June 1 - Baobab Avenue

Baobab Avenue was a part of the bike ride from Belo-sur-Tsiribihina to Morondava where tomorrow is a rest day. 83 kilometers of sand road before 17 km on hard surface sealed road. The forest has been largely clear-cut - a shame - a few birds en route, a lot of falls in the sand - looking at the road, you had no idea from the colour or contour if the sand would support the bike or not. Vehicle tracks were no help because of the tire width. So a nano-second inattention and you'd be stuck in the sand.

Another day of outstanding organization and support from the staff, getting bags to the boat (need a 45-minute ferry across the river to get to the south side and our bikes - a couple of extra 4x4s to ensure that no one got swallowed by the sand. For Ursula and I, it was a long day time-wise... as usual, we were last on the road getting in just in time at sunset.

I'm having a lot of connection problem, so I'm just going to upload the photos and let them speak for themselves...

our empty water bottles are much in demand outside our hotel

on the walk back to the boat in the morning

our ferry to the north shore - it had obviously previously been used to transport fish

the dirt road and a few obstracles

trust me, it wasn't all this good

and it is used by big trucks too

I'm sure our Dutch friends will appreciate this just in case they are on a leisurely Sunday afternoon ride in the sand
not at all obvious to be that there would be enough cyclists here to warrant a sign like this

gee this is fun

that's not suntan, it's dirt

but nor to worry, we still left some sand out there for the next cyclists