Julia's Travels: Madagascar – not for the faint of heart

After a little over a week in Cape Town, we hopped on a plane to Madagascar. I’ve always been intrigued by this mysterious island that some call the 8^th continent and have really been looking forward to this portion of our Africa trip.

We arrived in Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capital (aka “Tana”), and spent two nights in the city getting settled and figuring out our travel plans for the next few weeks.

During our one full day in Tana, we decided to try one of Lonely Planet’s suggested self-guided “walking tours” so that we could get a sense for the city and a little taste of the local culture. I have a pretty good sense of direction, and when provided with a map, I can normally find my way from point A to point B (Chris is pretty good at this too, which helps). This city, however, proved to be the ultimate navigation challenge. Allow me to set the scene for you: the city is located on a series of hills so the all streets wind around in curves and circles, traffic is insane (I have yet to see a stop light and traffic signs are rare), the streets have incomprehensible 5-syllable names that ALL start with the letter “R” (like “Ravelmanantsoa”, “Ratsimilaho” and “Razafindranovona” … no I did not make those up, they are actual street names), and to make matters worse, none of the streets have street signs, so even if we could understand the names, there was no way to figure out where the heck we were going. Outcome: we got totally lost and spent the better part of a morning aimlessly wandering around Tana. Fortunately, city is pretty safe during the daytime, so it wasn’t like we were going to accidentally wander in to a favella or anything. Eventually, we found our way back to our hotel and rewarded ourselves with a tasty meal at one of the upscale French-Malagasy restaurants downtown.

Since arriving in this country, I’ve been struck by a couple of things that have led me to suspect that traveling in Madagascar is will be rewarding, but also very challenging. My gut feeling is that this country will be unlike anywhere I’ve ever travelled before. First off, the poverty here is extreme and profound. In most developing countries, you see the stark contrast between the rich and poor with glimmers of a small (but normally growing) middle class, but here I have seen almost nothing but severe poverty.

Second, communication is really tough. I can say approximately 4 things in French. The local people here primarily speak Malagasy, and most also speak varying degrees of French. No English. Zip, zero, zilch. I have already resorted to hand signals multiple times during the first few days. This could get interesting.

Third, there are very few other western independent travelers. Of those we have seen, about 90% are French and don’t seem really interested in striking up conversation with the two lone Americans. There is, however, an abundance of crusty old European guys accompanied by beautiful young local girls. I saw a lot of this in Thailand and the Philippines. I’m sure that some of them are couples who are genuinely happy, but it’s tough not to make my own conclusions, and as a woman it pains me to see this scenario played out over and over…

On the other hand, Madagascar is also an incredibly beautiful place with amazing plant and animal life that can’t be seen anywhere else in the world. Also, the local people(the few that we have been able to connect with) have been very warm and kind, and the local cuisine is pretty tasty…which is always a major plus.

If nothing else, I know that Madagascar will be an adventure…

-Julia