Archive for the ‘Fianar’ tag
Ranomafana to Fianar
Taken from the Madagascar Team 1 Journal, originally by Pokey
Until this stage the transport group had done us proud with some fine buses and trucks. However, with all due respect, the “bus” arranged to take us from Ranomafana to Fianar was a touch on the small side. 16 of us crammed into the truck with packs on the floor of the truck and piled so high on the roof it looked like it might topple over!
Mike, our leader for the day, was vehemently cursing his tent-partner, Ben, in his absence for the absurdly small truck. After our arrival in Fianar, Ben, Sal & Suzanne were not far behind us, having travelled by a Mazda truck. Their journey in a car, which apparently had not suspension and nothing to sit on meant that they regularly struck their heads against the roof, was obviously more uncomfortable than ours, judging by their shell-shocked appearance. I actually quite enjoyed the joyney and my tape was accepted on the semi-function radio/cassette player for much of the duration; which was great.
On arriving in Fianar, we stood in awe of the Tsara Guest House with its smartly painted, peach coloured walls and well finished window frames. Surely this was a facard. But on entering and after being directed to our rooms, we weren’t disappointed. All the rooms were stylishly decorated and complete with smart wooden fittings, with even a few ornaments here and there. The best was yet to come. On investigating the bathrooms, hot water positively gushed from the taps, there were good showers and flushing toilets. This place was certainly “out-of-place” and still the best was yet to come. A few of us went down to the bar where hot chocolate and coffee was ordered. It was fantastic, obviously made with real milk!! Obviously we decided to have lunch at the Guest House, which for many; those with good “menu intuition” was of large steak sandwiches. There were many pleas to drop our intended itinerary and stay put for the remaining time.
The afternoon’s jobs were to get transport to Isalo and to get enough supplies or the whole of the Isalo trek. A new supplies team was put on the case and, with a better idea of just how much food 20 people could eat, we set about buying loads of food. Having nearly finished our purchasing, we met a man from the “Tourist Office”, so he said, which certainly surprised me, but he spoke good english. I soon realised just how fortunate we were to meet him. The subject of meths or the lack of it, was one which had grown particularly close to my heart as I was in charge of equipment. Obviously, I was overjoyed when the man told us he knew where we could get some. So, meths was found and bought. The supply buying frenzy was completed on arrival at the market where we purchased 1 mans entire stock of ranges. Meanwhile, I think Martin was slightly unnerved by the bloke with an 18 inch knife watching our every move. We returned safely to the Tsara Guest House with a kit bag of over 100 oranges costing just a few pence or less each.
Meanwhile, transport (Werthers, Sally, Helly and Mike) told stories of the bus they had hired, which got the Werthers thumbs-up and more “rocking”.
We ate our evening meal in the Tsara Guest House and afterwards, some more noisily than others got quite rat-arsed. It particular, Katie, who was well gone, managed to leave her walking boots and a cherry lolly lying about the hotel before going to bed.
