December 28, 2010
I was instructed to bring my bags to the taxi-brousse at noon in preparation for a 2:00pm departure. With such a large lead time, one might be tempted to expect the minibus to leave on time. That was a bit of a worry since that would mean arriving at Ankarafantsika National Park at the rather impractical time of 4:00am. I should not have given it a second thought.
I dropped my bags off at just after noon and went off to find a good lunch. I knew there wasn't going to be much in the way of food for the next 14 hours or so. I returned maybe 15 minutes before 2:00 to find that they hadn't even begun to load the luggage. We pulled out of the station at 4:30 and pulled right into a gas station where the crew spent the next 30 minutes checking out the vehicle. 'Nice to know that they are dedicated to ensuring that the vehicle is in top condition before setting out.
About two hours in, we stopped for no apparent reason. A bit less than an hour later, we started again, none the wiser. About 2:00am, we stopped again. This time there appeared to be a mechanical problem, maybe something with transmission. It was never explained. We resumed forward motion about three hours later. At that point, I was no longer worried about arriving too early. I mentioned via another passenger who speaks English well, that I definitely want to hop out at Ankarafantsika.
And there is was resistance! “Your bag is on top. It would take too much time. You must wait until Majunga.” I was a bit miffed. Every taxi-brousse I had been on, including this one, stopped along the way for lengthy periods to load/unload, and sometimes for no apparent reason. And then, when I need to hop out they are concerned about time? At the rate we were going, we might arrive in Majunga so late that it might not be possible to get back to Ankarafantsika on the same day.
At the lunch stop, I pointed to where my bag was: on the side, one bag from the top, not buried in the middle. Apparently, that was the trick because, an hour later, we did stop at Ankarafantsika. The whole process of retrieving the bag and re-securing the tarp took well under ten minutes. All that remained was to enjoy the park.
I had high hopes. Ankarafantsika is a Western park. Kirindy, another park in the region, impressed me more than any other. I was really hoping for something of similar or even better caliber. The excited guide book amplified the anticipation.
But Kirindy is a hard act to follow and Ankarafantsika never quite measured up. There are fewer species and there are only a couple of good wildlife trails. Coquerel's Sifaka is larger and more photogenic than Verreaux's Sifaka found at Kirindy but there are no mongooses and there is nothing here to compare with seeing a fossa. In the dry season, viewing conditions are probably similar to Kirindy but the rains have come and the trees have leafed out. On the upside, I saw three species of snake vs zero at Kirindy. The chameleons and geckos seemed more plentiful too. In short: it's good park. It just doesn't quite rate among the very best parks in Madagascar.
I spent three days here, including Christmas. Christmas Eve was OK but the second and third day were a bit of a mess. People, including the guide were difficult to reach on Christmas. That meant it was hard to do anything on Christmas and equally difficult to schedule anything for the day after. It is hard to find too much fault here. After all, it is Christmas, and Malagasy do celebrate Christmas. Still, being restricted from entering the forest without a guide seriously limited my ability to enjoy the park.
On the last night, I could have hoped for a guided night walk but settled for a self directed wander through the camp looking for mongoose lemurs. I don't really need a guide to find the lemurs up the mango trees. However, having a third hand to hold the light would have been useful. Photographic results are a bit weak. At night, best results are achieved by focusing manually with dark adapted eyes. That only works if you can avoid looking at the light source and that can only be done if someone else is directing it.
I could have used better photos of the Woolly Lemur but I chose to do the boat trip instead. It was late, of course, because my request never reached my guide and I had to wait for him to wander in around 7:00am. The crocodiles and herons were in attendance so this first and only tour of a Madagascar wetland was not a total loss.
What was a total loss was my sunglasses, which went for a swim in the crocodile infested waters.
It has been a tough week for gear. My netbook's screen has developed a nasty crack which I am hoping doesn't get worse. The 50-500 “Bigma” has begun to exhibit the same “unknown F-stop” flakiness that has plagued the 75-300 since the beginning of the trip. And, lastly, I left my shaving kit behind at Ankarafantsika. It can be amazingly difficult and sometimes expensive to replace even slightly specific toiletries in third world countries. $25 for a Schick Quattro is enough to convince me that I don't need to be so picky.
The trip to Diego was more involved that I expected. I was told ten hours but it actually took 22 hours and three vehicles. The third was the stuff of taxi-brousse legend. We left the station at 2:30am. For the next 30-40 minutes, we meandered through town picking up passengers until the vehicle was slightly over full. Then we headed out of town. With a full vehicle I expected an uninterrupted journey at least until someone vacated their seat. No such luck. At every little village and the spaces between we stopped and picked up more passengers. For much of the journey, approximately twenty-five people were crammed into a minibus which normally seats only fifteen and which reasonable people would limit to twelve. I say “approximately” because it was impossible to turn around far enough to actually see how many people were in the vehicle.
But I managed to survive the sardine can and dodge the “dump stupid vazaha into friend's waiting taxi far from the center” scam. The local taxi-brouse brought me into central Diego Suarez for piffling 15 cents. I am now in the far North. In fact, there are no major towns further North in Madagascar.
Next stop is Amber Mountain. As usual, the information locally available is weak and in French but I think I know what is going on now. An issue that I having to deal with is that there is no source of food inside the park and the nearest village is between three and five kilometers away depending on who you ask. It seems like the shorter hikes could be done starting in town but I'm not so sure about the longer treks. I picked up some canned meats today so that, assuming bread and vegetables are available in the village, I will have some hope of putting together sandwiches. It's a common delemna in Madagascar: Many places have no available food and even the largest towns are nearly devoid of the kind of items that a Westerner would expect to need for a picnic.
On the upside, it seems that one can wander around Amber mountain without a guide. As far as I know, this is the only national park in Madagascar where this is true. This should make it easier hike in from the village since I don't have to convince a guide to get up a the requisite time.
