Archive for the ‘Ranohira’ tag
Fianar to Ranohira (the storm)
Taken from the Madagascar Team 1 Journal, originally by Sally
At the crack of dawn a few hardy members of our team - Pip, Pokey, Graeme and Martin went to the bakery to get 100+ hot, fresh baguettes so that our supplies for the joyney and next few days would be complete. May I remark how nice it was to eat fresh bread for a change instead of the har,d smoky bread that we had become accustomed to. I feel I must remark on the military-like operation carried out by this provisions team in sorting out the supplies nto kit bags. Pokey had a list in his notebook of the contents of each kit bag. By now we were getting the measure of good organisation.
A little later than expected (although we were used to Malagasy timing by now) our fantastic bus arrived to take us to Ranohira. At this point I would like to describe the bus that Werthers, Mike, Helena and I had found and bartered for the day before. It had curtains, a first aid kit and very comfy seats. In fact the only word for this bus was ROCKING.
This journey would turn out to be a very exciting one. Firstly we stopped to look around a paper making place - Malagasy style. Everyone got a sample of this hand made paper which I though was very kind of them. At this point I remember that Kay wasn’t feeling so good, she’d obviously been eating too many biscuits.
The day had started off fine and sunny but as we travelled further towards Isalo the sky clouded over and in the distance we could see a large storm brewing. We stopped to have a good look at a huge rock which just stood out in the middle of nowhere. It was most impressive. As we continued on our journey, it became very cold and on the side of the road we observed ice. Now this was a very strange site in the middle of a very arid environment. What with this sight, a humungous storm and The Prodigy blasting from the radio it made the whole experience extremely eerie. As we entered the middle of the storm and lightning feel about s we had to comfort Katie as she though we would all die of a horrible death by electrocution.
On this treasured day we also encountered our first Baobabs which are very strange trees. These were seen and photographed so that I think that everyone in our team possesses the same photo.
The only thing that spoilt our day was that on arrival in Ranohira we found that the hotel had no rooms. Thus we were forced into staying at the Hotel Joyeux Lemurien, a dodgy place with a poor excuse for a restaurant. The rooms were pokey little holes with creepy crawlies and plenty of blood thirsty mosquitos. The restaurant was crap. We all sat at a very long table in the dark and waited for ages for a meal to appear. When it did eventually come it was very unimpressive, in fact is was crap and eneatable. AND there was no pudding. However, the worst thing about this hotel was the toilets, which were the worst smelling crap holes in the history of the world (except for the maggot infested ones on the provisions trip on the project phase).
To top it all off, when we went to pay the bill the following morning, the old ‘innocent’ hag saw us coming and charged us for 5 star accomodation. We were not happy.
