After spending the 26th and 27th at the Residence Eden Lodge in Tulear we met our Pisteur. A Pisteur is a guide who intimately knows the “roads” and changing conditions of the terrain that would we would drive for the next 6 days. His name was Antonio and he spoke english, sort of, thank the heavens, and without his help navigating the myriad of trails, paths, villages (do we turn right, left or go straight?) that we encountered on our first day would have been practically impossible. The route we followed took us through deep sandy tracks, rock infested paths and beautiful seaside vistas. There were a couple of dicey situations but our Nissan 4×4 with locked hubs pulled us through to our final destination.
We drove the “notorious RN5” a little while back and if you recall my first sentence to describe it, it was “Holy Crap! Well, let me tell you here and now the RN5 was a walk in the park, a piece of cake, a sunday afternoon drive compared to what was in store for us over the next few days. Now to be honest we only drove the RN5 to Mohambo and our understanding is it get seriously worse north of there but oh my god, this, the beginning of our off-road adventure was definitely an eye opener and we really can’t imagine how the RN5 could be worse. Maybe you need winches and stuff to get you through, I don’t know but this was a challenge.
We stayed at Five Senses Lodge, another beautiful wild beach location and arrived at about 1:00 pm. We had time to relax, had a very nice cheese sandwich and a delicious meal in the evening. Good preparation for the next day of travel.
