Repoblikan'i Madagasikara : a visiting vazaha.

 

   

 

   

Just spent a week in Madagascar, and absolutely fell in love with the place. It's beautiful.

It started off with a rather strange idea of going to Antsiranana - more pronounceably known as Diego Suarez - to learn to kitesurf. One of those all-inclusive holidays where you have a bed, food and kitesurfing lessons all rolled into one package, and they even send a taxi to fetch you at the airport.

The airline company for Madagascar is Air Madagascar. It was originally called MadAir, but changed its name after a few too many bad jokes. We got acquainted in the traditional way: I booked a direct flight, they changed it and told me I was to stay overnight in the capital of Madagascar, Antananarivo (Tana). So stay in Tana I did. I booked a hotel, arrived at Ivato Airport after lunch, was collected by a taxi, dumped my stuff in the hotel and asked the taxi driver to take me to the main street in Tana to have a look round.

Rather obviously a tourist, the first people I saw shouted to me to change money with them. "Vazaha (white skin), change, vazaha, change" was all anyone seemed to bother about. Attracted a few stares, fended off money-changers and various beggers of all ages, got caught by the rain ten minutes in and ended up in Antananarivo market. Above are some photos of said market. It's very interesting and very cheap, but as a tourist, I was warned against thieves and pickpockets every time I stopped to look at something or take a photo.

 

   

This is the place I stayed. It's called Sakalava Lodge, it has electricity all day and hot water from 5 p.m. to 6.30, the food is good and it's full of white tourists and Malagasy employees. Kiting lessons in the morning for more advanced learners and in the afternoon for dummies, and not a lot else to do. However, it's located in one of three or four beautiful bays which made for a nice long walk one morning.

I still can't kitesurf, in case you were wondering. It's harder than it looks. There's a lot more equipment than I had bargained for and by the time you're all strapped up and weighing an extra half-ton, that's half the lesson gone. The instructor also spent a lot of his time laughing at other people, who seemed to me to be doing perfectly well, but were apparently making some glaring mistake or other. My personal kitesurfing technique was certainly comical, if not terribly efficient.

I did meet quite a few other tourists there, though, most of whom had arrived from Mayotte. The interesting thing was that said tourists were hooked on kitesurfing and planned all their holidays around the sport, selecting destinations according to water depth and wind strength. They had chosen the north of Madagascar because you could kitesurf in an area where your feet could touch the bottom, which seems to be very important until you're proficient. They had kitesurfed in Mauritius and Egypt, and they were planning on going to Mozambique for their next holiday. They "absolutely had to do the Philippines". You get the idea.

I'm not quite sure what to think of that. On the one hand, why not, it gives your holiday more of a purpose than just staying in hotels and taking photos, and you stay in kitesurfy places with other likeminded kitesurfy people, with whom you can have eternal thrilling conversations about kitesurfing and palpitating discussions about the finer points of sail control depending on size and brand of sail, strength and direction of wind (on, off or side, apparently). On the other hand, however, you only see beaches and you spend your holiday in the same place doing the same thing. I think I'd rather travel around and take photos.

 

 

 

 

   

The lodge package also offered a couple of excursions, if several people wanted to go to the same place at the same time. Looked lovely on paper, didn't work out so well in practice because most people had come for the kite-surfing lessons and wanted to spend some time each day doing just that. One group, however, was headed out to the Emerald Sea, which I had been strongly advised to go and see.

For that sort of thing, Madagascar seems to be the same as Mayotte. A lovely place, very poor but very pretty, and a constant comedy show. As long as you're not actually trying to get anything done, the place is a hoot. As it happened, this group had booked a boat trip and had asked for eight masks, eight tubas and eight pairs of flippers. Upon arrival, a girl asked the boat guy if he had brought the required diving equipment. Yes, yes, he said, no problem. She then insisted on seeing said equipment. Out came six masks, four tubas and seven pairs of flippers, most of which would be in use by the fishermen on the boat. Off went the chap to fetch more stuff. By which time the other tourists had arrived for the same boat trip. Fifteen of us in total, and out of the equipment eventually produced, half the masks let water in, the tubas didn't really look like something you would willingly stick in your mouth and most of the flippers were the wrong sizes.

We sat at the front of the boat, got soaked, moved to the back of the boat, got soaked again and stopped in the middle of the sea - which was indeed green, with dark patches for algae - and the fishermen dived off the boat to catch lunch. When they had enough fish, they brought us to a small island with straw huts, all with a different tour operator's name on. They cooked the fish, we all ate, a couple of Malagasy girls with careful please-the-tourists makeup offered massages all round, then home, James. In a Peugeot 404 with tarpaulin on the top, nine of us inside, and the driver's door which came open by itself at one point, forcing the driver to hold the door with one hand and drive with the other.

 

 

   

The thing I most wanted to see was the red Tsingys. Limestone and laterite erosion formations about an hour's drive from Antsiranana, two hours' drive from the lodge, it's a smallish viewpoint but definitely worth the visit, as they're said to be unique in the world. This said, the English translation on the signpost is also pretty unique.

To get there, you need a 4-wheel-drive and a 4-wheel-driver. Our driver's name was Tintin. The road from Antsiranana is generally OK for Malagasy or Mahorese standards - you can't really tell where the road ends on either side, it's half gravel and full of holes - but the track to get down to the Tsingys hardly deserves the name of "track". The car lurched and bumped its way down, with a good metre's difference in height between the left side and the right side of the car before changing to the other way round. After about half an hour of being bumped around and thrown on top of each other, we saw a signpost: "Tsingy Rouge 16km" and groaned internally.

You could go round the Tsingys on foot, preferably barefoot because it's not so much a path as a river. When we came back up, we saw a sign saying "Canyon" and went to have a look at that. I've never seen the Grand Canyon and can't compare, but I found this one breathtaking. The laterite everywhere is the reason why Madagascar is called the Red Island.

 

 

   

Coming back from the Tsingys, we stopped at Antsiranana for lunch and a look at the market. Lunch was good and cheap - you seem to be able to get an excellent three-course meal anywhere in Madagascar for under ten pounds for tourists, five pounds for locals - and the market was pretty, with both an indoor part and an outdoor part. They're called bazars, which has become a French word for anything that's quite honestly a bit of a mess. Good fun though. I especially liked the spice market. Spices are measured using old tuna or vegetable cans. One canful of pepper or whatever costs a fixed price.

You get about in Antsiranana by taxi-moto, or tuk-tuk. Five hundred Ariarys apiece - about 15p - to go anywhere in the town. They're all bright yellow, as opposed to Tana's faded yellow Renault 4Ls and 2CVs.

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In Madagascar in general, rather than listing specific excursions, I took and collected a few interesting (to my mind, anyway) photos.

First, lots of children. They mostly seemed to love the camera, grinning wildly at the lens. They also seem to learn to beg from tourists at a very young age. When we stopped in Antsiranana market, I bought something and while I was handing over the money, a boy about knee-high was holding his hands up to me, hoping for the change. In towns, tourists are often addressed as "Hey, vazaha, give me sweet".

 

  

 

 

 

A few animals, including a frog on my bed, a chameleon that doubled in size when it realized it was having its photo taken, a snake that went to sleep with its head in the sand and something unknown that nipped me when I put a foot too close to where it must have been living:

 

 

Means of transportation with varying degrees of comfort and reliability. Planes are in insufficient supply and fly when rusty or breaking, change flights all the time and are known for taking you all round the island before you get to go home. Cars are driven at fairly low speeds on roads that only really have space for one vehicle, so the drivers honk their horns whenever they come to a turning. The driver that took us to the Emerald Sea had a bit of a scare with another car coming too close for comfort when neither honked in time, so he basically had his hand on the horn all the way home from that point.

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, some roadside scenes that seem to be typical of northern Madagascar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love the last one: hairdresser, CD burning, virus treating, memory cards and ice rolled into one stylish shop.

I don't know when, but I'll be back soon.