Madagascar – July 1

The flight to Tana is about 10 hours long. We land in Antananarivo around 10:30PM (called Tana from here on…) and walk across the tarmac to the airport. Getting a Visa (something we were all a bit concerned about) turns out to be as easy as standing in line and paying about $13. It takes a bit of time, but its really not too bad, and soon we find the sign bearing our names and meet Ben Ravelo, the person I have been emailing with for over 6 months. He owns Visit Mada Tours – http://www.madagascar-information.com and has arranged the first half of our Madagascar adventure. He greets us warmly and is as nice as I had expected from our email communications. He and his helpers take our bags and wait while we pull out money from the ATM. One of the many challenges of traveling in Madagascar is money. You see, you can’t use your debit or credit cards anywhere. So you have to use cash. And, you can only get cash in the major cities, so you have to get enough to last you until you make it to the next ATM. When you get money from the ATM, the largest bill is equivalent to about $5 (10,000 ariary, AR). So, if you get out about $300 you feel like you are carrying around a TON of money. Considering the monthly salary for a driver in Madagascar is around 60 Euro a month, you really are carrying quite a bit. It seemed a bit nerve wracking at first, but we packed it all away in our super secret under the clothes pouches and walked out to our car to be brought to our hotel in Tana – Hotel Fischerhaus. http:///www.fischerhaus.net

The drive through Tana is fairly unremarkable, mostly because its dark and we can’t see anything. We see many wooden stands on the side of the road, somewhat rundown buildings, people walking around. It looks like a big city in a third world country – which it is. The roads aren’t paved and full of potholes. We drove down roads that you truly thought you wouldn’t be able to return from. We turned off the main road down this rocky potholed road that you could barely travel through, due to the cars parked and the big holes. I think both James and I had a small moment of panic – what in the world were we doing? Where were they taking us? Was this where they pulled over, took all our money, and dropped us off in the middle of a foreign city on the other side of the world?? However – I knew it wouldn’t happen and 2 minutes later we pull up to Hotel Fischerhaus. The owner, Colin, and a two of his employees greet us and take our bags. We walk into the reception area and say goodbye to Ben, who says he will return to talk to us tomorrow at 11AM and give us information on the rest of our trip. Colin speaks perfect English and we talk with him for a little while. In the middle of our conversation, the electricity goes out and one of his employees goes to find some candles. This is apparently very common in Tana. They have many factories that produce fabric and apparently they run at night and use a lot of electricity, so there are brown-outs that often last for 5-20 minutes. We are given a couple of candles and lanterns and led to our room. Its simple and sparsely furnished, with a big mosquito net over the bed. The room is easily double the size of our room in Paris. The furniture looks handcrafted. There are high ceilings and nice arched ceilings. Electricity returns within a few minutes of us checking into our room. We change into our PJs and crash into bed for a good night’s sleep after 2 solid days of traveling.