Julia's Travels: Meeting my chicken bus match

We purchased our initial Jo’burg –Madagascar tickets through an American travel agency in May and decided at that point to organize domestic flights for the majority of our trip. The first leg of our journey was to be the only exception, and we planned to brave the Malagasy public transportation system for two “short” (think ~150 km) segments of our trip.

I am generally game for the occasional developing world public transportation adventure (e.g. the infamous “chicken buses” of Central America), but I promised my mom that I’d make an effort to avoid sketchy transportation in Africa. I figured that we’d e able to spend a little extra for nicer/safer buses in Madagascar, and in our absolute worst case scenario, we’d end up on some decent rural bus akin to what I experienced during my time in Asia and Latin America. Wrong. Sorry mom, we definitely tried to avoid it, but sometimes, the chicken bus is inevitable.

We had a couple of elements working against us. First off, there is only one class of bus transport in Madagascar. These buses are called taxi-brousses (literally “bush taxi”), and are actually large vans. The government fixes the ticket price by distance, so there isn’t any incentive for the companies to invest in snazzier buses that command a higher ticket price. Second, our mastery of communication with hand signals can usually get us to the bus station and to the point where we can buy tickets to our destination, but beyond that, we pretty much have to cross our fingers and hope for the best. Complicated questions about road worthiness leg room are totally out of the question.

The first leg of our overland trip was rough, but manageable. The second leg was where things got really interesting…So we arrived at the rural bus station in Moramanga Madagascar, bought our tickets to Tamatave, boarded the bus and proceeded to wait for the bus to fill up before leaving (there aren’t any set departure times, and buses just leave when they are full, which can take several hours) - bear in mind that we couldn’t talk to anyone, so we were a bit confused about why the bus wasn’t leaving. After a good hour or so, they had loaded up the bus with people and luggage to the point where the bottom of the bus was only just clearing the ground, which meant that it was time to go.

The ride was long and hot and dusty. We were crammed like sardines into our seats. I got stuck in a middle seat, which was pretty bad, but Chris was caught between two car-sick kids and a woman who was also having a rough time with the windy roads, so I actually think that my knees-in-the-chest middle seat was pretty ok.

We made about 20 stops along the 130 km journey. Mostly we stopped to cram additional passengers into the bus, but we also paused frequently so that the driver could pull over to buy snacks and fruit from road-side stands (fortunately the windy roads didn’t get to him too). We also made a couple of stops to help out buses that were experiencing mechanical trouble.

Around km 90, jus when Chris and I were starting to feel confident that we’d make it to our destination on-time, the bus started making strange noises, and pulled over to the side of the road. The other passengers seemed to be pretty familiar with this routine, and everyone piled off the bus and looked for a shady spot on the side of the road. The driver got a pair of coveralls and some tools from the trunk and climbed under the bus (you know it’s bad when you permanently keep a pair of coveralls on hand for breakdowns). Unable to communicate with the other passengers, we had no idea if the problem was minor or serious, so we plopped down in the shade and hoped for the best (you will notice that “hoping for the best” has become a theme of our trip to Madagascar). After an hour or so, the driver changed out of his coveralls, we all piled back into the bus and continued on to Tamatave.

The trip was supposed to take 5 hours, but we’ve learned that Malagasy time is +2 to 3 hours in pretty much any circumstance, so naturally the trip ended up being a little over 7 hours. We arrived in Tamatave just before dark and totally exhausted from the journey.

As if the bus ride itself hadn’t been enough, when we arrived in Tamatave it had been raining for several hours and the city had lost power, so the bus station was a giant, unlit swamp pit. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a bit of a neat-freak, and the idea of maneuvering through a giant, dark mud pit wasn’t the most appealing scenario. Eventually we made it to our hotel, and kissed the ground.

Our taxi-brousse adventure in Madagascar was definitely a character building experience, and it tried my patience more than almost any other bus trip I’ve made to-date. Let’s just say that Chris and I were happy that we’d booked domestic flights for the rest of our trip in Madagascar.

-Julia