Time to head home - Canada Day in Madagscar

July 1 - here we are spending Canada's 150th birthday in Antananarivo before catching the Air France flight just after midnight tonight.

After finishing bike riding in Antsiranana, or Diego Suarez as it used to be called, we had three more days in the north of Madagascar, the first spending the morning on our own in Diego to wander some areas we hadn't done before....

Two houses down the road from the provincial governor's residence is the derelict
Marine Hotel, dating back to the early 1900s, once a showpiece building, but seriously
damaged by a cyclone in 1984. Part of the façade on the left is shored up with a makeshift
wooden scaffold. You can walk around inside, but be careful, there are unmarked drops
where once were stairways. Not sure that such a site would pass safety standards in
Canada. Not only is it still standing here, but it is an attraction in its own right and
there is a plaque outside explaining its history.

Right beside the Marine Hotel is the Music Pavilion in a park with fountains
 (no longer functional). Once upon a time this must have been a lovely place
for the people of Diego to enjoy music and look out to the approaches to the
harbour...

...but sadly it has fallen into disrepair. Its former beauty is still to be seen, but now
there is only a small set of swings under this tree for kids to play on. Otherwise,
garbage is all around.  

But we found a nice mural of a ringtailed lemur beside a square overlooking
the harbour

...then going to the three bays to the east of Diego...

the beautiful colours of the Indian Ocean

This whole area has incredibly strong winds, generally in excess of 60 km/hr,
even quite early in the morning, so these bays are extremely inviting for kite surfing.
We felt quite sand-blasted on one side from our two-hour walk along these bays.

lots of these crabs, size around 4 to 6 inches, scurrying around on the beach.

This is a French gun emplacement from WW2, installed by the Vichy government
to protect the harbour. Diego Suarez' harbour is described as one of the world's
loveliest harbours, second to Rio de Janeiro, well protected naturally. As we
understand it, there was Allied concern that the Vichy government would allow
German or Japanese naval forces to use the harbour. That would have disrupted
British support convoys. Britain and South Africa invaded and occupied
Madagascar to preclude that.

Remains of all four guns are still in place

A bottle tree and bougainvillea along the walk

Rainbow over Diego the following morning

The following day to the red tsinghy to the southeast - the darker tsinghy from a few days ago was limestone that had been eroded by acid rains from volcanic eruptions many many years ago. The red tsinghy are the much softer sandstone and these result from erosion by rainfall now, so they are a living thing in the sense that new tsinghies develop in the cliffs that get eroded away and their colour starts quite yellow but gets whiter due to exposure to sunlight change, and after a few years, rain ultimately erodes them to nothing.

Tortuous 17-km drive from the highway (the one with huge potholes that we
biked on the last riding day) to get to the tsinghy 

 

 

 

On Thursday we were at the Amber Mountain national park southwest of Diego with primary forest and remnants of old volcanoes. And probably our last lemur sighting, certainly in the wild.

From our hotel room, sunrise over Diego and its harbour

primary forest in Amber Mountain park

Lake in old volcano crater - it's green in winter, amber in fall, and clear
during the summer rainy season.

Two of the country's tiniest chameleons and a stick insect

the Amber Mountain Rock Thrush that is endemic to this region

A crowned lemur above our head eating an orange - the last lemur we have
seen on this trip

Yesterday was a flight back to Antananarivo in the morning, so some time to wander around the lake on which is the war memorial, coming back to the hotel by a different route along a the ridge line behind the lake in the first photo. As well as streets, there are a lot of pedestrian stairways - Ursula's fitbit said we climbed 44 storeys in our walk through this area.

 

The lakeside is popular with the residents, here a number of them playing on
the outdoor fussball tables. Beside this were several boccia games with lots
of people playing and looking on. Sadly, as much as the area is well used, it is
not well maintained, garbage everywhere as well as evidence of zebu and goats
wandering the area

Madagascar gained independence from France in 1960. In some respects, it almost looks like time froze at that point, evidenced by the 60s vintage French cars - Renault 4s and Citroen 2-CVs - that are all over especially as taxis.

 

 

this one contributing to the noxious fumes that we had to inhale all
too often when diesel trucks were on the road

 

As we've said before, non-mechanized transport remains the norm here. We frequently saw large loads on carts being pulled by one or two people in town - here a load of wheelbarrows, but we seen enormous loads of furniture and everything else imagineable.

Time to check out of the hotel and go for lunch - will try to post this in the course of the day. This will be the last post from here, but after we get home, I'll put up one final postscript to this amazing adventure.