June 9-10 - rest days in Antananarivo

Rest days... blog, laundry, a few things like that. We wandered a bit of the central area on Friday... 

memorial for Malagasies who died in wars fighting for they French

human power on the city too - goods to market, and take the whole family along
and share the road with everything else



presidential palace

 ...including going through the market which is typically full of everything you can imagine in little alleyways where there is hardly room to move.

Friday night we went out for dinner with Tiana, our driver from the first two weeks here and his family including his son Deric who is working as part of the support crew for TDA for the cycling. Absolutely delightful people. Tiana and Lea work very hard for what they have and while doing so they have instilled in their family a similar work ethic and desire for education.

Deric (who is part of our support crew, us, Tiana (our driver from earlier), Harena, Lea, Mamitiana

Saturday we took a trip out to the Lemurs' Park with Deric and his cousin Mamitiana - the Lemurs' Park is set up as an environmental education centre where the habitat is protected, but the Lemurs can come and go as they wish, which basically means that they stay there because outside, the environment isn't suitable and on top of that, they get regular meals at the Park. Young ones are released back into the wild elsewhere in the country.

Coquerel's Sifaka

Crowned Sifaka

Coquerel Sifaka

Madagascar Kingfisher in the Lemur Park

a sleepy Black and White Ruffed Lemur

Ring-tailed Lemur - how many tails?

Bamboo Lemur

Tomorrow morning, we start cycling from the hotel in the middle of Tana - Sunday, and early, so they hope the traffic and all that will not be a problem - almost certainly we'll have an interesting time. Then it's six successive days on the bike, camping the first four nights, so we'll certainly be outside wifi and other such communications for most of the next week.

June 6-7-8 - onward to Antananarivo

Three riding days brought us back to Madagascar's capital, Antananarivo, or Tana for short. Not surprising, it is a chaotic city. We were bussed in the last 20 km because of the difficulty anticipated navigating late afternoon traffic. A lot of very steep hills, thankfully most of them quite short (like less than 2 km). Sunshine the first two days. Third day into Tana was a brisk headwind most of the day, sunshine until noon, then overcast and a bit of light rain.

Every riding days takes us through more lovely landscapes, people on foot or bicycle or zebu-cart to schools, work, market, etc. As we got closer to Tana, there were more and more electrical wires and electrically-connected houses although many (maybe most) live without electricity and running water.

The plan for our two rest days here is mostly rest. The hotel is pretty basic, but it does, and their wifi even reaches the room - that's a luxury compared with most. We woke up this morning (June 9) to wet roads outside but now midmorning and looks like it's clearing. After we get the blog posted, we'll wander a bit in town.

...a relatively ordinary scene... but look at the contents of the basket on the nearest lady...

see the duck - there are two of them on the right...

...and the chicken on the left.

 ...you can see two ducks on the right and a chicken on the left, most likely on their way to market and a certain fate.


A frequent seen... bare-footed people well outside town with home-made carts
either bringing in water or crops or going out to get them.

That is likely a heavy load - one person pushing up a fairly steep hill
with a long way to next town

Some fall colours... well into fall and harvest season here

Every bit of space is used, all tended by hand, not a machine in sight

Just about everything travels on these mini-busses that make it through terrible
roads - the bit of road in the foreground actually looks pretty good. We were on
40-50 km of dirt like this one day - terrible road but beautiful scenery.

Despite the isolation, there were some well-built buildings along the way
including the school house in the foreground

The road was bad enough that they didn't even consider trying to drive it with
the support busses. Instead, the busses drove the long way around to the campsite
for the night and they hire a couple of local mini-vans to provide lunch and support
on the dirt road. But eventually this bit of road stopped even the locals. The TDA crew
had to unload all of their material and carry it by hand to the other side and on to where
they could get to with the support bus. Absolutely amazing the amount of effort that
the TDA crew puts in every day to ensure our well-being. 

Campsite than night was on a soccer field near the top of a hill - lovely night,
great view, quite cool - reportedly 4 degrees in the morning.

Not unusual that local people would gather to observe us 'wasa' (foreigners).
On camping days, they usually have soup and coffee/tea when we finish the
ride and left-overs are often shared with the local people - here they are enjoying
a bit of soup.

This little one wasn't exactly sure what all was going on

Some nice lighting effects as the sun went down

 The next day took us through more well-cultivated fields...

We were heading downhill here, not too fast please for fear of potholes and bad road
surfaces as well as hairpin bends - eventually crossing that bridge way down there
and starting about 15 km of steady climbing, mercifully not always too steep

Ursula and Brad (the sweep) and a group of kids



It's harvest time, so everything, minivans included, get packed full of crops.
At other times, it would likely be equally packed with people.

A meeting place for half-a-dozen zebu carts being loaded with what we
think are squash

A view from that night's hotel

...and the next day again, people hard at work bringing in the harvest.

We passed several convoys of covered zebu carts laden with the harvest

...and in contrast to the zebu carts, a bit of higher technology, what appears to
be a radio telescope, but not sure who operates it or what purpose

...and then a potato (so we were told) market - at least a hundred zebu carts here
and active trading going on.

 ...And then the bus into Tana

June 3-4-5 - Morondava back to Antsirabe

After a day of rest in Morondava, it was back on the bikes for two very hot 130+ km riding days back to Miandrivazo (where we started the river cruise). Then, rather than backtrack on the same road as we had previously been on with the bikes, we had a bus transfer today back to Antsirabe. Tomorrow will be the first of three successive riding days to get us up to Antananarivo (Tana), the nation's capital.

The ride out of Morondava saw us in pretty sparsely settled areas. We continue to be impressed at the industriousness of the people - they are up early, going everywhere on foot, several kilometers to nearest villages or to school or to the fields they're working. We always get kids waving at us, and a 'salama' said to people by the road always gets a cheerful response.

So here is a bit of the two riding days...

washing on the riverbank - this lady is wearing a paste made by mixing ground-up
bark from one of the trees with water and using it both as sun protection and to
beautify the skin

no more baobabs - trees are now palms

overnight campsite

people walk everywhere frequently carrying loads on their heads

laundry is left to dry on the dry riverbeds or on bushes nearby

 

with temperatures around 40 degrees on the second day, Ursula rode the lunch
truck in from about 30 km out. Someone had well-intentionedly put this tiny puppy
on the bus fearing it wouldn't survive if left at the lunch stop - Ursula used her helmet
 to make the ride a bit more comfortable for it. They found someone to look after it at the
hotel that night - good thing, because there is no way that a group that is moving
around on bicycles can look after  puppy

 

Lunch on the bus shuttle to Antsirabe was at a school where one of our drivers was
educated - they did it very nicely and he must have been proud of his home
area - it really is a bit off the normal beaten track.