Tag Archives: Tourism

Getting there

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Friday May 31 2024 – In what is a strong candidate to be our most exotic trip yet, we are travelling to Madagascar to spend about three weeks exploring the place.  This will be our first time in Africa. Well, not quite; we visited South Africa a decade ago, but I don’t think that really counts as Proper Africa, whereas Madagascar definitely does, in my book.  I’m quite daunted at times by what awaits us, despite the reassurance that comes from knowing that the whole thing has been planned by an expert – Kate at Whisper and Wild has put together an itinerary which takes us all over the island to experience the widest variety of what it has to offer in the time available.

Lemurs, mainly.

Actually, I expect there will be a bewildering variety of wildlife for me to attempt to take photographs of, under the auspices of various guides who will be looking after us as we go along.  Given our experience in Costa Rica, I’m expecting to test their patience to the limit as they try to point out wildlife that they can see clearly but which I’m struggling to make out.

Preparation actually started quite some time ago. Because this is Exotic Foreign, as opposed to just Normal Foreign, we needed various jabs to protect us against the multitude of potential lurgies awaiting the unwary – typhoid, tetanus, polio and diphtheria. And there’s malaria, medication of course, which is optional, but which we decided would be a Good Thing.  I have no idea what it’s like to suffer malaria, but, at 71, I’m not sure I want to find out, particularly since an infection could well prejudice our next trip*.  Anyway, a major discovery as part of the preparation is that malaria tablets cost three quid a pop, and we each needed 32 of ’em. Not a huge cost in the overall scheme of things, but slightly unsettling when you’ve got used to free access to medication.

The itinerary has broken one of the rules which Jane and I like to observe whenever we can, which is to avoid the ghastliness of early morning flights.  Sadly, in order to get there in one day, we have to catch our first aeroplane at 0615 tomorrow morning; we fly first to Paris and then board an 11-hour hop to Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. That being the case, an overnight stay at an airport hotel is called for, and we find ourselves in the Crowne Plaza, by Heathrow’s Terminal 4, which is somewhere we haven’t been to for well over a decade. It will be grim to have to wake up at 4am in order to stumble across to check in, but at least the hotel room is well-equipped.

It may not be Twinings Finest, but at 3.30am one’s taste buds are unlikely to be that discerning.

Saturday 1 June 2024 – I’ve never been at an airport at opening time before, so today was a first.  Terminal 4 at 0415 is not a busy place

and there was actually a queue waiting for security to open.

Everything went very smoothly – we didn’t even have to take phones and other hardware out of our bags, which is a blessing – and by 0430 we were able to take a seat by our gate.  There was a small ripple of excitement for some people at 0500,

and Jane went to get us some coffee once the initial queue had died down.

The last time I travelled to Paris, it seemed to me that the various terminal 2 buildings at Paris Charles de Gaulle were all quite small – terminals 2A to 2E were all of a size and not at all imposing (Terminal 2E was opened in 2003 and had 11 gates).  That said, my last visit to Paris was in 2010. How things have changed in the intervening years!  Now, Terminal 2E has a train connecting three stations, each with a group of gates.  We had to get from station K to station M (after first having to go through a considerably less smooth security operation than we saw at Heathrow) and then saw the extent of this section of the terminal.

Our flight was slightly delayed, so we had a short wait in the terminal – an opportunity for some more coffee – during which Jane got an update from the people who run the first segment of our trip, the Masoala Forest Lodge.

It was good news and bad news.

The good news was that they were actually expecting us and could provide details of the next day’s travel arrangements to get us from Antananarivo, (aka Tana) the Madagascan capital, to the north east of the island. The bad news was the travel arrangements themselves.  The size of Madagascar, and the undeveloped nature of that area, means that getting to the lodge involves a flight.  We had to check in for that flight at 7am. Our departure was eventually quite significantly delayed; last-minute baggage to be loaded, air traffic delay and a technical issue meant that our landing time was around midnight and we still had to clear immigration, get some local currency and transfer to our hotel.

I’m very glad that we had been at the front of the bus, as it meant that we were among the first off the plane and therefore towards the front of the various queues we had to go through.  The first queue was to buy a visa – €35 for us, a short stay 30-day visa. Then we had to queue at passport control, and it became clear that the queues for those behind us was beginning to become quite lengthy.

The queue for passport control

Behind us, the lengthening queue to buy a visa

We had an anxious wait for our bags, partly because at first we waited by the wrong carousel. In our defense, there were no signs to tell us what was coming out where.  In the end, Jane went off and found our bags on another carousel, to much relief all round.

A driver, Aina (?sp – rhymes with hyena), was waiting for us, and after I’d changed some money into local currency (Aryary) he escorted us out to his car. He cautioned us not to let anyone else touch our bags. The reason for this became clear as we left the terminal; there were legions of people hanging around, some in official-looking gilets, but also a few others, one of whom walked with us to Aina’s car. It became clear that he was after a handout even if he hadn’t done anything to help us.  I have a feeling that this won’t be the only time we come across this behaviour.

The hotel – Relais des Plateaux – is only a few minutes’ drive from the airport and (according to its website) is dead posh, but the timings meant that we weren’t in a position to appreciate any luxury; instead another severely curtailed night’s sleep beckoned.

The journey to the lodge looks to be Quite Interesting.  The flight is a charter flight rather than a scheduled one, so heaven knows what manner of aircraft we’ll be on. It’s followed by a boat ride of about an hour, during which we’re enjoined to let the crew stow our day packs to avoid them getting sea spray all over them. It might even be possible to see whales on the boat ride, who knows? Come back to these pages in due course to find out how the day went, won’t you?

 

* “Where’s that,” I hear you cry?  You’ll have to watch these pages to find out, won’t you?

Camino Finisterre Day 13: Walkin’ back to Santiago, whoop-ah, oh yeah, yeah*

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Tuesday 14 May 2024 – Whilst we had a reasonably comfortable stay, the Hotel Millan is not a place I would recommend; any better days it might once have seen are many, many days ago. So we weren’t tempted to linger after breakfast, and in any case the weather forecast made a prompt start seem a good idea; cloudy and showers were the order of the morning, with the prospect of rain in the afternoon.

We set off just after 0830 in light rain, retracing our steps to Santiago whence we started on May 2nd.  We passed sights that I don’t remember from that walk, such as this dovecote

and some that I do, such as the impressive gates to the Pazo de Albariña,

which is some kind of a historical landmark.

The weather stayed gloomy, with occasional light showers, so when we walked through Ponte Maceira I was glad that we had seen it at its best on the way out to Finisterre. Nonetheless, I took a couple of photos, because it is a lovely village.

After Ponte Maceira, there is a longish climb up to Carballo, which is the high point of the day’s walk. (Coming the other way, you’ll remember, it’s also the high point after The Steep Bit, a decent example of the sort of mandatory component that makes Day One of any walk a bastard.) On the return leg back to Santiago it’s not so steep, and the ascent not so much, but it still tested my energy levels and, frankly, found them wanting. So I used photography to give me the excuse for some short rests on the way up.  For example, there was a beautifully red horreo to be admired,

and some decent scenery

which held out the tantalising possibility that the rain would stop.

In Trasmonte, we had the courage to walk past the tempting Casa Pancho, as we hadn’t quite done the qualifying distance after which a coffee stop is permissible. I looked in at Trasmonte’s intriguing Fisterra Bovine World, where I got a chance at a better shot at one of their sheds.

This is apparently a two-year project whereby thirteen different bovine breeds from all over the world will be fed and raised under the Galician livestock system, using feed typical of the area based on native corn, to measure the effect of the Galician System on each breed. Crikey.

Trasmonte features some photogenic corners,

and just beyond the village we passed the high point, which is more or less marked by a fonte.

The path then goes down, as is not uncommon after high points, and, in the case of this path, it goes down quite steeply (had I already mentioned this, maybe?).

It’s interesting that Google describes this path as “mainly flat”. I’d hate to take on something that it describes as “a bit of a hill”. Whatever, as the sun was now shining more or less reliably, it made for some attractive scenes on the way down.  It is a damp environment, as can be seen from the vast amounts of moss which adorn, well, pretty much everything.

At the bottom is a café called Bar O km 79, where we stopped for refreshments. I think its name stems from the distance from the bar to Finisterre. Whatever, a coffee was a welcome thing, and it meant that we were under shelter as a small spattering of rain swept through.

We pressed on

and it became clear that we were running into a stream of peregrinos who had set out that morning from Santiago.

It never became crowded with pilgrims, but the oncoming flow was steady and constant for several kilometres.

We passed another unusual horreo as we walked on.

It’s been noticeable that, starting around Negreira, the principal construction of the horreos has gone from entirely stone-built to stone-and-wood. This is a stone-and-wood one, as you can see, but the unusual thing about it is its base; typical horreos are mounted on stone “toadstools”, which serve to keep the rats at bay; this one simply has stone pillars, but of course there’s the ledge in place to make it impossible for rats to get at the riches within.

After a few more kilometres we came to our second stop, a bar called Os Arcos.  Whilst we got ourselves outside beer and pizza, an amusing little cabaret played out before us, involving the delivery of large gas cylinders.  With a huge din, this van pulled up.

Its mission was to deliver two full cylinders and take away two empties.  It would have been cruel and ill-mannered to video the troubles the driver had in unshipping the bars which hold the cylinders in place, but it was funny to watch – and very noisy. It involved a lot of hitting things with spanners and other bits of metal before he could get the cylinders out. He correspondingly had trouble getting the bars back into place as well before he drove off.  This video (if played with sound up) will give you some idea of the cacophony which surrounded this little vignette.

After resuming our journey, we passed a tulip tree in full bloom (something Jane tells me I’ve seen before, but not that I remember)

and the sun came out enough to make the scenery worth taking photos of.

The last of those is taken from the ascending path just a few kilometres from Santiago. Once again, I found it really hard work, even though it wasn’t all that steep; but we were rewarded at the top with our first sight of the iconic towers of Santiago Cathedral.

Slightly further on, one gets an even better view

and I was pleased to be able to see it whilst the sun was shining, something it wasn’t doing on our outbound walk.

The cathedral continued to dominate local streets as we made our way through the outskirts

and soon enough we were in the Plaza del Obradoiro

and shortly thereafter back at our hotel, the massive San Martin Pinero monastery building.

We’d walked the complete final stage today, covered 21km, and arrived in the sunshine, which was a nice way to finish our Camino Finisterre. It’s not been a classic achievement for us like completing the Camino Francés was last year – the weather and my digestive issues had intervened to make it a bit of a disjointed experience – but we still had a quiet sense of satisfaction.

What do I think of this Camino? I think it’s worth doing for anyone who has not visited Muxia and/or Cape Finisterre, which are both attractive, charismatic places, but probably less so for people who have visited these before. We found the endless eucalyptus plantations, and their aftermath (blasted earth and chewed-up trails) a bit tedious and depressing; it’s a shame that people’s livings depend on planting and harvesting this invasive species. The poor weather we had in places took some of the gilt off the gingerbread, for sure, although there’s a case to say that this is our fault for not having industrial-strength waterproofs with us.

That said, we’ve stayed in some great places – As Pias in Olveiroa, Casa de Balea in Corcubión and the excellent Hotel Semaforo at Cape Finisterre come immediately to mind – and the trip has got us walking again after a period where it was too difficult to get out and about. Assuming that Vueling don’t cock things up and ruin our journey home, we’ve had a pleasant couple of weeks, which of course included visiting A Coruña and Lugo; and We Will Be Back – our plans include taking on the Camino Portugues. As and when we undertake this journey – and all the others, of course – you can rest assured that I’ll be writing about our travels in these pages.

Hasta la próxima!

 

* Sorry about the title. Anyone younger than me will probably never have heard of Helen Shapiro, a teen star in the early 60s with a big voice and a big hit called “Walkin’ Back To Happiness”, which I, of course, had on my brain for the whole of today’s walk.

Camino Finisterre Day 12: Flamin’ Rain In Spain – Again!

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Monday 13 May 2024 – We looked out of our Mazaricos hotel window this morning to a drearily familiar scene.

In a moment of madness which we’ll surely regret, we decided we would brave the conditions, despite the track record of this kind of weather in this area. After all, the last time we came here, we were forced into a taxi by weather that was the subject of a Yellow Alert for rain. No such alert was in place today, so surely it wouldn’t be that bad? Anyway, I’d be wearing special waterproof socks, so at least I should be OK, surely? [Hah! What about me? Ed]

As you’ll remember from your reading of my description of how we got here way back on Day 2, the Mazaricos hotel, Casa Jurjo (#3 below), is quite some way off the official Camino path, and it has a deal for peregrinos whereby it will collect them from, or deliver them to, the Camino (at #2) as part of an overnight stay.

On the way out, we’d only managed from #1 to #1a before getting waterlogged. Today, the idea was to walk all the way from #2 to #1, even though we knew it would rain.

Accordingly, after breakfast, a lad called Jorje dropped us off outside #2 (a bar called Casa Pepe), and we started along the Camino towards Negreira.

At first it was raining, but OK. We walked through the village of As Maroñas

and out into the countryside.

As we went, there was the usual fairly attenuated flow of peregrinos coming in the opposite direction, and rueful smiles were the order of the day accompanying the “Buen Camino” greetings (through increasingly gritted teeth) as we passed each other.

In the distance in the photo above, you can just made out a digger by the roadside.  Its job was clearly to maintain the roadside drains that were obviously well-needed with so much flamin’ rain falling from the sky.

We pressed on,

and the rain pressed down. It was also bloody windy, which made things a lot more unpleasant. As I said, there wasn’t a Yellow Alert for Rain in force, but there might just as well have been, as I’m buggered if I could distinguish between the user experience today and that of ten days ago.  We simply got wetter and wetter, and our resolve to continue walking fell lower and lower…

…until we passed #1a (Casa Vella) again

at which point we decided, exactly as before, that Enough Was Enough. The claims to waterprooficity of my vaunted waterproof socks turned out to be overblown and my feet were as sodden as the rest of us.  We called in again

and the delightful señora there once again made us coffee and whistled up a taxi for us.

This means that we have completed the Negreira – Mazaricos stage of this Camino, albeit not in one go and, indeed, not even in one direction. This leaves unwalked the 13km from #2 to #4, which is a shame. But this Camino hasn’t been about proving we can do mileage, which the Camino Francés was, partly, and did.  This was supposed to be enjoyable and having to walk in the pissing rain is not that.

A small vignette played out whilst we had coffee at Casa Vella, as a couple of other people were there, one of whom was evidently (a) English and (b) slightly embarrassed to have no euro cash with him in order to complete paying his dues.  He asked if we could spare €20, which he would send us online.  While I suspect he was legit, I was reluctant to start handing out bank details to a complete stranger in The Foreign, even if he was an English Gentleman.  As it turned out he had sterling cash (does this make him more of a gentleman or less, these days?), and so I gained a bit on the deal – he gave me £20 and I gave him my last €20 note, retaining the €50 I judged would be needed for the taxi.  We never caught his name, but he was a pleasant chap, despite the fact that he runs a podcast, and hails from Newcastle, not that you could tell from his accent.

Anyway, the taxi was warm and, importantly, dry and ferried us swiftly and cheaply (for just €15) to our hotel, the Hotel Millan in Negreira.  We were supposed originally to have returned to the Mesquita, but there had apparently been a cock-up and so we were in a different place for tonight.  Luckily, our room was available for us to move straight into, and so we dripped our way upstairs and started the process of drying ourselves out.  We have a lovely view over the hotel’s pool

but it’s not really the weather for a swim, somehow.

The hotel offered a lunch, which was decent enough and very good V for M. Afterwards, we hopped across the road to buy some newspapers, which are almost as good at telling one the news as tablets are, but infinitely better at sopping up moisture from the inside of sopping wet shoes.

The rest of the day was spent drying out, both by us and the weather, which was dry by the evening. According to Accuweather, we should expect a couple of showers tomorrow, but, assuming that our various tactics for wringing the moisture out of our gear work, it looks like we should be able to walk the remaining leg.  We’ll take another look at the weather tomorrow morning, obvs.

Lunch had been an opportunity for us to discuss our philosophical approach to completing this Camino. It would, of course, be infinitely more satisfying to arrive into Santiago on foot than to skulk in by taxi. But the course of the last couple of weeks has taught us a lot about the limitations of our waterproofs (fairly considerable) and our courage (easily swayed by the lure of practicalities and comfort). So we’ll see.  And so will you, should you come back to these pages to find out.