Category: Antananarivo, Antsirabe & Ranomafana National Park

Another long drive (6 hours) to cover a relatively short distance (238 kms).

The roads aren’t too bad aside from the standard potholes, but they are winding, very winding, through hilly and semi-mountainous terrain. The going isn’t bad until you come up behind a truck or one of the many overcrowded, smoke-spewing passenger vans (taxi-brousses) that ply the entire country.

Then you have to wait and wait until there is a short straight section in the road. And then you go for it!

You really do go for it because (a) there probably will be another vehicle approaching the curve ahead of you and (b) there is hopefully a patch of road that doesn’t have a tire-destroying pothole right in the passing lane.

The scenery as mentioned is hilly and mountainous with small villages scattered throughout. The mode of transportation in many of the villages is by pousse-pousse, essentially a rickshaw with young men running barefoot up and down the potholed streets barely breaking a sweat.

It is estimated that between 1 and 2 % of the remaining forests are destroyed each year and a staggering 80-90% of the land burns each year.  The forests are gone and the land is bare and terraced and made to support the growing of rice and other foodstuffs.

We have read that upwards to 90% of the original forests that covered Madagascar not that long ago have been destroyed and the only forest remaining are in the national parks. To add to this dilemma, one Asian country in particular are here raping, through illegal logging by the locals, the remaining Rosewood trees.

They’ve removed them all from SE Asia and now they are here doing the same. I won’t go into this but suffice it to say, as in all of the other African, South Asian and Asian countries we have visited, let’s just say there is a country involved that is not well liked, at all by many.

We stayed at Setam Lodge which is about 1 km inside of the park boundary. It is nestled on a hillside and there is a very steep stair climb from where we parked our truck. This was a good prep for our next day when we headed out on a so-called “easy” trek into the rainforest in search of the Common and Golden Lemurs, both highly threatened and only found in this rainforest.

The view from our bungalow

Ranomafana National Park is 41,600 hectares of tropical rainforest and was established in 1991 after the discovery of the very rare Bamboo Lemur. It is a World Heritage Site and is part of the Rainforests of Ansinanana and is an excellent example of the cloud forests with very high diversity that once flourished in the area.

After a breakfast of bread, yogurt and bread with jam, oh and a small glass of juice and some lukewarm coffee (a very typical Malagasy breakfast), we met our guide and walked uphill along the road for 1 km to reach the entrance to the start of several hiking routes through the forest.

Exhausted after the inclined walk, just kidding but I did feel a little winded because hey, we’ve been driving and essentially sitting on our butts for the past two months, we proceeded into the entrance of the rainforest, straight up!

The sky was cloudy, heavily clouded and after only a short heart-attack-inducing climb of about 10,000 feet it started to rain.

It felt like 10,000 feet but was probably only about 300 feet. Our knees were feeling good, the mud and clay and tree roots were getting wet and slippery and we were on our way deep into the heart of one of the last remaining rainforests in Madagascar.

We took the “easy” four-hour trek. As I write this from my hospital recovery bed I can tell you here and now that it wasn’t that easy. Maybe for a 20 year old but…

It wasn’t really that bad and I do tend to exaggerate but it was a challenge and it was well worth the sore knees, the drenched clothes and muddy hiking boots.

We did “see” the highly endangered Golden Bamboo Lemur but unfortunately high in the forest canopy. We also caught sight of the Greater Bamboo Lemur, the Paradise flycatcher and then were treated to about six or seven Common Brown Lemurs just outside our lodge after the hike. A nice finish to a good day.

After a hot shower, dinner time. Zebu and beans with watercress. Yummy!

Our route for the next three-plus weeks.

We set out on the 19th for an overnight pit stop in Antsirabe, about 180 km and a 4½-hour drive from Tana.

Having to partly drive through Tana with the congestion and pedestrians and oxcarts and vendors and chaos, we departed our B&B slightly anxious and we had no choice but to trust our Google Maps advisor. The coffee served in Madagascar is very strong so this didn’t help with the butterflies we were feeling when we set out on what we knew would be a challenging venture to just get out of the city but we made it out without a hitch.

It took about 45 minutes to reach the RN7, the main road we’ll be driving until we hit Tolaria on the west coast in about a week’s time.

When we finally got close to our lodge, very close in fact, there was a fork in the gravel road. The road to the right looked like nice gravel and the road to left looked like a 4×4 only road. You can probably guess which road Google Maps told us to follow so we did, we took the left turn. I didn’t really think a nice lodge would have such a dodgy road but up on the hills in the distance looked like, possibly, a lodge. We slowly proceeded, got held up by an oxcart with only inches of clearance on a steep embankment and continued on at about 2 km/ hr.

This couldn’t be the right road and fortunately ahead we saw a woman walking and asked if she knew Residence Madalief Lodge. Yes she did and she pointed up in the hills behind us. I knew it!

Now the trick was how to turn around. There was steep hillside on the right and a steep embankment on the left. Hmmm. A little further ahead after a very narrow approach there was room to do a little truck dance. Turn, move a little forward, back up and turn, move a little forward and turn and repeat.

We discussed in hindsight that we need to take more pictures of these kinds of situations. A story is one thing, a picture tells, well, you know.

Some road pics to Antsirabe

Residence Madalief is a nice lodge perched on the hillside away from the hustle and bustle of Antsirabe. The air was fresh and cool and full of a beautiful fragrance from the many flowers that were blooming throughout the grounds. To top it off we had one of the best dinners so far in Madagascar.

Most tourists travel through the country with a driver/guide and a nice 4×4 vehicle and at Madalief, we met a guide named Frank who turned out to be a small saviour.

When we arrived we parked our truck and then noticed that our rear driver’s-side tire was looking a little low on air. We just had new tires put on so figured we must have a small puncture wound.

Damn! I hummed and hawed and figured I’d probably have to change the tire in the morning, went to our room and then basically realized that changing the tire the next morning would be a very big pain in the ass so decided to ask the lodge manager if one of his staff could possibly join me and go into town to find a garage and be my interpreter. No problem.

Two new guests arrived when I went back to the truck and that’s where we met Frank. I told him about our tire problem, that one of the lodge staff would go to town with me etc. etc. and without hesitation he offered to look after it for us. He is from Madagascar he proclaimed and besides, he needed to go into town for something to eat so he would be happy to take the truck, have it repaired, eat and then return.

And that he did and that lifted a potentially huge burden off of our shoulders. I wish now we had asked him for the name of the company he works for because we would definitely give him/them a big thumbs up and we know by talking to the couple from Belgium that he was driving that he is a great driver and a great guy!

Our tire repaired, a great meal, a couple of beers and off to bed to get set for our next six-hour drive to Ranomafana National Park the next morning.

After a short 3 night stay on Ile Sainte Marie we hopped a short flight back to Antananarivo. The flight took just over 45 minutes. When we added up the time it took to ultimately drive to Mahambo where we caught the ferry to Ile Sainte Marie plus only the ferry crossing time it was well over 20 hours of travel time. Maybe next time we just fly there and back!

We spent 2 nights at a very nice little hotel, K’meleon, about a 5 minute drive from the airport. The staff were excellent with one of the owners speaking very good English and the prices were very reasonable. The hotel and our room were immaculate and the toilet flushed! Our room cost per night was just under $25 CAD, a large  650 ml Three Horses Beer was $1.80 CAD and the restaurant served excellent quality meals for excellent prices. Our total bill was $123 CAD for 2 nights and included 2 very nice dinners, 2 breakfasts and shall we say “several beers” and some good South African White wine. To put this in perspective, our room tonight (which we had booked and put a down payment on many moons ago), Susie’s Place, cost just under $90 CAD per night, a 650 ml THB is twice as much at $3.60 CAD and the breakfast, although included is barely enough to feed a starving pidgeon. A very big difference and on a value-for-money basis K’meleon wins hands down. And yes, the toilet flushed at Susie’s as well.

On the evening of our arrival we met a very nice French Canadian Botany Professor from Montreal and spent the evening on the outside terrace discussing the Trans Canada Pipeline, federal transfer payments to Quebec and then settled down to some good old conversation about life, the universe and everything. Luc was a very nice man and it was a pleasure to meet him. Joyce and I both enjoyed his company.

That evening we arranged a 1/2 day tour of the city and at 9:00 am the next morning we headed off into the chaos of Antananarivo.

Antananarivo, or the original Tananrive means ” The city of thousand” is congested and the air very polluted.  It sits at 4,186 feet above sea level and most modes of transportation use diesel so the air is thick with particulate and hazy with the blue smoke from single and double cylinder engines. I find it intersting when you ask someone the population of their city. As was the case with Soweto, the census versus the local belief was way out of whack and so is the case in Tana. We asked our driver the population of the city and he said 7 million.  The latest census in 2012 estimated the population at 3 million. I guess it’s possible that another 4 million moved here in the past 7 years but it seems unlikely but Tana is not just Tana so the whole metropolitan area must be included. Either way, it sure seems like there are 7 million people squashed into an area that boundries 9 km north to south and and 6 km east to west.

Regardless of the traffic, smog and congestion it is always interesting to get out and see the real life day to day existance of any cities populace. There are several sites to see in Tana but with about 4 hours to spend and hoping to miss the rush hour traffic (it all seemed like rush hour!), we decided to just visit one site, Le Palais de la Reine.

Ler Palais de la Reine. or Queens Palace is located on the highest hill in Tana but due to a devasting fire in 1995 it is mostly empty but we had a guide who was able to explain to us some of the historical insights of this palace built for Queen Ranavalona in the 17th century. Photos were not allowed in the partly refurbished palace so, not much to post and to get into the history, the French colonization etc. etc. would require far more bandwidth than we have right now so I will leave it to you, our dear readers to do a little Googling on the subject matter.