Tag Archives: Africa

Coasting into Toliara – end of the RN7

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Sunday 16 June 2024 – Today is the day we completed our journey to the south-western coast of Madagascar by reaching Toliara – from Antananarivo, over 900km of sometimes absolutely ghastly road surface, but expertly – and safely – driven by Haja over the course of 6 days.

Shortly after leaving Roy’s Garden (Le Jardin du Roy – gerrit?) we went through a town called Ilakaka, which is the main town in the sapphire mining area of Madagascar (not being a jewellery kind of guy, I had no idea that Madagascar was well-known for its high-quality sapphire).  It’s a busy place,

and one immediately understands the importance of the sapphire mining here.

These, by the way, are not selling finished stones, they are mainly buying what people bring in. Thousands of Malagasy are involved in what is turning into a “sapphire rush”, like the north American gold rushes; deposits of sapphire-bearing soil and gravel are being mined, often without due respect for the environment – or indeed health and safety – by hand.

The excavated material is then searched for raw sapphire – exiting the town, we crossed a bridge over a river which is clearly a prime spot for panning for sapphires.

The entire industry is based on manual labour – no heavy machinery of any description is used, as far as I know. Kenny was of the opinion that the miners are being exploited by the traders (often Indian and Pakistani) who understand the value of the gems far better than the miners do.

The nearby town of Sakaraha specialises in cutting the raw sapphire to produce saleable gems.

A side note, here: in one of our conversations with a large group of European – Belgian, Dutch and German – tourists, we learned that their minibus stopped in the area, presumably at one of the establishments that sells sapphire as well as buying it. They weren’t impressed, they would much rather have got on with their journey.  It made us glad that we had the flexibility of being just the two of us with Kenny and Haja, Kenny having picked up by this stage our vibes that we weren’t much taken with retail opportunities.)

Although we started out in sunshine, there was mist in the valleys

and there were several “table top” hills in the surrounding countryside.

I guess that the tops were of softer sedimentary stone, worn down by erosion.

We passed several roadside tombs on our journey.

Some were well-established and some were newer.  One stood out in particular,

a boat-shaped tomb of someone who was clearly very rich.  The tombs illustrate the importance of Zebu to the ethnic groups who inhabit the area. Zebu are used as a sort of bank: if wealthy, buy Zebu; if in need of funds, sell Zebu. When someone dies and is buried in a tomb, Zebu play a part in the process. For a wealthy person, several Zebu might be killed and their skulls used to “decorate” the tomb, showing that it was of a wealthy person or family; for a poorer family, just one Zebu might be sacrificed.

It’s the sort of thing that sparks a debate about poverty in what is officially one of the poorest countries in the world. Looking at the lives of rural people through western eyes, one is tempted to think of them as poor, but this is perhaps a cultural illusion. Money and possessions might be in short supply, but life as a farmer provides food for the table and the market, and a rhythm of life that doesn’t require a significant income stream; and there’s no tax to pay. Raw materials for building come from the land and the capacity of the Malagasy to repurpose things is astonishingly inventive and effective. Where they need them, people have their mobile phones and their portable solar panels to power them; they may not have bank accounts but the mobile telephone companies enable a sophisticated instant money transfer system which, together with mobile phone charging, is available at any number of roadside stalls.

They seem to our eyes to be happy.  In income terms, yes, they’re poor by our standards, but I don’t believe that they live below the poverty line.

City folk, though – that’s a different matter; they have to pay tax, pay for food, for their electricity and so on; perhaps they’re not as well off as rural folk?

Anyhoo….

We started, once again, to see a change in the landscape.  We began to see Baobab trees, at first in the distance

and then closer to,

like this one, which still had fruit on it.  There were some older trees in the landscape as well;

this one is very old, and regarded by the local as a “sacred tree”. We also saw a major change in the landscape.

which heralded our Activity For The Day; a visit to the Zombitse National Park. It’s quite substantial, at over 360km² and falls within a region classified as Madagascar succulent woodlands, known for many endemic species, and on the transition between the dry deciduous woodlands we have already visited and the spiny forest that is on the plan before we return to Antananarivo.

We had a shortish walk around the park, and saw some creatures we’d seen before, such as the Oustalet’s Chameleon and the Verreaux’s Sifaka; some we’d sort of seen before, such as this Sportive Lemur

who was a Zombitse Sportive Lemur (as opposed to the Masoala variant we’d seen in, erm, Masoala) and, being nocturnal, looked less than delighted to be woken up. We saw a beautifully coloured Day Gecko

and got up close and personal with a couple of huge Baobab trees.

Male Baobab
Female Baobab

These were several hundred years old.  I don’t know if they’d been creating little Baobab trees between them, but they were very impressive trees….

….or not, actually. In fact, Baobabs are not trees, but succulents (like cacti); it looks like bark on the outside, but inside is fibrous and squishy – and no good for building things, making things or burning, which is why so many Baobabs have survived; had they actually been useful, I suspect the landscape would have been bereft of them.

We passed through a town, Andoharotsy, where there is quite a flourishing trade in creating and selling rum, made from local sugar cane.

Barrels of fermented sugar syrup awaiting distilling

Wood to fuel the still

Yellow containers for the final product

Given the random nature of the creation of the raw materials and the quality and length of distillation, one can imagine that there is a huge variation in how the final product turns out. I can imagine it’s rather like poitin in Ireland – something to be treated with extreme caution.

At this point the RN7, which had been reasonably well-behaved for the last segment of our journey, turned mischievous again.  How can you tell the road surface is bad?

Because traffic is likely coming your way on your side of the road. Correct timing of slalom turns becomes more than just a matter of passenger comfort.

The next town, Andranovory, has (surprise!) a very busy market

and the local specialisation is in carpentry, especially making furniture.

The architecture also has a local flavour, with small houses, quite often of wattle-and-daub construction,

and an extended thatch roof, supported by pillars, OK officer I’ll come clean, sticks, which provide an extra shaded area.

The landscape changed again, this time to a limestone base

and we began to see an intimation of the “spiny forest” that we planned to visit the next day.

By this stage, it was lunchtime, and Kenny proposed a lunch stop at  L’Auberge de la Table, which gave us a nice, somewhat up-market lunch, and also enabled us to buy tickets to a connected establishment, the Arboretum at Antsokay, a place which, presumably, anteaters would enjoy visiting. We were expecting to take just a few minutes to wander round looking at, well, trees, I suppose, but – no, there was a guided tour, which would take an hour and, yes, there was a guide.  Who’d a thunk it, eh?  Our initial cynicism, though was allayed when our guide turned out to be both charming and knowledgeable. Jane is interested in things arboretumological, and so she and the guide (whose name, to my shame, I have forgotten), got on famously, while he found us not only some interesting plants for mainly Jane’s interest,

Fake Baobab
Some plant’s fruit that looks like a face
A young baobab – looks like just this tree, you know?
A “compass plant”, which leans south to catch any moisture in the prevailing wind
The “bleeding tree”, with red sap
A 400-year-old pachypodium or elephant’s foot plant

but also some creatures to include mine as well.

Common Big-eyed Snake. We think.
Skink
Day Gecko
The spiny tail of a (hibernating) Collared Iguana
Magpie Robin, female
Magpie Robin, male

Apologies for the poor quality of the final two pictures; I only had the phone with me.

It was actually a pleasant visit, and our guide would have kept on chatting to us, but another group of punters came through the door and so (probably to Kenny’s relief) we took our leave, and headed to our hotel, the Bakuba Lodge, an establishment designed and created, with great style and panache, by a Belgian, Bruno Decorte.

Jane thought its appearance had a lot in common with “La Pedrera”, Casa Milà, in Barcelona.  I thought it was more like the somewhat confected architecture we saw in Finca Rosa Blanca (Costa Rica), or Binibecquer Vell, in Menorca. Whatever, we had a great dinner, with very good service, and a nice sunset view,

so the day ended well.

One would have thought that, having made the epic journey from Antananarivo to Toliara down the notorious RN7, we would at least spend a couple of days exploring the area and relishing the completion of such an expedition, but no, tomorrow we head back to Tana. But at least we have an  encounter en route with a spiny forest in the plan, so the day will not be spent simply travelling. Why don’t you come back to these pages to find out what a spiny forest looks like, eh?

A scramble in Isalo National Park

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Saturday 15 June 2024 – Le Jardin du Roy is very nicely put together. The rooms are spacious and comfortable; my main gripe is that there’s not enough light to see what you’re doing.  I suppose that this is a consequence of running from solar power and/or a generator, but it makes finding things (e.g. a black laptop on a dark surface in an underlit room) very frustrating. The internet availability was pretty poor, too, but the food was good and the service very agreeable.

Its buildings were in very lovely stonework,

and whoever designed or crafted it put several “hidden” things among the stones. At a basic level, you could find things like this star among the stones.

but there were more complicated creations as well.

Two lemurs and a palm tree

A nativity scene in our room

The day dawned, as I imagine is a regular pattern at this time of year (beginning of the Malagasy winter), cool and misty.

Our mission for the day was to explore Isalo National Park, so we headed to town (Ranohira) and Kenny (a) introduced us to our guide, José and (b) got tickets for the National Park , which, at 815 square kilometres, is pretty substantial. It was created in 1962, and is mainly dry, deciduous forest, based on sandstone landscapes, which means there has been plenty of erosion from wind and rain, creating rocky outcrops, plateaux and canyons up to 200m deep.

Our main objective for the day was to walk along one of these canyons.

After a short drive, we started our hike, for it definitely wasn’t a walk in the park, as you’ll see as you read further.

The scenery was quite spectacular with the sandstone cliffs we’d seen elsewhere.

 

We were headed alongside a river, as one could tell from the aquatic bamboo plants we could see.

The path started off easy enough

and, as happens so often, we started off with José explaining all sorts of non-wildlife stuff, such as: the difference between young Pandanus palms (single stem, thicker leaves, in the foreground) and older Pandanus (branched, leaves thinner, in middle and background);

and the iron pipe leading water to the town, some 6km away.

We did see some of the local fauna:

A butterfly – sorry, don’t know which sort
A red dragonfly, nothing to do with Hannibal Lecter
Sleepy Scops Owl
Sleepy Scops Owl

Darwin’s Bark Spider and its web

Madagascan White-Eye

I was dead chuffed to have nailed the image above, as the birds that we occasionally saw around us were exceedingly skillful at detecting the instant before a camera shutter is pressed and buggering off.

We soon reached a picnic area

where some lads were starting the preparation of a cooked lunch (what is it with men and outdoor cooking?) for those who had booked it (we’d chickened out, or rather cheesed out, and ordered a packed lunch to protect our, but particularly my, digestive systems). Here, we saw a Red-fronted Brown Lemur

who was very cute, but actually had a very sad back story.  She had got separated from her family group during a bush fire, and had failed to find them again; so she was lost and solitary. She hung around the picnic area trying to steal food – of course everyone was told not to feed her – and she must have been very lonely.

José also found us a White-browed Owl

but the real excitement was seeing a Ground Boa crossing the trail just in front of us.

We stayed very still, hardly daring to breathe, so that it carried on its way into the forest. It was about a metre and a half long.

The walk continued alongside the river into the canyon, which was the main objective of the day’s hike.

and we were treated to a succession of great views as we scrambled over the rocks (it was a real scramble in places,

and we were both grateful for the sticks we’d brought with us from Ranomafana).

Some of the trail had been prepared to make it easier for the punters

and José told us about what happens during the rainy season, when the water level rises several metres.  Some evidence of this could be seen in the trees that had been deposited among the boulders in the canyon.

We eventually reached a couple of pools: the Blue Pool

and the Black Pool (which had no illuminations)

where the trail basically ended.  So we took a rest while Jose and Kenny shot the breeze

and then headed back the way we came. There were a couple of encounters with the local fauna:

Dragonfly

Water beetles

And the colours of the stone were fascinating.

When we got back to the picnic area, we were lucky enough to see a group of Verreaux’s Sifakas.

They were very athletic, as ever, leaping from bough to bough, rather better than the Monty Python sheep, who, of course, tended not so much to fly as to plummet.

After our packed lunch, eaten amid the haunting scent of delicious food being cooked for the other picnickers,

we headed back to the car.  On the way, we passed a rock on which was perched what I heard Jose describe as a “snot bug”.  Eventually, we understood it was a Snout Bug, for fairly obvious reasons

though I suppose that if it caught a cold, then maybe Jose’s original description might have been the better one. We also saw (among the other, more orangey coloured ones) a butterfly with a beautiful blue hue.

That was it for the hike; the canyon was a lovely, if slightly tense, experience, and I was glad to have caught some video of the sifakas.

On the way back to the hotel, we passed a couple of very colourful local scenes.

We had an evening entertainment laid on – a short walk to watch the sunset. On the way, we were lucky enough to see a Hoopoe,

though I had the wrong lens on the camera for a truly good shot. It was still nice to see it. The hotel had laid on a resting place for us (which we laid on)

and a cocktail service

(with nibbles).  The scenery was striking in the setting sun

and the sunset itself was not bad,

(middle photo from a mobile phone; outer two from my Big Camera; shows that mobile phone cameras these days are pretty damn’good).

Actually, we got more striking colours looking behind us

but it was a nice way to finish off the day. The nibbles had been enough food for us, so we simply retired to our room and took no dinner. Since we were (we were told) the only residents at the hotel for that night, it must have meant an entire kitchen staff on duty for no purpose; but we’re at the start of the tourist season, so I guess the hotel must expect quiet times.

We leave the hotel tomorrow, rather early, as we continue our south-westerly journey to Toliara, on the coast.  We have a Thing To Do en route, which we hope will be interesting.  I’ll of course report, so please stick with these pages to find out what we got up to.

On the road (yet) again – Ambalavao to Ranohira

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Friday 14 June 2024 – We had a comfortable enough night at the Betsileo Country Lodge, disturbed only by the occasional ghastly-sounding and very loud gurgling from the water system, and, when we went to take a morning shower, the water pressure was so low as to make the ablutions merely case of cleaning the Important Bits.  We heard later that someone, one of a party of German tourists, had left their shower running, and completely emptied the tank!  Another problem was very intermittent electric power from the hotel’s generator. This didn’t stop us from having our breakfast, but it did mean there was no internet access, meaning I couldn’t publish my latest update. The manager explained that they were still waiting for some new batteries, which strikes me as probably being a common problem in Madagascar.

Anyway, the morning dawned cool and misty,

but the sun soon burned the mist off as we started our journey south, now with a significant westward component also.  Our target for the day was Ranohira, which is near the Isalo National Park, a place we would be visiting the next day. All we had to do was to get there, a distance of some 230km. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll remember that a previous journey of 210km took all day because of the vagaries of RN7; but today was different – the road surface was, by and large, very good and so we made good progress.

It was clear at first that we were above a valley where the fog had not yet dissipated

but we eventually had to drop down into the mist.

That burned off pretty quickly, too and so we could appreciate, once again, some good views of a changing landscape.

As we left Ambalavao, we had gone through the “gateway to the south”, an area which marked a significant change in the surrounding countryside. We ended up on a high plain, which was huge.  This was the view from my side of the car

and this was from Jane’s side.

See what I mean? Horizon to horizon flat – and with comparatively much less agriculture going on, although rice paddies were still to be seen – largely in places where the rainy season would allow the one crop per year they expect in this part of the country (cf the three a year in the wetter, cooler north). The houses in the villages we passed were generally much smaller.

Here are a few of the sights we saw as we went along:

Herding Zebu near a village

People flocking to market in the village ahead of us

People flocking to market in the village we had just passed

Seeing people on the road in any number quite often meant that we were approaching a village or town, and people were walking to the market there.

A roadside shrine – the first we’d seen, actually

Kids in their school uniforms leaving after the morning

Taking tomatoes to market

Taking goats (or maybe sheep, we couldn’t separate them) to market, on the top of a bus

The collapsed ruin of a house built with unbaked mud bricks and washed away by the rains

Drying rice before packaging and carting it, presumably to market

Zebu grazing

View of distant sandstone cliffs – this particular formation is known as the Pope’s Hat

More sandstone hills in the distance

The sandstone hills mark the edge of the plain and the start of the Isola National Park

The sandstone in the landscape is a distinct shift from the granite we’d seen so widely before this point.  Eventually, we caught sight of Ranohira,

the town from which we would access the Isalo park tomorrow. You can begin to pick out the detail in the sandstone in the photo above. Our hotel, the Jardin du Roy, was 20 minutes’ drive past the town, and was through a wondrous landscape of sandstone eroded by wind, rain and time.

It included a “statue” which is locally nicknamed “The Queen”; one can see why.

The Jardin du Roy is a very swish hotel and we were staying for two nights, so we were able to relax for the rest of the day and gird our loins for a hike the following day. A walk through a canyon is the main item on the agenda, but there may be some wildlife to be seen as well. Who knows?  Only time will tell.