Madagascar: Bashful Baobabs Make an Appearance

The staff at the lovely H1 hotel were very enthusiastic, and always smiling. Their English was ok, but not the best (I did hear them learning though, so they clearly try their best!), which lead to some funny conversations with them. Here is one from the afternoon that was like a Morecombe and Wise sketch:

Me: "Can I have a Sprite please?"

Lady: "What size Sprite do you want, small or large?"

Me: "How much?"

Lady: "The small is like this, the big is like that"

Me: "Sorry, I meant how much do they cost?"

Lady: "Small is 3000"

Me: "And the large?"

Lady: "We don't have large."

Me: "..."

Lady: "..."

Me: "I'll take a small Sprite"

The funny thing was, later at dinner I asked for a Sprite, and they brought me a large one! Oh well. Speaking of dinner, it was very nice. A vegetable soup I actually liked, probably the best zebu I've had, and crepe surprise where the surprise was a banana (not that surprising, but still nice).

The only downside to the evening was Mamy. When he got drunk on the camping trip a few nights ago, we found out his father had died a few days before our tour started. This is obviously affecting him, as tonight he was totally wasted, and when asked about who we should tip in Ifaty (Mamy is leaving us after sorting us out in Ifaty, essentially because Exodus don't want to pay to send their guides on flights when it isn't necessary, and we are catching a plane from Ifaty back to Tana), he misunderstood, and went on a rant about how it would have nothing to do with him and how he "would be free of us tomorrow". You can understand him being upset, but this was very unprofessional, and cast a pall over the evening.

On the way back to my room (it is another little house thing), there was a big fire a couple of miles away on the plains. It was very dramatic in the night, and I tried to get some photos but, well, see for yourself:

You can totally tell what it is. If you squint. Really hard.

A 6:30 leaving time meant getting up at 5:45. I'm not even going to use a disgusted sound though, as I'm used to getting up around that time now. Breakfast was as robust as dinner, with bread, Malagasy bread (made of rice, very much like crumpets), pancakes, egg selection, and fruit juice, as well as coffee with MILK! (Literally the second time I've seen milk in Madagascar, and the first was in Tana). Then we all filed into the bus (which Dharma had been polishing again) for the last time.

For a while, we drove through the grasslands, but slowly the scenery changed to... well, Monument Valley. There were fat sandstone pillars with flat tops, very flat topped mountains, and not much vegetation in between. We drove past a rock that looked like a woman, which is called the Queen of Baro, and then we were out to a grassland with actual trees!

The mountains were far away at this point, but look how flat they are!

Is that a Diner I see over there?

The Queen of Baro. Maybe I didn't catch her good side; I remember her being more... queeny

At first it was just fruit trees (the rest are typically cut down for wood), but soon a new and vaguely exciting tree began to show itself: the Silver Palm. This is actually the same species of Palm we have seen in other places, but something in the soil makes them grown dull silver green instead of regular green.

They looked more silver than they look here. But still not all that silver really.

Villages then started to appear again, and the first one we happened upon was huge! This is the sapphire region apparently, so there is a gold rush (but with sapphires). They don't have the equipment to make proper mines, so instead they just use shovels and dig from the surface (which is apparently successful; there is some foreign investment in the area, but up to this point there is no need for them to bring in machinery: it is profitable enough without). We don't stop here because all the good sapphire are immediately exported, and they try to con you into buying the leftovers apparently. This was fine by me; it was a very busy, disorganised place and I could easily imagine being pick pocketed or mugged.

After a few more (smaller) sapphire villages, we were in the territory of one of the iconic trees of Madagascar, and one that had been conspicuous in it's absence thus far: the Baobab! Fat trunked, with no branches aside from a very small spread at the crown, these trees are (mostly) found exclusively in Madagascar. They don't survive the axe because of national pride though; their wood is spongy and more or less useless for building, and you can get juice out of the fruits (though the fruits are edible, they aren't very nice apparently), so they stand tallest on the plain. The one we stopped next to for photos was 600 years old!

I don't think Rosa really understood my goal in this 'showcase' photo...

So fat! So old! So Baobab!

As we travelled along, we sat a few different species of baobab, but mostly they look rather similar. We learned a bit more about them too. For instance, the first time they give fruit is when they are 80-90 years old!

This species is too branchy for my liking. Do you even fruit bro?!?

The people round here are nomadic, constructing crude huts to last then a year or two, and then moving on. I don't think I have seen worse structures for living in permanently ever, and due to all the moving around, there is no infrastructure, so they have to do things like bathe in puddles in the road when it has rained. It had just rained as we passed, so some children were doing this.

Thank god I didn't photo the kids bathing in the road, or child services would've been round!

We were making a brief stop in Tuliara to get fuel, and money for those who needed it (I did not; my £300 from the start of the trip will last me to the end!). Though this is the capital of the south of Madagascar, and in general is more modern than other places, there really wasn't much to see here, aside from HUGE puddles, and a little boy beating up a CD (he was holding it with one hand and punching it with the other. No idea why).

The road to Ifaty was motorway 9. Probably even better maintained than motorway 7, and given that we only had to go 30km, we were there very quickly. The hotel is once again the best we have stayed at, and honestly I think this will take some beating! It is once again little huts, but this time on a private beach on a lagoon in the Indian Ocean.

That isn't a real lemur. It is how the room tricks you into entering!

The view from the porch. Seen worse.

There are some activities on offer, mainly for tomorrow, so after taking a half hour walk along the beach and seeing some long beaked birds, crabs, and an unifentified organic... thing, I am heading up to the main hotel, to see if there is anything interesting. If not, I guess I'll just relax. Life is hard!

Rosa rushed out of nowhere and insisted on photographing me because I looked good.