We made it to Madagascar!  I can honestly say that this is the least prepared I have felt for any country I was traveling to, including North Korea.   I let the Boy and the travel company lead this itinerary, not to mention that we were actually on our third itinerary as Madagascar travel demands a sense of adventure, patience, and humor.   Roads washed out in a cyclone in March and had not reopened, the relaxing beach trips needed to be canceled due to pirate attacks, flights around the country didn’t take off for days regardless of published flight “schedules”.  Throw in the last 27 hours of medical crisis and I officially adopted a “fuck it, whatever” vibe to this second part of our trip.  In my mind, we were near enough to South Africa to get good wine, and in a pinch I could just drink a lot of the notably bad Malagasy wine and power through…

But first we had to make it to the lemurs.  The only international airport is in the main city of Tana, which is notorious for its traffic.   [Ed. note: the airport itself was…well, it was something. Having been to Zanzibar, I expected a similar ‘African Island’ airport vibe, but the immigration queue (if you could call it that) was a free-for-all of epic proportions. And we were just getting started.] Now, we have been in many cities who pride themselves on traffic, although none have been riddled with the snafu which is the zebu cart.  A lumpy, horned cow pulling a wooden cart powering through the massive round-abouts alongside the SUVs and motor bikes.   And those horns are VERY pointy so the SUV drivers definitely gave way!

The drive up the country was on mostly paved roads, but the potholes rivaled Atlanta and they didn’t have any permanent metal plates to relieve the jolt.  Thankfully, the stress of the past 48 hours allowed us to sleep most of the journey (and forget the need to pee, of which they only option was the “bush toilet…”).  [Ed. note: our local guide let us know we were over an hour and a half late landing.  We pointed out that our airplane left Sudan late, and the Nairobi airport lost power for a bit. He didn’t seem to care…]  It could have been worse of course.  The “local buses” that kept stopping to pick up riders were a minivan with an assistant hanging on the open back door by a rope, collecting the 500 ariary fee per passenger (yes, that is a full 16 cents USD…) and packing them in 15 to 35 deep, with the live chickens strapped on the roof…

Tomorrow we finally find lemurs…on an uphill rainforest hike…