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Isalo National Park

Tulear had been nice enough, but it was time to leave the heat of the south and move inland toward the higher plains in the middle of the country. Our plan was to get to the town of Ranohira, about six hours away, and we had made the unheard of smart decision to reserve the two seats next to the driver on a taxi-brousse for the following morning at 7am. Still foolish enough to think that 7am actually meant 7am, we got up extra early and arrived at the station at a little after 6. We found our van, took our seats and watched the early morning bustle as all the vehicles prepared for their journeys ahead.

It really didn't surprise us when 7am came and went since we knew the only way to get the thing to actually leave at 7 would have been to arrive 7:10. We were still sitting around at about 8am when one of the very few privately owned cars in Tulear, a beat up old BMW, pulled up and a man and woman got out and walked into the main office. They were both about 60 years old and walked with the gait of people bearing considerable social status, at least by Malagasy standards. They may well have been very important for all we knew, after all, their BMW was a Beverly Hills Edition, it said so on the dented fender. A few minutes later, the office manager, the very man who had sold us our tickets the previous day, came out of the office and approached us. There had been a mistake, he informed us in French, his intentions surprisingly clear despite the language barrier, our seats were not the two in front next to the driver, but the next row back. It became clear to us that the elderly gentleman had used his connections to secure a prime seat for his wife on whatever journey she was about to take.

This was news to us. We indicated to the manager that we vividly recalled paying for the two seats next to the driver, the very ones we were currently sitting in. When reserving tickets, passengers often pick their seats from a grid with the numbers of each seat written on a piece of paper, which is exactly what we had done to avoid any possible miscommunication. As a matter of fact, we were so sure we had reserved the two seats in front, numbers one and two, that the numerals were written in the manager's handwriting on our tickets.

Undeterred, the manager persisted; we were to sit a row back. Andrea and I looked at each other, a year's worth of being pushed to the back of buses, shuffled between hotels rooms and charged higher ‘tourist' prices was all we could think of. It had to stop now, it was time to fight back for all the polite people in the world.  It was here we would defend all of the hapless tourists who had been taken advantage of. It was here we would take our stand.

We told the manager we weren't moving.

The manager stood, not knowing quite what to do next as we sat staring politely, his high-profile clients behind him expecting something to happen. Inspiration apparently having struck, he went into the office and returned with his clipboard, the seating grid used to place passengers attached which he then showed us. It had, I swear to God, the word "vahaza"  (white person) written on the two seats behind the driver. Better yet, you could see where he had crossed out the same word on our current seats. Sorry, we said, that simply wouldn't do.

By now there was a small crowd and the manager was feeling the pressure to obtain results, but nothing short of a limousine ride or threat of arrest was going to get us to move. Despite his wild gesticulations, we feigned that we couldn't understand him and didn't budge. After about 20 minutes he gave up, Mrs. Very Important got in behind us, and the taxi-brousse pulled out of the station, a small victory for every jilted traveler having been won.

The ride to Ranohira went surprisingly well as we drove east inward from the coast and toward the high plains, and we arrived there by mid afternoon. Ranohira is a small town just outside Isalo National Park, a place we wanted to spend some time hiking around in and exploring. There's not much to the town, and most people stay there only when visiting the park on the way either to or from the coast. Along with some beautiful scenery of dramatic rock formations and a few waterfalls, the park hosts a couple of different species of lemurs, a veritable must see on the itinerary of any visitor to Madagascar.

We had been told the place to go for trekking guides into the park was an outfit run by a man named Momo, who spoke English and had a small operation offering bungalows just outside the park. After bidding our taxi-brousse adieu we remembered the lesson learned at Lake Baikal in Siberia, found the nearest local and said the word "Momo," to which he nonchalantly pointed us down the street. Five minutes later we came upon a screened in patio outside a building with some mud huts outside. It was during the heat of the afternoon and not a lot seemed to be happening, but once we rousted a young woman behind the counter, she ran to get someone when she realized we couldn't speak French. Momo, a large, jovial Malagasy man came out, introduced himself, and offered us a mud hut for the evening. Since we didn't exactly see a strip of hotels on the way in, we accepted.

The place didn't seem too busy, actually we didn't see anyone else at all, and Momo gave us our choice of huts. With what little we know about mud as a building material, we picked what we would consider the finest hut on the grounds, with a light bulb and a hole for a window with a little wooden door on it, and a mosquito net over a well worn bed. We were told that the light wouldn't be working between the hours of 6 and 9pm, ostensibly the hours we would need it most, but we figured that any mud hut with electricity at all is pretty much at the upper end of the mud hut spectrum so we weren't complaining. We asked Momo to set us up with a trekking guide for the park the next day, asking him to let us know if anyone else would like to share our guide in order to cut costs, to which he agreed. Tired from getting up so early and having made our plans for the following day, we retired to our hut and lay on the bed until the sun sank low in the sky and the heat passed.

In the evening when we went to have dinner on the patio, we discovered that not only were we not the only ones staying at Momo's, sitting at a table we recognized the familiar faces of the only two westerners we knew in Madagascar, Tijl and Marije from the Netherlands. Coincidentally, they had arrived a short time ago and were looking for trekking partners. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Momo had said nothing to them about our request for the same. We quickly agreed to once again head into the wild together and despite the fact that Momo didn't look too excited about losing the commission on a trekking guide, things were looking up for the next day.

After dinner, someone lit a fire in the middle of the patio and a few locals came by and began to play some music. The only real instrument they had was a guitar, the other sounds came from a plastic tub used as a drum and a tin plate and two forks to make a sound not unlike a cymbal. The music was upbeat, the harmonizing was perfect, and the infectious beat coming from the plastic tub had us all spontaneously dancing around the fire with the staff until late in the evening. Maybe it was the atmosphere that night, but we think it was some of the best music we've ever heard.

Bright and early the next morning, we met our guide, the driver of the car who would take us to the park, and his friend. It bears mentioning that both Tijl and I are over six feet tall and Marije is tall as well, Andrea being the only petite person amongst us. The car was an old Peugeot, and like most vehicles we've seen in Madagascar was fit for only midgets or clowns, which left us wondering what exactly was the impetus for cramming yet another person in with us for the jarring dirt road to the park. The driver's friend seemed pretty excited about the whole thing however, and with us not being versed in all things Malagasy, we just sort of stared blankly and got in.  There was, however, increased legroom in back due to the missing floorboards, which also afforded us brief views of hitherto unnoticed crawling insect life of the area on the dirt road below, but we like to think that was done involuntarily.

We drove into the park, stopping near the base of some dramatic looking sandstone cliffs, and hiked in to a more heavily vegetated part at the base of the cliffs where we spent most of the morning following some ring tailed and white lemurs. In the afternoon we hiked up to a couple of beautiful oasis-like pools in deep canyons with waterfalls, hanging ferns, etc. taking time to have a refreshing swim in each. My swim in the first one would have been a lot shorter if I had been able to hear Andrea yell to me that there was a three-foot eel swimming near me over the sound of the waterfall. That might also have explained why Marije and I were the only ones left swimming at the time. The second pool, however, had a light, sandy bottom, limiting the stealth capabilities of any lurking creatures and allowing us to relax. We ended the day hiking along a ridge of sandstone cliffs overlooking the valley, taking in some marvelous scenery before descending to our waiting driver below.

Considering the size and age of our car, we are happy to report that on our drive back to Momo's, we were delayed only twice. The first time we hung the car up on a tree stump, which was easily solved by us all getting out, lifting the minute vehicle up and moving it over. The second time we got a flat. We were prepared to lift the thing up again, but the driver insisted we stay inside, so we sat crushed together and watched the sun come through the holes in the floor as the vehicle tilted precariously when he jacked it up.

We don't know what Momo had been celebrating while we were away, besides maybe the fact that we were away, but he was half in the bag by the time we returned, preparing for a tour group to arrive. Perhaps he was embodying the spirit of festivity for his forthcoming guests, walking the walk, as it were. Since Marije's father had recently sent her some money for his birthday telling her to spend it on something nice, they were looking forward to moving on to something built with a little more wood. Her and Tijl had heard there was a very nice resort with a swimming pool and all, about 15km out of town, and after a long day, they were determined to find it. Momo didn't seem too happy to have one of his mud huts lose out to some uppity resort, and he had one of his many friends overcharge the Dutch couple for a taxi ride out there. We made plans once again to meet our friends in Antananarivo and bid them well. Andrea and I were content enough in our earthen treasure, or more like it too lazy to move, so we stuck it out one more night dancing with the locals. 

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