Tsingy and Baobabs

Road, what does it mean? “A wide way leading from one place to another, especially one with a specially prepared surface that vehicles can use” says the dictionary. I like that part with specially prepared surface. Here is missing. We have almost 5 hours to travel to the “Parc National de Madagascar, Tsingy de Bemaraha”. The wide way is just one lane that resembles red mountains and valleys at a smaller scale. On the sides there are walls of vegetation, grass, or bushes, or young eucalyptus trees (they grow rapidly, when they are five years old, they cut them for charcoal, and from the stumps will grow new shoots). If two cars meet, one will squish itself on the side and the other will pass.

It feels like we’re training to become astronauts or we have a particular contest for fitness. In order to keep our heads not bobbing we need to move our bodies, and soon enough we feel all our muscles. After one hour we take a break, I’m so nauseous. The only relief comes when we’re passing small bridges, when all four wheels are on the same level, and for an instant we glide. It’s briefness makes it more precious. At some point there are children shoveling dust from the sides back in the holes. They are repairing the road. But every passing car, and every gust of wind sends in the air half of their work. It doesn’t matter, they wave happily.

At the entrance of a village, under a shade tree, women and children are gathered. Three women, long poles in their arms, are taking turns in pounding them in a tall tub. They are “grinding” rice. From their looks this work is back breaking. They don’t have the money to buy a machine to grind it or to pay for the electricity that it would consume.

Sheltered by the vegetation our hotel looks like it descended from a high life commercial suddenly affordable for everyone. Flowers in bloom everywhere, a pool, gazebos and tucked away in more flowering bushes the condos. In our rooms we have, beside embroidered sheets, two types of switches: the big ones work from 6 pm to 10 pm (generator time), and the small one for the rest of the time .

Next morning: Tsingy. Yay! I finally get to tell you about tsingy. They mean tip toe, explains Tata (TAh-tah), our guide. To walk over them you have to go on your tiptoes, there is no room to put the whole sole of your foot. The guidebook says they have this name because of the sound they make when you poke them.

We start at their base, walking between walls of grey stones. There is sand between them and large white hibernating snails. Tata waits for all of us to notice he is going to turn a corner and he is right to do so, we could easily get lost in this maze of stone. 

An ebony tree

We climb over metal ladders or over stepping stones, 

we cross narrow path or rope bridges.

 From a belvedere point we see the myriad of points. The rain chisels away 1 mm every year.

They don't know how that clay pot got up there, or when. Archeology doesn't have the money to find out.

Because we’re such good walkers, we made a good time and we have a bonus, a walk through the forest. After trudging an hour without seeing a thing, we saw it more like a punishment. Suddenly, a male paradise bird, twittering while twirling his feathers. Now this is a reward!

A coua (koo-ah)

This a short day, we go back to our hotel for some relaxation, and in the evening the parents and Ioan go for a night walk, to see the smallest mammal in the world: the mouse lemur. It is the dusk time, when just a little bit of light hems one side of the sky. The lemur gets out to eat and Ioan is the first one to see it, walking on his “street” of branches. We caught him in a cross-fire of lights and he stopped, looking with his big eyes, but not seeing a thing. After taking the photos and filming him, we let him go. 

As we return to the hotel we see some more chameleons, fast asleep and with faded colors. Looking at a pregnant female, with her sides bulging with eggs, she started coloring herself in pink and black under the flashlight. 

Did you see the mosquito?

The next day is Grand Tsingy. We’re given harnesses and we start walking through the forest to get to a group of tsingy. We have to climb them, and that’s where we find useful the harnesses and the knowledge from Tree Top Adventure. We click the carabiners onto stainless steel cables and carefully walk between holes. 

They are just a few yards deep, very narrow and at their bottom are more tsingy, as sharp as any. Actually, we don’t know how deep they are, but there is no help under two hours, so we are careful. We get to our first point of belvedere with tsingy and pachipodium (plants that look like an elephant foot), trees and red flowered cacti.

Again forest to get to the caves. They are under every tsingy, made by the pouring rain, but here they are big enough. We put on our head lights and follow Tata. 

The walls are made of white cauliflowered chalk. Sometimes high windows let in a filtered sunlight. We go one by one, crawling through small spaces, taking off the backpacks and putting them on. Tata guides us with his words “Mora-mora, fa malami!” (slowly- slowly, it is slippery) and he is there to help us over the crevice. We climb a steep wall holding onto a rope. Ioan looses his footing and rolls away and returns like a horizontal yo-yo. I was proud of him that he kept his cool, didn’t let go of the rope and got up with no help. When we emerged from the caves we were all dirty with white dust and ready to go home.

A moth, hiding from light, big as the palm of a normal hand.

No such luck. Forest, climbing tsingy, this time much higher, more scarier, we are tired and we are very careful not to make a mistake (I physically separate Ileana and Ioan who tend to make jokes and talk, and not pay attention where they’re walking).

 But when we get up there at 70 m (76 yds) I don’t feel tired at all. I would just stay there and watch. Eventually we have to get going, the rock reflects the sunlight and is baking us.

On the long walk back to our car we eat jojoba, a fruit slightly bigger than an olive, sweet and sour. We even see a fossil of a coral, proof that long time ago this place was covered by a sea.

At the end of the day Maria, who was not too happy about going over rocks (“couldn’t you take us to a museum?”) knew 43 words in Malagasy, she even sang “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” in it. This was her way of making acceptable the trip, by pestering the guide and learning. On the other hand, Tata knew only two Romanian words: left and right. Eventually we told him that his name means "father".

I don’t know if you liked what you saw in our pictures, but for me it was worth the trip. And it was not done yet. We had to go back the same way and even longer. In the beginning the car picked us up from the Tsiribihina river, now we had to cross it and drive some more towards Morondava.

We stop at the Kirindy reserve, where it was said that we could see some fusa (foosa). Watching the Madagascar movie I thought they invented the bad guys, as they portrayed them as some smaller lions. But as Mihai walked the grounds he saw two of them, just lying in the shade. One had a tracking collar. As a specie they are somewhat between a dog and a cat. In the beginning I thought they were tamed, but no, they were just hungry, so they hanged around the camp.

We take another night tour, and see the giant dwarf lemur (what a name!), who eats flower bugs (they drink the sap of plants, have large colonies and when clustered together, they look like white flowers). 

Mihai goes in the day tour also, we sleep in. He brings back a fruit of a baobab, big as a baseball, velvety brown, with an edible meat and bean like seeds. I look at them and it seems incredible that such a mighty tree can grow from a such a small seed.

On our way back to civilization we would stop to see them better. First stop: the holy tree, people believe it grants wishes.

 

Would it grant these children a real soccer ball and not one made of plastic bags tied with strings?

Second stop: the loving couple. For some reason two trees that grow close to each other become intwined (but not all of them).

Third stop: just some big trees in the middle of nowhere and people who were weighing rice.

Last stop: L’avenue des Baobabs

It is said that the baobab looks like it has its roots instead of branches. The Malagasy story goes like this: one day the baobab went out with his friends and seeing them, he wanted to be like them. So he went to God and asked to be as tall as one of them, and God made him tall. Then he wanted to be strong, and God made him strong. Then he wanted to be big, and God made him big. And then he wanted beautiful flowers, and God gave him beautiful flowers. And then he wanted different leaves, and God uprooted and turned him upside down! 

I look at the trees, and I find them beautiful. It’s like they grew so tall that their branches are blocked by an invisible ceiling. Every part of them is useful for food. You can’t destroy them by taking their bark, they’ll just grow a new one. We go around them, touch their bumpy and smooth bark. No one knows how this avenue came to be, baobabs grow where the conditions are good for them, but now it is a must stop for tourists, especially at sunset. On the outside of the road there are small enclosures, protecting one year old baobabs. They are securing the future.

We say good bye and leave. After half an hour we get on tarmac, and the children’s faces light up realizing that we have a smooth ride, that we’re on our way to civilization.

I didn’t know when I chose this destination, that it was going to be so emotionally taxing. Now that I know, I would still put it in the schedule, but I would come better prepared. It took the simplicity of the beach to come to terms with what I wrote in Bitter Sweet.

One last image: I am on the boat down Tsiribihina river and I see a newspaper kite. A little boy was running and keeping it aloft. Someone took the time to make a toy for the child. And the child had the time and freedom to play with it. There is hope for a better life!

Misoutra shi Veluma Madagascar! (me-sue-trah shee veh-loo-mah) Thank you and Good bye!

Polka dot butterfly

Tsiribihina

In 2009, National Geographics ran an article about a strange, unique place at the end of the world, Tsingy de Bemaraha. It took the reporters several days to reach it and they described countless dangers, including the high risk of an accident. With medical help days away, slipping on one of the sharp rock needles could have cut an artery and kill the photographer. No way we would make it there, I thought, but Ileana Ruxandra and Ioan had other ideas. We designed our whole trip to Madagascar to allow us to reach the tsingys and here is how we managed to get there.

Grand Tsyngy, Tsingy de Bemaraha

It is a national park and a World Heritage site for it's unusual limestone formations and ecosystems, unique in the world. There are hundreds of visitors every year (it's only accessible during the dry season) and our Lonely Planet guidebook laid out all the options. I found an SUV at the taxi station in Tana, the driver Mami, has been a guide for seven years and he held his price. We rode for four hours from Antananrivo to Antsirabe, 180 km, $100. Mami wanted twice the money for the next leg of the road, we said no thank you. I went in the market looking for a car and found a spacious Mercedes van for the right price. After a night spent at "Chez Billy", a cheap but nice guesthouse, we rode to Miandrivazo another 220 km and four hours down the road. There we stayed at Akory Aby, a tolerable hotel. We had booked a boat to take us down the Tsiribihina river. It started with a detour to the police station to register ourselves and another 30 minutes in a beat up van to the loading dock. They have been organizing trips for tourists for several years. Classically it is a pirogue trip, three days in a narrow carved tree trunk on the river. The locals do it for about $100-130 per person. It takes them one week of paddling to get back upstream!

Loading dock! Everybody waves at us.

Mass transportation, Tsiribihina way

We had the more comfortable option, a little power boat. We had a guide Ernest, two cooks and a three people crew. The river is wide but very shallow, they ride in zig-zag continuously to avoid the boat getting stuck in the sand. When it does get stuck, the crew jumps in the water and pulls the boat out. At the busiest time of the year I counted 18 foreigners taking the trip. There were four power boats and one pirogue. All the time we were almost alone on the river but we would ran into the others at the night camps, tiny tents perched on the sandy banks. With eight people, we were the busiest boat and we had the best of times with three Canadian ladies. The first night we arrived at the waterfall, visited it quickly and when to move a couple hundred yards upstream for the camp the engine was dead! They somehow managed to get us there in the dark, using another boat and the guys in the water pushing the boat. The next day we got back to the waterfall for a bath, later visited a local village.

The waterfall

Sunrise over the river

I am a vasa

Amazingly, one of the pilots of the other boats almost cut off his finger in the engine, but they found a hospital where he got the first aid. The emergency room physician who was on our boat went to check it out and when she came back she shrugged her shoulders: "their doctor did everything he needed to do". The pilot went on, helping as much as he could with one hand and suffering in silence. The last night, the locals danced for us and with some of us. I would have expected a collection at the end, but no, they just had a great time and went on for many hours after all the tourists retired. At midnight I scrambled out of my tent and begged the remaining party to shut up.

Ioan, Maria, and some of the dancers from last night

We had some good talks with our guide. We discussed the poverty of Madagascar, politics, traditions and his life plans. At thirty two he wouldn't marry until he would be sure that he could send his children to school. He wanted to go to the university, but his parents couldn't afford it. With the corruption of Madagascar he would have to pay big bribes to get a decent job, being a guide is the best he can manage, but is only a few months a year. He hopes to get a job as an English teacher if one of his friends from the capital can help him. Besides, the expected wildlife on the river didn't show us much. We saw a couple of lemurs by the waterfall, a couple crocodiles and sporadically a bird or two. The whole region seemed deserted, but still from nowhere, people would show up by the side and wave at us. Ernest told us about their lives. Here people are poor, but still they can find something to eat, roots, rice, beans, fish. In the dry season they would move on the banks of the river in little huts, when the rain comes they would move up the hill in bigger villages. He was more concerned about the poor people in the cities, "they really have nothing."

The fauna of Tsiribihina?

Long talks on the boat, Danielle and Ioan

Our car is coming

Great companions

With the crew, last moments

The third river day, after lunch we were left in Belo de Tsiribihina. Out of nowhere, there was a little city, with churches, school, pharmacy and several crummy hotels. Our driver, booked with another agency, was waiting for us. The way things work here is to rent a 4WD vehicle with driver and fuel included. The cost is $110 per day and you pay for every day until the car gets back to the owner. Somedays it could be eight hours on the road, one day we only used it fifteen minutes. All the hotels have free lodging and food for the drivers. We got on the road to the national park. Four hours, 100 km, on a dirt track, words cannot describe it. These roads might be like paradise for four-wheel enthusiasts, for normal people they are just hell. Six-eight months per year the roads are unpassable, a huge truck could take a full day, if it ever makes it. Now at the height of the touristic season, the tracks where dry and manageable, but painful. Surprisingly every few kilometers there was a little concrete bridge, sign that we are on meaningful road. And even more surprisingly we arrived in one piece at the entrance to the national park, crossed the Bekopana river on a little ferry and got to our luxury hotel "Orchidée de Bekopana". At $90 per night for a nice apartment it seemed affordable, until we saw the cost of the meals. It was the end of the fifth day on the road. They ran their generator a few hours per day, there was electricity! Hot water, a toilet with door, a nice little pool, French music in the restaurant. We stayed three nights. The first day we visited the Little Tsingy just a three hour walk for a warmup. We saw some animals and birds and a couple of nice vistas. It was "too easy" so Ioan and his parents added a night walk to look for the smallest mammal in the world, the mouse lemur, and sleeping chameleons.

Let's get going

Little stingy

Mouse lemur at night

The next day we took a complete tour to the Great Tsingy. Besides the admission to the park, they offer various itineraries, all with the mandatory guide, at various costs. Our complete trip combined all available itineraries. One hour on the "road" for 17 kilometers, seven hours hiking, the most amazing scenery we ever saw. It is impressive how well organized they are and what they achieved at such a remote location, the good infrastructure – via ferrata (mountain route equipped with fixed cables, stemples, ladders and bridges), rope bridges, walkways. We carried a harness at all the time, using it occasionally when negotiating vertical walls or crossing ravines. We scrambled up and down impossible jagged rocks, crawling and squeezing ourselves through incredibly narrow caves and occasionally leisurely walking through the forest. Crossing over a couple of suspended bridges over the abyss, we had fun, until we got tired. Maria had her own sort of fun pestering our guide, Tata, with questions about Malagasy language. By the end of the day she was able to remember 43 words and we all learned some grammar. I couldn't stop thinking that I had my good pants on me, the same pants I had at the Sydney Opera, but that was the case for the whole family. I remembered the hesitant question that Ernest had for us, the locals were wondering why the whole family is dressed in black, "is it a religious custom in your country?", "No, we only have one garment each!"

It's early in the morning

What did we get ourselves into?

It's lovely

Piece of cake

Somewhere above, there is light

Out of the caves, smiling

The children hide in the shadow 

There is no source of money here. You bring everything with you, their biggest bill is a little over four dollars. I realized at some point that we don't have enough and we have to stop eating at the restaurant. The only other source of food was the little village down the road, they had some molded bread and tiny bananas in the market. Luckily, the hotel accepted our last dollars at 10% premium and we managed to get out.

The return to Antananarivo took another four days. First we did the same 100 km in reverse and crossed back the Tsiribihina river on a made up ferry, two boats linked with planks of wood and we got to the road for Morondava. Another 100 km on that, still dirt, but much better. We spent the night at the Ecolodge of Kirindy, a few cabins in a natural reserve. They decided some years ago to not allow tourists at night in the national parks, so this is one of the only places in Madagascar to see the night fauna, and the one where people can see the fossa, the main predator on the island. I didn't have much hope, after all we already looked for tigers in Nepal and lions in Africa without success. But here, in the Kirindy reserve, two fossas were camping by the huts, they were hungry and we were warned they could even get in the cabins and chew our shoes. The night walk was great, but was enough for my family, the last few days have been tough and the next morning they just wanted to sleep. I also took a day tour joining James, an English teacher from Nottingham and saw my last lemurs.

Fossa

My last lemur

After a few more hours in the quiet camp we got back on the road for the last attraction, the baobabs of Madagascar. This is the iconic image of the country, best visited at sunset, we didn't wait for it, we still saw some fantastic trees and got some good pictures. Half an hour later we reached asphalt, the feeling cannot be described.

Now this is a big tree, the locals think it has magic powers

Avenue de baobabs in Madagascar

Morondava, a tiny city by the Mozambic channel is the return to civilization, Malagasy way. They have an airport, some stores and countless hotels by the beach. It is 700 km from Antananarivo, but they improved the road in the last years. We had a reservation to fly, my family was ready to take the road and save money. I didn't know what to do. With four dollars in the pocket and the whole bank system in Madagascar "en panne", I walked all over, 8 km in the sun, from one bank to another and to the airline office, trying to decide. For ground transport we could rent a car, it was really expensive (paying the trip both ways) or we could take the public option called taxi-brousse. These are Toyota or Mazda minivans with 14 tiny seats, they don't leave until they fill all the places, they stop frequently and break often. A guy stopped me on the street offering me a full taxi brousse by myself, the price was too good. Buying all the places on the van would have been $230, his price was $180. It didn't sound right, but it worked.

The great beach in Morondava

After one day of rest, in the hotel rooms and by the beach, we left at 6 am for Tana. Before we left the driver and my guy had a little scuffle about the price, but we held steady, left them figure out their problem. When I payed the driver 13 hours later he was very happy to take the money. The whole ride was uneventful but taxing, I was glad to see this beautiful country by the road and by not flying we saved $582.