Category: The Southwest Coast: Tulear & Tsiandamba

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 roads and the 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, however 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 we probably would have had a problem driving the route by ourselves.

Our route took us through deep sandy tracks, rocky 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.

Our destination was Five Senses Lodge, another beautiful wild beach location.

We arrived at about 1:00 pm and had time to relax, had a very nice cheese sandwich for lunch and a delicious meal in the evening. Good preparation for the next day of travel.

The 26th was another sunny warm day and this was the day we would finally hit the south west coast of Madagascar.

We were staying at a french run Resort, The Residence Eden Lodge which was supposed to be about 45 minutes south of Tulear and it was another “here we go again” with our Google Maps and Maps.me navigation systems not necessarily being accurate.

From Isalo NP the road was very good and we made good time. As we approached Tulear our navigation buddies suggested we hang a left off of the RN7 and take the gravel road which would lead almost directly to our accommodation. The road junction had a few signs, none of which mentioned our lodge so we stopped off of the side of the road and contemplated our next move.

Right near the junction there just happened to be a police road stop, which are many when travelling through the country, so we figured we would ask one of the policemen.

None of them spoke english.

Not surprised we showed them our destination on our maps and we showed them the actual village name and address from an email from our iPad. They commiserated and came back to tell us that no, this road you want to take is tres mal! You must go an additional 500 metres down the road and then turn left.

Okay, glad we asked and then proceeded to travel 500 metres, 1 km, 1.5 kms, curse and swear and then turn around and go back to the police stop!

This time there is another fellow who pokes his head into our open window. Maybe he’s undercover because he didn’t have the police issue gendarmerie uniform on but he insisted that we do not take the route our maps suggest. He said drive 5 kms, not 500 metres and then turn left and you will eventually find your hotel and he was absolutely correct!

Our Maps.me did eventually display this new road leading to our lodge and we did verify by stopping several times to ask if we were indeed on the right path and indeed we were.

The last stretch of the road to our lodge was a little sketchy and at one point we drove probably about 1 km along a very narrow road with a cliff on one side and a “you are dead if you go off the edge” drop off on the other side. It kind of reminded us of the Facebook videos that have circulated of some of the mountain side “roads” in the Himalayas but not quite as harrowing fortunately becaused Joyce would have walked right there and then. Most of the road was okay in relative terms so aside for the direction mess up we made it to the lodge in probably 1 hour to cover 30 kms.

The lodge was really quite nice and we had a very large bungalow with living area, outdoor tanning beds and a view of the turquoise waters of the Mozambique channel.

The owners also had a penchant for pets, probably 8 cats and several dogs who acted as if they had never eaten a meal in their life when we would try to enjoy our dinner, breakfast or lunch. They were a big pain in the ass and to top it off, the morning of our departure while eating the standard bread, butter and jam breakfast with a cold “omelette” thrown in to justify the cost, the local pet lemur decided to stop by and steal our banana bread.

We were supposed to meet our Pisteur at the lodge at 9:00 am and finally at 10:00 we received a phone call to inform us his taxi broke down on the way to meet us. Surprise surprise! A little ticked because every hour of travel time is very valuable, we departed the lodge with a 10% discount due to no hot water, hey, it’s an ecolodge afterall excuse, and made our way back along the gravel and rocks to meet up with Antonio, our guide for the next 6 days of off road 4×4 adventure.