Category: Madagascar

Day Four: Can I Move Yet?

The food poisoning incident that rounded out our last installment and featured explosive decompression from many members of the group wasn’t a one-day sick. I can’t speak for the others, but for me, it drained every ounce of energy from my body. Even after I got over the worst of it (during the days I’ll describe in this entry) I’d be running on fumes for the rest of the trip.

Needless to say, I took the morning off. Not that my body gave me any choice. Antsirabe’s on-again off-again electrical grid kept turning my CPAP off during the night, and the hard-ass bed and lack of AC would have kept me awake in any event. I spent the morning trying to drink fluids, hoping that some would stay in my body instead of flushing through me every five minutes. By late morning, I was just well enough to force down a little trail mix and a warm, Fanta-adjacent soft drink left over from the day before.

While this was going on, Lea and the others were out on an excursion I’d been looking forward to—a hike to Tritriva Crater Lake. I guess Lea’s geology nerdery has rubbed off on me, because hiking around a dormant volcano sounds like my idea of a good time. By all reports, the picture I had in my mind of this caldera was probably cooler than the genuine article—and Lea says the touts near the volcano were bothersome despite Armand insisting they leave his tourists alone.

By the time the group came back to lunch, I felt more like myself (if still a frail, enfeebled version). I was able to nibble half a sandwich for lunch and was mobile enough to attempt the next excursion, which was a rickshaw ride to the center of town. It was fun in a “well, at least I can say I did it” kind of way, and some of our fellow travelers got a chance to switch places with their rickshaw-pullers and pull the rickshaws themselves. I wasn’t feeling that up to it, so I just stayed in my cab, warded off the occasional tout, and tucked myself back on the bus for our afternoon drive to Ambositra.

This drive wasn’t as grueling as the one the day before; we got to our hotel with plenty of daylight left, though the rooms themselves had finicky locks that hadn’t been oiled since the French ruled the island. Plus, the storm drains in the hotel parking lot smelled like raw sewage, sparking another round of quease from myself and others.

The thing about Ambositra: Even through our food-poisoned haze, that night we had a blast. Armand took us to the Zafimaniry Voteta Centre to see a local community group dance. Armand himself busted some moves, and then one by one, the dancers roped us in, myself included. Why the hell not?

It was nice to feel energized for once, at least until dinner, but after the soup course, a wave of exhaustion hit me like a truck, and I didn’t touch any more food that evening. Instead, I went back to our room, collapsed, and according to my notes, I had really weird dreams.

Day Five: Artisans? Cool! More Chameleons? Not so much.

In the morning, I skipped breakfast except for a Bounty bar. I didn’t feel capable of dealing with anything that wasn’t ultraprocessed chocolate and coconut that was most likely sealed and packaged in another hemisphere of the planet. (Side note: Despite their popularity overseas, the Mars company doesn’t sell Bounty in the US, ceding the entire coconut candy bar market to Hershey’s Almond Joy. IMO, Bounty is better. Here endeth the ad.)

After breakfast, we didn’t have far to travel—our next stop was just a few miles away in downtown Ambositra’s crafting district. There, we saw demonstrations of woodcarving and marquetry before being left to browse around a really cool shop with really cool stuff to buy (hint hint). To be honest, I’d never heard of marquetry before, though evidently I’d seen things made using the technique: creating wood “paintings” by carving shapes and stencils out of really thin pieces of wood of different textures and hues using a really, really thin, foot-pedaled saw. While I’m sure there must be marquetry hobbyists in the US, I can’t imagine there are very many people who do it for a living.

On the road out of town, we stopped yet again so the group could wander and shop the local Thursday market (something akin to a giant weekend flea market in the States). I skipped that part since I was still feeling queasy, and I don’t enjoy being crowded by people trying to aggressively sell me stuff on the best of days (see also: Marrakesh). Lea told me later that it wasn’t as bad as all that, and that it was really pretty interesting. For future travelers: If that’s your thing, go for it. It just wasn’t for me.

All through the day, the temperature dropped, and I started to regret leaving my coat in the luggage. It wasn’t just the temperature; the wind picked up too. We stopped for a chilly roadside picnic, which was the first of several where we’d get to experience what I suppose is typical Malagasy tourist fare: a hoagie roll with thick slices of hard, white cheese, plus boiled eggs, sliced cucumbers, and whatever snacks we’d bought at the last gas stop (which likely included candy bars, a variety of chips in flavors not available in the US, and tamarind candies that, as of this writing, we still have one bag of in our kitchen two years later). (Lea’s note: I’m saving them because it’s my last bag, it’s not like I’m ever going to go back to Madagascar to get more!).

Roadside views from Madagascar:

By nightfall, we’d driven back into the rainforest where our next lodge awaited—but we didn’t go right there. Instead, we pulled off to the side of the narrow road, got out of the bus into the cold, wet air, and cozied up to the brush on the side of the hill, hoping no oncoming traffic was going to plow into us in the dark. (Maybe that was just me.) “And why are we stopping?” was the question I asked aloud to no one in particular.

Apparently: To see chameleons. It took a while to find one, and once we did, the whole mob of us (which I think included at least one other tourist group) crowded around the poor, befuddled lizard for photos. To be fair, the tours used to offer night walks for those who wanted to see them, but had to stop because of Chinese tourists allegedly stealing chameleons to take home as pets.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, was the exact moment when chameleon fatigue set in. I’d already seen several, in daylight no less, so I had no interest in standing on the side of the road, in the dark, in the cold, in the misty rainforest, to get a glimpse of another under a wavy flashlight beam. I was exhausted, starved, and dehydrated, and all I wanted was to get to our room.

Since laundry facilities aren’t a thing in the bush, we washed some clothes in the bathroom sink and shower, then festooned the room so they’d dry overnight.

Day Six: Rainforests Aren’t My Natural Habitat

According to Armand and our various forest guides, Madagascar’s rainforests have been steadily shrinking for the last few centuries as more and more land has been cleared for agriculture. Therefore, Ranomafana National Park would be the last rainforest we’d get to explore on our trip.

If only I felt like exploring. The options for the day were to join a crack-of-dawn bird watching hike, an 8:00 a.m. hike that would meet up with the first group, and an afternoon walk through the jungle for those who didn’t get enough the first time around.

Lea chose to go on the 6:00 a.m. walk with the telephoto lens to catch birds. I elected to follow with the later group. I wouldn’t have the good camera, but I didn’t mind. Sometimes it’s more relaxing to walk around in nature without having to record it. I did bring a gallon jug of water, both for myself and to refill Lea’s bottles whenever we finally met up. Since there was a definite chance of rain that morning (because there always is in a rainforest), and since I absolutely hate getting rained on, I chose to wear a disposable plastic rain poncho.

That was possibly one of the worst travel decisions I’ve made in my life.

Kids, learn from Uncle Jared’s bad choices: Never wear a poncho while hiking, especially in a rainforest. For those in the back of the class, ponchos don’t breathe, so in the jungle they act as miniature saunas for whoever’s dumb enough to walk around in one. You might ask, “But Jared, why didn’t you just take it off?” Well, hindsight’s 20/20, but at the time, I blamed the heat, humidity, and my profuse sweating on the environment, not my clothing choices. It wouldn’t be until the end of the hike that I finally put two and two together. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I don’t think it rained at all on my portion of the hike, though it had definitely rained earlier. The path, if you want to call it that, was muddy and slippery as hell, and the path was long. I hadn’t appreciated how far we’d have to hike before reuniting with the other group. Yes, they had a two-hour head start, but I also knew they’d be stopping to take pictures of birds, and birds in the jungle are only slightly less elusive than a Bigfoot in the Canadian Rockies.

I did what I could to enjoy the hike, but in addition to being freshly watered, the path was steep—like trying to hike up a mudslide in spots. One of our guides saw how much I was struggling and started helping me along, arm-in-arm, as if I was a feeble old man. Which, to him, I’ve no doubt that’s what I was.

About two hours after the hike started, we finally caught up to the other group, where I passed off the water, reclaimed the camera for a bit, and dragged myself the rest of the way up the mountain. There was plenty of wildlife to see, including a ring-tailed vontsira (also called a ring-tailed mongoose, only it isn’t a mongoose). The mongoose actually snuck up on our group as we were taking a breather at the rest stop atop the mountain, then darted away as soon as he knew we’d seen him.

After that, we made our way back down the mountain. This was much easier, thanks to gravity—getting down wasn’t an issue; the only problem was controlling my descent. I believe I could have made it on my own, but the guide who’d helped me walk part of the way up refused to leave my side on the way down, and he kept a grip on my arm the whole way. I tried to tell him I didn’t need the assist, but he didn’t know any English. My guess is I was probably overestimating how much strength and balance I had left in me, and he’s seen multiple tourists of my ilk before who fell flat on their asses and had to be carried out.

Once we got to the gift and art shops at the bottom, the clouds had all scurried away, so I peeled off my poncho and learned about my error. I’d been sweating far more profusely than I’d known, and since ponchos keep as much water in as they keep out, my clothes were utterly soaked from top to bottom. If I could send a camera back in time and take one more photo that I’d missed from that trip, it would have been of me, standing there, soaked to the bone.

After lunch, Lea went back to hike again. I retired to our room to rest, read, and rehydrate. The next day would be our earliest departure yet, but the payoff, as it turned out, would be worth it. But that’s for the next installment.

For now, enjoy the Ranomafana Photo Barrage:

Day One: The Bus

On Sunday, after our “free day” in Antananarivo, our tour of Madagascar officially began. Our first bus ride of the tour wouldn’t be as long as some, but getting out of Tana would be a repeat of the traffic snarls we’d enjoyed on the previous day. The bus itself was fine as buses go: There were 20-ish seats for the 15 of us, and cracking the windows open provided plenty of air.

The main problem was the seatbelts, which I’m convinced were engineered by someone who’d never actually seen a seatbelt before, but had only had them described second-hand. For one thing, they were way too short, which didn’t seem to be a problem for most of our tour group, but was a challenge for my big, fat American ass. The belts didn’t actually go across the waist—instead, they straddled your crotch as tightly as they could. However, the main problem was the buckle itself: Unlike in Western vehicles, where the clamp for the seatbelt is right beside your hip, these were much lower—about halfway down the side of the seat cushion and buried so deep the strap almost wouldn’t reach. Every time I got in or out of a seat, I had to fight with one of these bastards for two minutes just to get the damn thing to click shut.

But I have to say, seatbelts were a necessity—not because we might get into a wreck, but because once you’re out of the city, the roads in Madagascar are barely roads at all. I’m sure they were wonderful back when they were paved (however many centuries ago that was), but today, they’re mostly collections of giant potholes with little slivers of road in between. Over the next two weeks, there would be times when our average speed maxed at 15mph, with the kind of violent back and forth rocking I’d normally expect on the open ocean in bad weather.

Our first destination was Andasibe, home to the Analamazaotra Nature Reserve east of Tana. We arrived at the little resort village nearby in plenty of time to settle into our cabins and stretch our legs for the first of two hikes: one from 2-4 p.m. (in daylight) in the Andasibe Mitsinjo forest, and the other a 6 p.m. night walk in the nature reserve. It was a bright, sunny day, and perfect for a walk in the woods, so we put on our bug repellent and sunscreen, got our cameras ready, and bused down the road to the Andasibe Mitsinjo Forest.

A word on our cameras: Ever since Iceland, we’ve traveled with a Canon Rebel T3 for zoom shots, wide shots, low-light shots, high-speed shots, and panoramics, while Lea also packs her lightweight, waterproof Olympus Tough TG-6 for easy point-and-shoot shots, anything with lots of color (which the Olympus handles better than the Canon), and, of course, underwater photography.

For this trip, the Olympus was still in fine shape, but our Canon bit the dust on Lea’s trip to Namibia, where its light sensor gave up the ghost. However, we came to Madagascar for wildlife shots, most of which would not be close at hand and would require a really fast shutter. Therefore, shortly before leaving for Madagascar, we bought a refurbished Canon EOS R7. This is the mirrorless equivalent of our old Rebel, but with years of upgraded camera design and software. Most importantly, with the help of an adapter, all our old lenses fit the new camera, including the all-important telephoto lens.

That lens was the only way to catch a goddamn lemur in the forest. Unlike at the Lemurs’ Park, where they’re all conveniently on or near the ground, the lemurs in the forest do what lemurs do—they hide in the topmost layer of the canopy. On this walk, I was able to photograph one brown lemur from what felt like two or three football fields away, while the rest of the two-hour hike introduced us to various plants, spiders, and chameleons. It also opened my eyes to exactly how much up-and-down marching we’d be doing for the next two weeks. On this day, I still had the energy to keep up, but (spoiler alert) that would change sooner than I’d hoped.

It was even worse at night, but that was my fault, nobody else’s. When we’d bought that Rebel T3 waaay back in 2014, we made sure to take it out a night for practice so we’d know how to adjust its settings and use it in the dark. This time, I’d had no time to play with it before our trip. The R7’s controls are far more intuitive than on our old Rebel, but that does no good if you can’t see what you’re doing. While the rest of the party hiked ahead to spy on what wildlife came out in the dark, I spent most of my time fiddling with buttons, F-stops, ISOs, and exposure times while hoping not to trip on a root and break my neck (or worse, the camera). For what it’s worth, I did manage to capture several frogs and an entirely-too-cute mouse lemur for my troubles.

Day Two: Analamazaotra, Continued

We woke up bright and early Monday for an all-morning hike in the Analamazaotra Nature Reserve, which we’d only seen in the dark the night before. This walk was much more productive than the previous day hike in terms of spotting lemurs. We also saw several varieties of birds, but frankly, I wasn’t interested in those. Even when you know where they are, they’re practically impossible to see or photograph through the canopy, and to me, birds are basically cat food.

Armand identified the lemurs we spotted as common brown lemurs, indri indri lemurs, and golden sifakas. We weren’t the only tour group in the forest, so when we found the largest concentration atop a hill, we had to wind our way around several other clumps of humans while trying to keep track of which ones belonged to us. Later, we came across a pair of young sifakas as they were wrestling on the ground, completely oblivious to the invading tourist horde.

We’d eaten breakfast at our resort’s restaurant, so lunch and dinner were at the other two restaurants in the little village. The electricity was questionable, but the food was okay. The best part was the fresh-cut pineapple straight from the tree that Armand arranged for dessert after lunch. However, one of these three restaurants was going to prove the death of us (by us meaning two thirds of the tour group), but we wouldn’t learn that until the next day.

[CONTENT WARNING: Don’t read this next part on your lunch break.]

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[Okay, you were warned.]

Day Three: Barf-O-Rama!

Nothing was supposed to happen Tuesday. The plan was for an all-day road trip from Andasibe back to Tana, then southwest to the town of Antsirabe. With luck, we were looking at an 8-hour ride with a stop for lunch in Tana on the way.

We weren’t lucky.

It was about an hour into the bumpy drive before we had to pull over for the first time—one of our traveling companions was ill, and needed to be ill outside the bus, if you catch my drift. And of course, this was on the side of the road: In Madagascar, gas stations with restrooms are easily two hours apart from each other, and there wasn’t time to wait.

After our sick passenger collected themselves, we got back on the road. Before stopping again. This time, it wasn’t one sick traveler, but two. And then a third. It wasn’t looking good. Food poisoning never does.

We’d never know which restaurant in Andasibe got us, but Lea’s best guess is that at least one of them was using non-potable river water for cleaning their pots and pans. Whatever the cause, more of us became ill. Lea was queasy early that morning, but luckily for her, it didn’t get any worse. Unluckily for me, I started feeling queasy too, right before we arrived at a restaurant for lunch (90 minutes later than we’d planned, thanks to all our stops).

I’m not someone who gets reflexively ill when I see other people throwing up, but I’ve historically been prone to other countries’ stomach bugs. That morning, I thought I was getting off easy. I might have gotten away with it too, if I’d had the brains to skip lunch.

A word about eating on the road in Madagascar: Half the time, there would be nowhere to stop so Armand would often pack a picnic. (More on those at a later date.) If there was a restaurant on our route (or, more commonly, at the end of it), he’d have us order ahead so that when we got there, we wouldn’t have to wait for our food. For today’s lunch, I’d ordered the spaghetti carbonara, not realizing what was coming.

(This is about to get very personal, so skip ahead if you’re squeamish.)

At the restaurant, I made use of the toilet. And again. And again. And again. You’d think that would have been a clue to go easy on lunch, and maybe not eat the creamy pile of lukewarm pasta they put in front of me, but no. I had faith in my Pepto (I’d taken the legal limit) and the fact that my body had just expelled what I thought was everything inside it.

I made it about a third of the way through my pasta before I realized it wasn’t going down without a fight. I opted to pause, take more Pepto, and not look at food for a while. I made use of the plumbing a couple more times, and by the time we got back on the bus, I felt stable, if a little top-heavy and sweaty.

Whatever internal stability I’d achieved lasted until our next (and final) gas stop for the day. Once I stood up, everything inside me shifted. I got in line with all the others to make use of the gas station’s one meager bathroom. While standing in line, feeling hot and gooey, I told Lea that I almost wished I would throw up just to clear everything out of my system.

Well, guess what. Wishes come true. About two minutes later, I had to cut in line, run straight to the toilet, and vomit my guts out.

I haven’t thrown up since 2005. Barfing, in general, isn’t something I do, but apparently my body had been training for this day. Others in our group had thrown up multiple times—mild and timid hacks, coughs, and retches. When I barfed, it was the barf of a practiced vocalist who knows a thing or two about diaphragm support. I practically made the bathroom stall vibrate from the force of ejecting everything I’d eaten (and maybe a few of my internal organs) all in one go. Lea assures me that people could hear me as far as the gas station’s parking lot.

Everything after that is a blur. Despite the importance of hydrating when you’re sick, I remember being scared to drink anything out of fear that it would come right back out. It wasn’t long before the sun went down and our driver was navigating the maze of potholes in the dark. We passed several other gas stations over the next few hours, but everything closes at night, so none of us had any reprieve—that final stretch to Antsirabe was an interminable hell, with some really pleasant bungalows waiting at the end. As soon as we arrived, I went straight to the bathroom, finally drank some water, and attempted (with little luck) to get some sleep.

Recovery wouldn’t be overnight, so I was going to miss out on a little the next day. Before we headed back into the wild, our trip would take us into civilization and our first real exposure to Malagasy culture. But more on that in the next installment!

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for September 27, 2024. After a two-day air transit debacle, our travel krewe (Lea, KT, Melissa, and I) arrived in Madagascar for a two-week bus tour. Anticipating that we might miss one of our flights, we arranged to land in Antananarivo (hereafter referred to as “Tana”) a day early.

Despite the universe’s best attempts to foil us, we made it to Tana on time. The rest of our group managed to get some rest along the way, but at this point, I hadn’t slept for approximately 48 hours. At least I got to sit down with our luggage and relax under a bright, blue Madagascar sky while everyone else stocked up on cash from the airport ATM and stood in line for SIM cards.

We had no plans for “Tour Day Minus 1,” thank the Malagasy gods, except to reach our hotel and crash. Once everyone had everything they needed from the airport, we squeezed into a taxi, and off we went. (To be clear, when I say “squeezed,” I mean it: The cab wasn’t big enough for the driver, four of us, and our luggage, but we made it work by being extremely friendly.)

The ride gave us our first view of Tana. I didn’t have any expectations for the city, but I was still surprised by how hilly, winding, and crowded it was. In many ways, Tana reminded me of La Paz, Bolivia, except that Tana isn’t in a deep mountain valley. The buildings are mashed right up against each other, the narrow streets curve and twist like hiking trails, the roads are unbelievably crowded, and market stalls line the front of every building, barely leaving room for cars to pass.

We kept our eyes open for restaurants, taxi stands, grocery stores, and the like, trying to get the lay of the land, but it was hopeless. We just had to cross our fingers and hope that wherever we ended up, there’d be a place to get some food.
To be clear, our tour came with hotel reservations, but the tour didn’t start until the following day. Since we were early, Lea had booked a place in town to crash, and our cabbie finally found it.

Our hotel sat atop a local bar and was right next door to a karaoke club. The rooms were surprisingly spacious and reasonably clean. There was no A/C, but that was expected. There were also mosquitoes and nowhere to hang a net over the bed, so we just had to cross our fingers and hope that our malaria meds would do their thing.

Two doors down from our hotel was a French restaurant. (Though independent, Madagascar still feels like a French colony in all but name.) This wasn’t fine French cuisine, but there was a decent selection of Western-style “French” on the menu. Unfortunately, the wait staff didn’t speak a word of English or, as it turned out, French. Nevertheless, they’d nod their heads and agree with anything we said – and do nothing. Ordering, receiving, and paying for our meals was something of a challenge.

By this point, I may have already been in R.E.M. sleep and just somnambulating between the restaurant and our room. You’d think that sleep would come easy…

BUT.

BUT as soon as we were ready for bed, Tana’s very active night life went into gear. For us, this meant trying to sleep above the very loud bar directly below us and the even louder karaoke going on next door. I probably did sleep somewhere between the thump thump thump below and the hoots of laughter from all around.

Around 2 or 3 in the a.m., blessed relief arrived in the form of the neighborhood’s power going out. (Apparently, Madagascar was in a drought, and the lake that fed the hydroelectric dam was too low to maintain power 24/7.) The power outage meant that our room’s fan and my CPAP stopped working, but at least we had a few minutes of silence.

Then the karaoke club turned on their generator, and the party recommenced. No sleep for the wicked, nor the world-weary traveler.

Day Zero: Lemurs

If I were to say we woke up Saturday morning, I’d mean that we simply stopped pretending to sleep. We went back to the French place for breakfast, this time forewarned by experience about the language barrier. Here’s an interesting after-effect I’ve noticed from the year Lea and I spent in South America: Any time I try to talk to someone who doesn’t speak English, I reflexively default to whatever Spanish I remember, even if I know damn well that the other person doesn’t speak it. I guess this is my personal version of the age-old trope of people talking really loud as if that’ll make their language more intelligible.

Anyway, the manager of our hotel (a helpful guy named… Morris? Maurice?) arranged an all-day cab to drive us around. And where did we want to go? To see lemurs, of course! Our tour promised lemurs aplenty, but those would all be in the wild, and though Lea and I have had fairly good luck with wildlife in the past, we knew not to count on it. Plus, just outside of Tana, there’s the Lemurs’ Park, a botanical reserve where rescued lemurs are nursed back to health. They have over eight different varieties, most of whom have become acclimated to humans—at least well enough to get close and take photos.

Here they are:

The lemurs aren’t kept in cages or pens; instead, the park’s natural boundaries and loads of easy food keep them close. There are also tortoises and several of Madagascar’s omnipresent chameleons. (Chameleon fatigue would set in fairly quickly on our tour, but as of Saturday, it hadn’t happened yet.)

In short: We can’t recommend Tana’s Lemurs’ Park highly enough. If you want to come to Madagascar for the lemurs, but aren’t prepared for some hard, hard travel, here’s my suggested itinerary:

1. Arrive on a flight that lands early in the morning.
2. Take a taxi to the Lemurs’ Park.
3. Go back to the airport and fly out in the evening.

But enough about the lemurs. Let’s talk about the traffic.

As we saw the day before, Tana’s streets aren’t designed with heavy traffic in mind, but heavy traffic is what they have. Part of the problem is that the streets are so narrow that passing isn’t usually an option. Also, most of the cars are very old and not in the best repair. So, if one car breaks down, everyone stops. Our 22 km trip to Lemurs’ Park took at least two hours, and most of that was simply crossing from one side of Tana to the other. At times, our driver simply turned the car off, and we got out and stretched our legs while waiting for traffic to start moving again. It was the same on the way back—the streets grew narrower and curvier as we made our way to the Au Bois Vert Hotel to meet the rest of our traveling companions.

In the interest of protecting the innocent, I’m not going to use anyone’s real names, even though I could easily look everyone up on our group Whatsapp chat. The tour was arranged by Explore! and you can book one just like it here. We four were the only Americans; the rest were a collection of Brits, Australians, and New Zealanders. There were twelve of us, plus our drivers and our guide, Armand. That night, we introduced ourselves, talked about why we travel, and waited on dinner. Our rooms were resort-style spacious, but a little lacking in mosquito protection, so we hung up our net, crawled into bed, and got an actual night’s sleep before the official start to our grand adventure.

Next time: “What goes down must come up.”