Au Bois Vert

We finally made it to Madagascar at around 1:00 p.m. today.  The flight was less than smooth, but very interesting.  To begin with, I haven't been on a flight that empty in ten years.  There was nobody in first class, and the rest of the plane was less than half full.  It very much felt like a flight from the nineties, from the way that the stewardesses were dressed to the containers they used to serve our lunch.

Even from the air, I could tell that this was going to be an experience.  The vast countryside was mostly vacant, peppered with an occasional farm or "village" (and I use that term loosely).  As we got closer to Tana, the landscape shifted from virtually untouched to being covered by terraced fields -- a not-so-subtle indication that the Malagasy are of Malay-Indonesian origin.  More and more villages also started to pop up.  The typical village was composed of 4-5 buildings on top of a hill.  One was, almost without exception, a church, and the others were indistinguishable one-story buildings made from mud bricks, many with thatched roofs.  The other striking feature of the countryside was the lack of asphalt. All of the roads were made of well-trodden dirt.  Until we hit the runway, which was (thankfully) paved, we only saw a single asphalt highway snaking its way through the hills of an otherwise red-clay desert.

The airport was definitely an experience.  After disembarking, we handed out passports to one of the security officers who quickly took them, put them in one of a dozen stacks walling a few other guards into their desks, and stood in a giant mass of people, waiting for them to approve our visas and (quietly) call out our names.  From there, we grabbed our bags, walked out of the secured, and were immediately accosted by dozens of locals -- taxi drivers, "tour guides," and porters -- all hoping to persuade us to shell out a few thousand ariary (the exchange rate sits at ~3,200 ariary to $1 USD).

Before I could find an ATM and pull out a wad of 10,000 ariary bills, I spotted someone from our hotel holding a sign for us.  Because we're only staying here a night, I figured that we'd be alright without cash for the evening and we headed out with him to his van.  As we were loading up the van, some other guy came over, repeatedly saying, "Au Bois Vert" -- the name of our hotel -- "Au Bois Vert."  He forcibly took our packs off of us and put them in the back of the van, only then insisting that we give him a tip.  Rarely have I seen a foreigner so annoyed with me.  I told him that I didn't have any ariary and closed the door while our driver went to pay for parking.  For several minutes, the porter just stood outside the van glaring at us.  Then, after the annoyance had built in him, he started just repeating the word "rand" -- the South African currency.  Now, I had a 100 rand note with me (~$7), but I wasn't about to give that to him, especially after he was being so creepy!  After another few minutes, he moved to the other side of the van and stayed there until our driver started walking back to the van.

Driving out of the airport was eye-opening.  The sides of the red-clay road were plastered with makeshift wooden shacks, each peddling something -- cell phones, raw meats, cooked dishes, etc.  As we moved into the more developed parts of the town, little changed other than the size of the buildings.  There were still the same kinds of shops, and the same dust-covered kids sitting in the same leaning doorways.  There were, however, two major differences.  First, some of the buildings were two-story stucco construction.  Second, there were way more people everywhere, including in the streets.  It was immediately clear that there are no rules of the road here.  Dogs and chickens stand in the road as they please.  If you don't like it, you can honk, but the animals, often unfazed, leave you with only one option: Drive around them.  Pedestrians are no different, often walking in the middle of the streets.  In several instances, there were cars just parked in the street.  They hadn't even tried to pull off to the side.  Perhaps the most shocking thing that I saw on our drive, however, was a ten-foot-long, three-foot-high pile of trash on the "sidewalk" that someone had lit on fire!

Honestly, when I saw signs for our hotel not far from that trash-fire, I became a bit concerned.  Yet we pulled into the front gate of the Au Bois Vert and the scenery immediately changed.  It's a 3 hectare compound, walled off from the outside world.  The place is beautiful, from the painted carts strewn around to the charming bungalow-style buildings, and the fantastic little restaurant.  They even have a few radiated tortoises, one of which had the meanest mug I've ever seen in my life!

We had a late lunch of zebu, chicken, and duck skewers paired with a Three Horses Beer (locally just called "THB"), which is the flagship Malagasy beer.  The zebu was really good.  I've read that eating zebu undercooked carries with it the risk of contracting tapeworms, but it was definitely worth the risk. Hopefully I won't have tapeworms in my future because (1) few things gross me out more than tapeworms; and (2) I don't think I could stand to lose that much weight!

After a nice walk around the grounds, Kati collapsed on the bed in our bungalow for a nap and I headed up to the pool for a relaxing afternoon with my book.

Dinner was also excellent.  I had a zebu lasagne and Kati had a zebu stew.  After a bottle of Pinotage, a few gin and tonics, and some orange-infused rum, we headed off to bed.

Tomorrow we're hitching a ride back to the airport (maybe 10 minutes) to catch a flight to Morondava for the adventurous leg of our trip.