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Other entries in Tulear

Morandava and Tulear

It wasn't shaping up to be a good day. It could have been that we all had about four hours sleep after drinking too much beer with the locals the night before. It might have something to do with the fact that it was already 80 degrees out at 7 in the morning and destined to get a lot hotter. Maybe part of it was because we had a six hour drive over rugged dirt track in a car with no air conditioning ahead of us. More likely, it was a combination of all those things.

The night before had been a lot of fun, and we got to cut loose a little and get to know some really nice Malagasy people. We weren't ever able to stand on the sidelines for long before being dragged onto the impromptu dance floor, sometimes by several people at once. This morning it was simply too early, and we begrudgingly left for Morondava, cursing the fact that the very locals who had kept us up the night before, celebrating the concept of electricity, were snuggled away in their grass huts sleeping it off while we doubted the car for our trip even had shock absorbers. Andrea had, through a combination of common sense and earplugs, managed to get some sleep and seemed somewhat refreshed. Tijl an I were somewhere in the middle, and Marije didn't feel so well, claiming it might have been some food the previous day. In any other case we'd probably have mocked her saying she couldn't hold her beer, but considering that 1) we were surprised all of us weren't sick since our food had been clucking around in the bottom of our canoes for the previous four days and 2) she's Dutch for crying out loud, those people drink beer for breakfast.

Shortly after departing, we finally learned the true purpose of our trek leaders' girlfriend joining us on the trip, it was to be the first to get carsick, catapulting Marije into a similar situation for a good portion of the day. Things were not shaping up for the better, us stopping our bounce through the jungle a few times to allow the two to rest without constantly hitting their heads on the roof of the car. Even Andrea's medical kit couldn't stop the onslaught, her anti-nausea mask-like expression uncontrollable-lip-smacking medicine not staying in anyone's stomach long enough to take effect. Those of us who could eat had more rocks and rice around lunchtime before we all moved on in the heat of the day.

It was supposed to be a six hour trip, but it was turning out to take a little longer with the stops. At some point nearer Morondava where we were heading, we were going to pass through the famous Avenue of the Baobabs which at least some of us were looking forward to. The baobab tree is a large, peculiar looking tree found almost exclusively in Madagascar and southern Africa. It's commonly referred to as a tree that looks like it's been uprooted and stood upside down. The Avenue of the Baobabs is an area where a road bisects several prime examples of this massive tree, and it's become a fairly famous spot. Since they supposedly look best around sunset we were hoping to arrive late, but even at our current pace we'd pass through in mid-afternoon.

Some time during the day we came upon a detour of sorts, actually more or less of a roadblock. There was an area of swampland where the only road construction we ever saw in Madagascar was being performed to the effect that they were shoring up the dirt road that they had built over the swamp. There was an area they had widened by filling in dirt around the construction site for vehicles to pass, out of which protruded the back of a large truck. The truck had gone too far towards the edge and lodged its front end into some soft dirt, completely blocking the road.

It was here that we were to learn that the Laotians ability to do nothing with a stuck vehicle was drastically eclipsed by the Malagasy people. At least 50 people stood around from towns on opposite sides of the swamp all talking about this dilemma, while one man slowly dug at the dirt around the front of the truck with a plank of wood. Not wanting to offend anyone, we delicately implied to Jonah that he might suggest that if 50 guys were to push on a truck, chances are it would move. The suggestion was proposed by Jonah, noted and immediately abandoned by the crowd, them spending their energy much more effectively discussing this exciting situation. We could see the truck wasn't going anywhere for a while at its current pace of extraction. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon, we decided, with two of us not feeling well we found a spot under a tree, settled in and watched the commotion.

After an hour or so of digging and three or four prior attempts at backing the truck up, success was achieved and the truck reversed slowly out of the hole. By now there were a few vehicles on either side of the roadblock, we were all anxious to get going and Marije was looking much healthier after not having been jostled around a car for a while. We got in our cars and waited as the truck backed up, preparing to squeeze by. Instead, the driver of the truck was simply preparing for a running start, plowing forward only to promptly lodge the truck in a ditch once again, blocking the entire road.

Everyone was perplexed. Why had the truck gotten stuck twice in the very same place under the same circumstances? We were also perplexed, but for a very different reason. After another hour or so of collective head scratching by the crowd, Jonah put his training to work and came up with a potential solution. We would cut away the brush on the far side of the truck and fill in even more dirt so we could drive around it. This proactive solution would leave the locals to solve their own problems and we could move on before we all died of old age. It sounded crazy, but Jonah was a problem solver and had us thinking that his idea might just work. He even recruited a few locals to begin digging, and before you know it there was a narrow path around the truck. Again, much shouting and general commotion by the locals while something was actually happening, and our car made it through, but not before tearing a piece of the fender off. We didn't care though, Jonah got the star-of-the-day award and we got out of there just as the other vehicles waiting were about to tempt fate the same way.

The roadblock worked to our advantage in a couple of ways. First, like we mentioned, Marije was feeling much better after some rest on solid land. Second, it delayed us just enough to put us smack dab in the middle of the Avenue of the Baobabs right at sunset, for some picture book perfect beautiful scenery. We stopped long enough to enjoy the picturesque setting, taking a few photos and joking around with some really fun local children. The kids loved it when we would take their pictures on our digital cameras and show them so they really hammed it up for us, giggling, flopping around on the ground, etc.

We arrived in Morondava after dark, bidding Jonah, his girlfriend, Tijl and Marije adieu. Jonah would head back to Antananarivo in the morning, and Tijl and Marije had thought ahead and bought plane tickets to Tulear, further down the coast, for the next morning. We had made no such plans and wanted to check out Morondava for a couple of days before heading to Tulear, so we told our Dutch friends that we might see them there, but made definite plans to catch up when back in Antananarivo. We then found the nicest place in town, got a suite with air conditioning and a big private bath, climbed into a bed with an actual mattress, and slept for 12 hours.

The next day our on to-do list was seeing Morondava and finding a way to our next destination, Tulear. It's a seaside town of reasonable prosperity, with a few resorts on the beach and a pretty laid back atmosphere. Our hotel was on a beach overlooking various fishing boats and the daily activities of the locals. We were there in the low season and not a lot of people were around which made sense to us since it was just as hot as the Tsiribina river, so much so that we basically stayed in our room between the hours of noon and 3pm. While sitting inside our luxury rent-a-fridge, we noted that many, if not all of the locals had no such option so the town pretty much shut down while everybody sort of sat around in a stupor waiting for the heat to abate.

Next on our list was to find a way to Tulear. We discovered that by road it took three days, the vehicle going almost all the way back to Antananarivo, which didn't sound too appealing to us. There was supposedly an option by sea, but after finding out that it would be a three day private charter and would cost about $1500, we politely declined. For once during our trip, common sense took hold and we chose to book a flight out of the small airport later that week.

We spent the next couple of days walking around and doing nothing much except trying to cash travelers checks. It's good we didn't have much else to do because we learned quickly that like many lesser developed countries, access to cash in Madagascar isn't like we're used to at home. The only ATMs we saw were in Antananarivo, and we were told they only worked for local cards. Practically no one takes credit cards and travelers checks can only be cashed by banks. Below is how a good part of a couple of days was spent trying to get money.

Day one:
Walk 15 minutes in 100 degree heat to bank, get in line. Wait.
Teller requires receipt to cash travelers checks
Walk 15 minutes in 100 degree heat to hotel, get receipts
Walk 15 minutes in 100 degree heat to bank.
Bank is closed for lunch.
Walk 15 minutes in 100 degree heat to hotel.
Walk 15 minutes in 100 degree heat to bank, get in line. Wait.
Teller says bank can't change a $100 travelers check without authorization from main office which will take one day.
Walk 15 minutes in 100 degree heat to hotel, collapse in exhaustion.

Day two:
Walk 15 minutes in 100 degree heat to bank, get in line. Wait.
Watch anxiously as teller looks for authorization.
Wait as teller begins excruciatingly slow process of filling out many forms in triplicate.
Watch teller wander seemingly aimlessly around bank for no apparent reason.
Receive money minutes before bank closes for lunch.
Walk 15 minutes in 100 degree heat to hotel, collapse in exhaustion.

One day while we were sitting around waiting for the sun to go down, we had a chance to meet one of the owners of our hotel, a guy named Gary who was originally from Menlo Park, California. Gary is in his late 40s and personified the kind of guy who wanted to drop out of the rat race of developed countries, finding a perfect home in Madagascar. He was pretty excited we live in his native California, taking time to talk at great length to us about positive energy and kismet with his surfer-dude accent. As long as positive energy kept flowing to our air conditioner, we were happy to listen.

After a couple of days our plane arrived and we took off for Tulear on the southwest coast of Madagascar. It was a pleasant flight down the undeveloped coast overlooking the Mozambique Channel, and we landed a scant hour and a half later in another resort area. Tulear bears a couple of distinctions worth mentioning. It is the largest town in the region and the terminus of Route 7 from Antananarivo, one of the few paved roads in Madagascar. It is also the furthest point on the planet from San Francisco, California, so if we HAD to wear stupid hats, this would be the place to do it. Although the people, as usual, are exceedingly friendly, there's not anything very fancy about the town, it is architecturally uninspired and on the edge of a mangrove swamp so there are no beaches. Most people only stop there for a couple of days before heading off to the beach resorts nearby to the north and south. Our plan was to stay a couple of days to explore, then begin working our way slowly back to Antananarivo up route 7 stopping at various towns and national parks along the way.

Having gotten used to the lighthearted demeanor of the Malagasy people, we were surprised that our hotel wasn't exactly service oriented, being caught off guard when we arrived at our hotel and asked for change for the taxi driver and were greeted with a flat "No." However our room was nice enough once we removed a frosted glass window pane from another room to fill in the one missing from our eye-level bathroom. We had no idea what the people before us did, but no one seemed to stop us during our home improvement project. The window also helped keep in the air conditioning, once again being the life saver in the heat.

We also discovered that Tulear is not the place for entomophobics, or those with a fear of flies. They were everywhere and on everything. You know those pictures of people with flies crawling all over their faces? Those aren't your average fly, they're super-fast flies that actually prefer landing directly on your mouth, eyes, etc., which makes eating pretty difficult for those of us with fly issues, the term 'nightmare' comes to mind. Mine is more of an obsessive-compulsive thing, but it was disturbing, to say the least, to find out that the pastries in the roadside stalls weren't all raisin rolls. You couldn't even see the meat at the butcher's stall they were so covered, so we decided we'd do our best to eat only canned goods and at restaurants while we were there. Not that we were fooling ourselves, we knew where the food for the restaurants was coming from, but yeah, we were fooling ourselves. As long as we didn't see it beforehand we could make believe all ingredients had been fresh as can be inside an airtight refrigerator which we'd like to think that there was at least one of somewhere in town.

As you might guess, because of the language Madagascar is a big tourist destination for the French. As a matter of fact, we met very few people from English speaking countries at all. While it forced us to brush up on our conversational abilities while cursing ourselves for not listening in eighth grade, people were generally quite friendly as we verbally stumbled along, even, yes, even the French themselves. The only people who would question our choice of destination without (gasp!) being able to speak French, seemed to, for some reason, all be from Québec. After this happened a few times, in the spirit of things we felt it best to annoy them as much as they annoyed us, so below are our responses to their question, "You don't speak French and you are in Madagascar? How DO you manage?"

1. We don't. We are not actually here right now. Who are you talking to?
2. We're starving and don't know where we are. My God, please help us.
3. We don't speak snoot.

It was in also Tulear where we discovered that the world of European dirty old men is actually divided into regions. While it seems that most old men in Thailand running around with young women are German, apparently old French men prefer Malagasy teens. It was an extremely common sight and seemingly very much a part of life in the resort towns, and it's difficult to see people take advantage of such abject poverty, similar to what we've seen in other poor countries. However, no one said everything we'd see this year would make us feel good, and this sort of thing is part of getting a well rounded perspective of any country.

After a couple of days in Tulear and actually thinking ahead, we went to the taxi brousse station and booked two prime seats in a vehicle leaving the following morning. We were looking forward to seeing a little of the interior of the country, away from the more touristy areas, and the prospect of cooler weather in the high plains didn't sound so bad either.

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