Andringitra

In this park, I did my favourite walk of the trip. First a hike into and around the plateau, and then, the next day, the Pic Boby ascent. Pic Boby is the second highest peak of Mada. The highest has no easy access. For a few moments, I was the highest man on the eighth continent.At the gatekeeper's house, a few girls were braiding their hair. We climbed what you see behind them.

The view from Pic Boby: these are the landscapes we walked through. Described as lunar in tourist guides, they are stark: smooth granite blocks shaped by thousands of rains, this was the first time I'd seen anything like it.
The view down the plain. You can see the rice paddies in the back. This is Betsileo land, the tribe that can get three harvest in a year. Not so high though; the cold only allows one.
I forget the name of this flower. It grows on an Aloe.
Anicet (right) and Arnaud (left), my two hiking companions. Anicet is an ANGAP agent, probably the man with the best knowledge of the park around. He usually only guides the gros bonnets, which we were apparently. Arnaud was an intern at Isalo, and had been offered a trip up Pic Boby. I tagged along.

Isalo

This is Madagascar's most popular national park, with over twenty thousand visitors a year. Personally, of the three I visited, this was the most disappointing. For weeks on the west coast, I couldn't figure what was missing on my photos. Clouds, that was what! A frenchmen I met in Isalo and with whom I travelled to Andringtira kept on talking of the different shades of blue of the sky of Madagascar. You can see what he meant on this photo.
One of the famous cascades, cascade des nymphes, I think. I could be wrong. There wasn't enough light for the picture.
The Savannah: the mountains you see in the back form the Isalo massif. This is at sunrise (yes, I was up that early.)
Isalo's most famous attraction: the piscine naturelle. The kid that just jumped in as I took the photo has a sister with whom I sympathised that day, and later, meeting her randomly in Tana. As to what, every encounter can matter.

Market scenes

Markets are centres of activity. Throughout my trip, I often visited them; sometimes to buy something, say food or a bag, other to see what was on sale.This is Fianar's Zoma market. Big enough to get lost, there was so much on sale: car parts, meat, veggies, clothes, and so much I forget. Fianar is in the region of the Betsileo, a somewhat haughty people. They don't stare at me as much as others.
The market of Ambalavoa, where I and a friend bought two days' worth of food. The ladies were competing for our custom. We went to the cheapest and nicest looking tomatoes.
A market 15 km from Ambositra on a particularly cold day. People wear blankets around them; here's a stall selling them.
Why?! Probably because some white guy sent them. Beautiful donation...

Other towns

Here are photos of other cities in Madagascar. There's Tana and the rest. Here's the rest.The church of Belo sur Mer. See the baobab in the back. To the right, there's a road with a bunch of dwellings on either side.
A church in Ambalavoa. The cars in front may be out of action, but there are thousands like them still going. Ambalavoa has the architecture of the highlands.
Deep in brousse, near the coast, this is what villages look like. These houses are luxurious; often houses are the roof on the ground without the walls. See the rainbows in the background; there were two spanning the whole of the sky.
How is this a town? For coastal towns, the beach is very important. This is Morombe, a town of 9000. The two main roads are parallel to the beach. You can see houses on the right of the picture.

Fianar-Manakara train

This train ride, the only one working in the country, has become a very popular tourist activity. Most catch the train down to Manakara and come back by the road, stopping at Ranomafana National Park.
For the Malagasy, this train is a vital link between the highlands and the coast and every village in between. Besides the three passenger wagons, the train carries merchandise: the bananas you see, chooks, pigs, and more.

Activity on the platform.
The train drove through some wonderful scenery, past waterfalls, over mountains, across banana plantations.
People selling food. This stop was mostly about bananas.



As you can see here.

Tana

I spent almost ten days in Tana, the capital. The film I used when I arrived in Madagascar didn't work out, so I am missing a few photos of the capital. Still here's a selection.
Here's a typical street shot taken at the bottom of the Lambert Hotel stairs. I am in Analakely. In the distance you can see the stairs going up to Isoraka, the area where I spent most of my time in Tana. Between the two staircases are hundreds of streetsellers and tens of beggars. Can you spot the 2CV?
Tana with a dramatic sunset taken from the Lambert hotel.
A spire of the queen's palace, the Rova. The Rova dominates the town but burnt down a few years ago. They are rebuilding it slowly.
The view from my room at the Lambert Hotel. The reception was full of prostitutes making sure their chosen man wasn't going anywhere without their consent. Every other hotel in town was booked out; staying at the Lambert was eye opening. The hotel has great views.

Boutre trip

To get from Belo sur Mer to Morombe I took a boutre. I talked of these ships in a blog entry at the time; they look like they were built 500 years ago. I spent four days and two nights on board for about 80 km. We were solely relying on the wind, and the wind is capricious.When it came to bringing the sails down and putting them together, I looked for a place out of the way of the saliors. There was none, so I moved around to get out of their way. Helping was out of the question: I was a passenger, white, and didn't speak their language.
Look at the mast, the ropes, the sails, the cables...
The captain (not the commandant! the commandant is smoking in the back) rolling the sail around the boom.
Once we got to Morombe, we started blowing our makeshift horns. The crew had drilled a little hole in a few of these massive shells.
When the wind blew evenly, there wasn't much to do but sit around, grab a guitar, play some music and sing.

Putting up photos

It takes a long time for each post. The system worked better before they changed it but that's google. I'll try to put the rest up tomorrow and the day after. Here are a couple of random ones for now.A man I met in a saline. He was digging a canal, so that the water of the tide would come into the plains you see behind him. They then pump the water out of the canals into flat basins. The water dries out, and here you have salt.
Dominos, men's national pasttime. (Women play rami.) Games are spirited. The players slam their dominos onto the table. Stakes vary; these were set a 1000 fmg per person. Susbstantial money for the winner.
What do you see? Give it a shot...

Baobabs I

You've heard of them, there they are. Madagascar has six of the eight existing species of baobabs. The other two are in Africa for one and Australia for the other. I saw most of them North and South of Morondava on the West Coast.You could fit ten people arm stretched around this monster. I was sitting at the front of a truck when I saw it. The driver saw my expression and stopped for me to take a photo. I thought I was pretty far from it, but not far enough to fit it all in my lens!
Near Belo sur mer, there is this little village set amongst a baobab forest. During the day everyone is working the salines. With two fellow travellers, we hiked to this village and walked around; I felt like it was all out of a fairy tale. If only there had been wolves...

Baobab II: the famous avenue

The avenue of baobabs. Certain japanese tour operators stop in Madagascar for one night to see these baobabs. Then off they are to another fancy African destination. This is a touristy spot but it deserves to be so.A zebu cart and baobabs in the background. Spot my shadow. Zebu carts are all over Madagascar. They're cheap and they work well. It's the one vehicle I didn't take.
I said it was touristy, I know, but we are in the low season, and Madagascar only gets 200,000 tourists a year. That was last year; this year doesn't seem as good, but I don't have the numbers. I've been told that Japanese buses come for the sunset a few times a week; the Japanese are clad in all white. Give them a white mask and throw them in a hospital. Germs can be scary.
Another daily reality of the Malagasy bush: zebu herds. They are everwhere. A zebu is much like a cow except for the hump. For many ethnies, they are a source of wealth. A very good zebu can cost up to 400 euros.
Just a tree. For photographers, the shots I took on Agfa film turned out significantly better than the ones on Fuji. I'd like to understand why.

The Tsingy

These were made famous towards the end of the eighties. They made a National Geographic centerfold and a Nicolas Hulot documentary. Together with lemurs and baobabs, documentaries about Madagascar like to focus on these formations. A few examples can be found around the country, but these are the most impressive. Seeing Hulot's documentary over ten years ago is one of the main reason behind my trip.See the vegetation protruding? The Tsingy rise up to 70 meters from the ground. At these heights, the tops are bare, but at lesser heights, one doesn't see the Tsingy, just a green forest that has its roots tens of meters below. Walking through the Tsingy, one experiences two world; the heat and the stark reflections of the Tsingy top; and the cool tunnels and caves of the bottom.
One of the girls I visited the Tsingy with had vertigo. Crossing this bridge was an achievement!
See the different levels? They are due to the different movements of the sea. The shape of the Tsingy is due to the acidity of thousands of rainfalls. The Tsingy are so named after the Malagasy expression "tsingy tsingy" which means walking on the toe of your feet. They are very sharp; running my hand on an edge, I cut my thumb as I would with a razor. And when hit softly, they ring metallically.
This is the view from the underworld. See the length of the root.

South Africa

I am starting to put up my photos with the South African section.

Landscapes I

Cape Town from Gill's appartment's window.
Table Mountain from the same place.
A national park near a state border somewhere.

Landscapes II

Crossing to Plett. I drove a large part of this section. In SA, when someone wants to overtake, you pull over past the yellow line.

On the same road. So beautiful.

People

Yuanique, a very nice girl I sympathised with on the road.
Gill, my incredibly helpful hostess, posing. She poses well, doesn't she?
An American artist, who travels one year out of five. He was drawing the surroundings while telling us of his novel, and his new idea. He doesn't carry around a camera. Just his drawing pad. He reckons it allows him to get closer to his subjects that way.