Tulear to Tana – 6 Nov
We had to be picked up at 5.45am to get to the airport on time but it didn’t feel too painful as it was warm and sunny already. It only took us 35mins to reach Tulear with a jeep as we could then do 60km/hour average. What a breeze.
Our flight was on time and only 45mins later than the original scheduled departure time. Sometimes it can be up to 10 hours behind ! Air Madagascar have limited the number of planes they have so if one doesn’t get back on time from Tana, everything gets affected.
We heard that last year the US gave $100 million to help the poorest in the country but the President kept 80 million for himself, gave his next-in-command 13 million and so only 7 million went to the poorest. There’s no follow-up though. And knowing how much corruption there is in Africa, it’s hard to understand why the USA would even DO that. Coup d’Etats are frequent so when people make it to the top they know they only have a short window of opportunity to stuff their pockets.
We arrived in Tana at 10am and as we still had our driver with us the whole day we decided to go and explore the Lemurs’ Park. It had a beautiful open terrace overlooking a valley and it was a little oasis 22kms away from the capital’s hustle & bustle. However, we were not allowed to touch or feed the 6 species of lemurs that they have there.
We had a nice lunch and then went onto the Botanical gardens and the zoo. I really wanted to see a fossa but we only saw 2 sleeping, sadly. Some makis were on an island but most were in cages that were filthy (lemurs don’t have much of a digestive system, so they process food pretty fast :). It was also difficult to take decent pix of them behind bars. We really wanted to see the aye-aye enclosure as there are so few left in the wild but it was being refurbished so we never got the chance. SO frustrating as this was our main goal.
The best part for me was to be taken “backstage” and have some lemurs lick my fingers (dipped into honey for an extra treat). We saw one species with amazing blue/green eyes and also some pretty crowned lemurs with orange fur on top of their head. They have very delicate fingers (no claws) and unlike monkeys they will eat bananas with the skin – they don’t peel. They are very very gentle but don’t like being stroked (you can’t have it all – sigh).
We then went onto the flower market and were hoping for panaromic view of the city but there was too much smog caused by fires.
We had dinner back at the pizza place behind Le Chalet des Roses and were a bit sad to see so many white men eating out with black prostitutes. Some of these girls looked so terribly bored. They guys hardly talked to them. We later saw some of these men on the plane back to Paris the next day and it was odd to see them with their (much older) wives and knowing what they’d been up to.
We had to be picked up at 5.45am to get to the airport on time but it didn’t feel too painful as it was warm and sunny already. It only took us 35mins to reach Tulear with a jeep as we could then do 60km/hour average. What a breeze.
Our flight was on time and only 45mins later than the original scheduled departure time. Sometimes it can be up to 10 hours behind ! Air Madagascar have limited the number of planes they have so if one doesn’t get back on time from Tana, everything gets affected.
We heard that last year the US gave $100 million to help the poorest in the country but the President kept 80 million for himself, gave his next-in-command 13 million and so only 7 million went to the poorest. There’s no follow-up though. And knowing how much corruption there is in Africa, it’s hard to understand why the USA would even DO that. Coup d’Etats are frequent so when people make it to the top they know they only have a short window of opportunity to stuff their pockets.
We arrived in Tana at 10am and as we still had our driver with us the whole day we decided to go and explore the Lemurs’ Park. It had a beautiful open terrace overlooking a valley and it was a little oasis 22kms away from the capital’s hustle & bustle. However, we were not allowed to touch or feed the 6 species of lemurs that they have there.
We had a nice lunch and then went onto the Botanical gardens and the zoo. I really wanted to see a fossa but we only saw 2 sleeping, sadly. Some makis were on an island but most were in cages that were filthy (lemurs don’t have much of a digestive system, so they process food pretty fast :). It was also difficult to take decent pix of them behind bars. We really wanted to see the aye-aye enclosure as there are so few left in the wild but it was being refurbished so we never got the chance. SO frustrating as this was our main goal.
The best part for me was to be taken “backstage” and have some lemurs lick my fingers (dipped into honey for an extra treat). We saw one species with amazing blue/green eyes and also some pretty crowned lemurs with orange fur on top of their head. They have very delicate fingers (no claws) and unlike monkeys they will eat bananas with the skin – they don’t peel. They are very very gentle but don’t like being stroked (you can’t have it all – sigh).
We then went onto the flower market and were hoping for panaromic view of the city but there was too much smog caused by fires.
We had dinner back at the pizza place behind Le Chalet des Roses and were a bit sad to see so many white men eating out with black prostitutes. Some of these girls looked so terribly bored. They guys hardly talked to them. We later saw some of these men on the plane back to Paris the next day and it was odd to see them with their (much older) wives and knowing what they’d been up to.
posted by Sylvie at 10:03 PM
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