. I was dreading the cold weather but as I was well wrapped, it was ok. I queued for a cab home as I couldn’t face busing it so late.
We came back with over 3,000 pictures between us and Roberto felt it was the most interesting trip he’d ever been on as it was the first time he’d encountered poverty on such a scale. He found it quite an eye opener.
We would really like to go back one day and explore the East (though it’s very wet) or West. We were actually originally booked to spend 2 days in Morondova on this trip but Air Madagascar cancelled our internal flight 3 weeks before departure so we had to cancel.... we were gutted. Morondova is the main reason I wanted to visit the country in the first place (+ the lemurs) so I will have to keep trying... wealth & health permitting !
I realise that this is not my most interesting blog by far but I’m relying on it to become my memory later since I don’t tend to remember much unless I photograph it or write it down. I’d say it’s ‘old age creeping in’, but, in truth I’ve always been like that.... so.... !!!
The next trip will be India from 24 Feb to 5 March....
We had our wake up call at 4.45am, a quick breakfast with disgusting zebu milk. Roberto had had a very agitated sleep due to the side effects of Malarone but I was ok on my Doxycycline.
There was no traffic on the road at 5.30am so we got to the airport pretty quickly but there were lots of people on the streets already – many going to church for the 6am service !!! It was already very sunny though. The drive to the airport was lovely, with lots of very green paddy fields all along the way...
We then had to wait patiently at the airport, trying to avoid all the people who wanted to change euro coins for bank-notes. I made the ‘mistake’ of helping one guy out and then 10 wanted my bank-notes. I had to say I needed to draw a line... butI felt so bad about it.
The Corsairfly flight was fully booked and the meals were very boring (all vegan). The films weren’t great either and my seat didn’t have any sound ! I managed to swap with Roberto as the sound track for the movies was in French so he preferred to listen to his iPod.
We got back to Paris on time and got the RER pretty quickly. As a result, we managed to get an earlier EuroStar. They kindly let us swap our ticket though we had paid for ‘non exchangeable’ in view of the fact that we had travelled from so far and had our flight ticket to prove it.
It meant I was back home for 11pm and in bed by midnight... Thankfully, there wasn’t a lot of time difference between Mada & the UK. I was dreading the cold weather but as I was well wrapped, it was ok. I queued for a cab home as I couldn’t face busing it so late.
We came back with over 3,000 pictures between us and Roberto felt it was the most interesting trip he’d ever been on as it was the first time he’d encountered poverty on such a scale. He found it quite an eye opener.
We would really like to go back one day and explore the East (though it’s very wet) or West. We were actually originally booked to spend 2 days in Morondova on this trip but Air Madagascar cancelled our internal flight 3 weeks before departure so we had to cancel.... we were gutted. Morondova is the main reason I wanted to visit the country in the first place (+ the lemurs) so I will have to keep trying... wealth & health permitting !
I realise that this is not my most interesting blog by far but I’m relying on it to become my memory later since I don’t tend to remember much unless I photograph it or write it down. I’d say it’s ‘old age creeping in’, but, in truth I’ve always been like that.... so.... !!!
The next trip will be India from 24 Feb to 5 March....
posted by Sylvie at 10:04 PM
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