Summing up Madagascar — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

Wow, what a trip. Madagascar is the world’s 4th largest island and is about the size of Texas, but we managed to see a fair bit of it. Here is our rough travel route for 5 weeks. Blue lines show our three air trips, while red indicate SUV and boat journeys:

Our quick overview of the country was consistent with the statistics. Madagascar is young (median age 19.2; life expectancy of around 63), poor (median income of about $400 per year), depends upon subsistence farming, is undeveloped (only about 1/3 of the people get electricity, and even in the capital, outages averaging 6 hours per day are normal), and pretty corrupt (frequent road block shakedowns by uniformed personnel, as well as tip seeking by immigration and security personnel at airports). Thus, it is no surprise that cash is not only king, but is often the only option of payment in most of the country. We withdrew several million Ariary (each tranche equal to $221) over the course of the trip (basically whenever we happened to be in a town with a functioning ATM), but still found ourselves counting and recounting our currency holdings to determine how quickly we would need to make another withdrawal.

These issues are said to have been the impetus for the demonstrations and eventual coup that took place during our visit. For your future reference, when you’ve registered for the STEP program and the State Department issues a Level 3 Travel Warning for your destination during your trip, you will receive emails that you are “strongly urged to shelter in place,” should reconsider any travel, and are urged to “have a plan to leave in an emergency that does not depend on U.S. government help.”

Notwithstanding this kerfuffle, our trip was uneventful, the people were typically friendly and welcoming, and we were able to enjoy the wealth of natural attractions that the country has to offer.

Lisa mentioned the roads. They were indeed quite bad in the West, South and even around the Capital. (The North was smooth sailing though!) One of our first areas to visit was Big Tsingy:

Getting there was . . . interesting. Day 1, the last 100 KM to our hotel took 4 hours, with one ferry crossing—and, as shown by this video, getting a car loaded onto it was not for the faint of heart (Reminder—to see video, you need to open the blog in your browser, not just your email):

The next day, the drive from our hotel to the Park entrance was a mere 17 KM—but took an hour with two stream fordings.

Granted, those were not major roads, but the main highways were not much better—and sometimes actually worse. Highway 7 from the west coast to the Capital was reminiscent of a long-abandoned mall’s parking lot. Our itinerary stated that it was 870 KM and that, over the course of 7 days, we would spend 28 hours driving it. Unfortunately, the estimated pace of 30KM per hour (~19 MPH) was overly optimistic because of the poor road and the need to share the road with pedestrians and other slow moving vehicles:

Granted, this last type of vehicle wasn’t always slow moving!

The roads were so bad that in some areas people would sweep gravel up to smooth out the bumps, then request tips from drivers.

Similarly, like in Nepal, people (usually women and children) would be engaged in making small rocks or gravel out of big rocks—with the products being used to smooth the road:

We eventually got somewhat used to the slow pace, and embraced the fact that it was nice for capturing vignettes of village life:

A common site—-clothes dryers (and even lines) are not a thing here….

And for getting pictures of road side vendors, such as this young lady in the central highlands who was selling the hats for which her tribe is known, wooden kitchenware, honey, and moonshine (both big bottles and small!):

(Note the reuse of water bottles; I quickly learned not to crumble my empties!)

There also was the occasional stall selling live animals—but we are pretty sure they weren’t pet stores:

We also had many opportunities to observe the brick making “industry” in action. Rice farmers in the capital have a side job of brick making, using mud from the irrigation canals to fill molds, and then firing the brick in grass-fueled kilns.

This was essentially the same throughout the country, although one area in the highlands seemed to be more focused on production than others:

Unsurprisingly, based on my limited sampling, the bricks were all solid, rather heavy, of non-uniform sizes, and softer than those commonly used in the US. That, however, did not hinder this lady in her brick-hauling duties:

Only once did I get a clear view of bricklayers in action, and it was pretty much like home, with the use of a standard trowel and a line to ensure the course was level.

Back to the main focus of our trip: Wildlife! National Parks here are not open after sunset, which posed a problem when looking for nocturnal lemurs and chameleons. The way around this was to walk along the border roads of the parks with a guide, which sometimes resulted in unusable pictures:

Or, even worse, having to get into the ditch to allow tractor trailers to pass us by on the narrow roads. We won’t forget one walk when we were being passed by two trucks on the 1.5 lane road, which resulted in one of them pulling off and then slowly backing up as we waited on high alert a couple feet from its back wheels!

Of course, those roads also posed issues to trucks. This truck, which we walked by when looking for chameleons, ended up a few feet from a 100+ ft dropoff, and apparently had been waiting a week for a tow truck (or trucks) sufficient to haul it back out:

(Note the two cables to keep the truck from going over the cliff…)

I had read some years ago of the funerary customs of the traditional Malagasy religion, in the context of spreading bubonic/pneumonic plague. That religion, a combination of animism and ancestor worship, continues to be followed by only a small percentage of people, but has influenced the practices of the majority Christian population. Exhumation from temporary graves, redressing, and eventual reburial was a standard practice and still retains a devoted following. We saw several temporary graves on our travels, but they didn’t stand out like the permanent tombs in the country’s South. Basically, if there was an impressive masonry structure with a lot of decorations in that part of the country, it was a tomb:

(The juxtaposition of these structures with the houses in nearby villages made me think of ancient Egypt.)

Despite the poor road conditions, we never had a car break down (just one flat tire). BUT, we had one boat die on us. Fortunately, it was at the very end of a two hour commute, and after a little bit of poling…

we were taken in tow for the final quarter mile by one of the more reliable boats in the area:

Finally, going back to the country’s short life expectancy, our 30-something guide told us a story as we passed by a funeral. He explained that some funerals are sad, while others are happy. His example of a Happy Funeral involves a 50 year old grandpa who had lived a full life. Needless to say, we both thought that was a bit young!

And with that, we are finished with Madagascar. As the day passes and the shadows get longer,

we will be following the sun across the Mozambique channel to our next destination, from where you’ll soon be hearing from your favorite story-telling photographer: