Was It Worth It? Well, There Is No Other Place In The World Like This

This is one for the Bucket List 

We've spent the last week in Madagascar.  First thing to say, it's not a well developed country.  In fact, it's a rather rough place, with occasional concerns for safety.  Depending on your definition, in terms of countries, it's probably somewhere in the bottom half.  

However, that doesn't mean that there aren't interesting things to see.  In fact, it's on the amazing scale, it's pretty high up there.  But if you want to come here to check it out, you need to have a commitment.  In other words, it's not easy to get here. 

 

It's very remote - you've probably heard that before in this blog because we like to go to remote places - but it's true.  It is not easy to get here; we like to go to remote places and then go to the remotest part of that remote place.  It's quite difficult.  And once you get here, it's a challenge to deal with the conditions, and a real ordeal to get to the interesting parts. 

Okay, so why do you do this?  Is it worth the "adventure"?  I'll let you be the judge. 

So Madagascar is a very large island, number four on the list, behind such behemoths as Greenland. And that means when you get here, there is a lot of distance between points.  And if you add one more element, which makes it almost ridiculously problematic and that is ... 

Bad Roads - I have complained in the past about bad roads in different places we've traveled, but this has to be among the worst.  The roads here are ... hideous.   This picture above shows a local guy leading us across a flooded river, which was supposed to be the road. 

 
This picture above is the main national highway, and this was one of the good sections.  

For example, today we traveled back from our target destination which is around 400 miles away.  Admittedly, that's a long way, but it took us sixteen hours to drive it!  (an average of 25 miles per hour) In one day, in the rain, and dark.  And it was worse than it sounds.   I would almost call it a near death experience, but Fiona might scale that back a bit. 

 

Fortunately, we had the foresight to hire a driver.  This is not a credit to us being experienced and courageous travelers, it's kind of mandatory.  It's actually cheaper to rent a car with a driver than to do it yourself.  After our experience for the last four days, nobody in their right mind would want to drive this on their own.  

Not only that, but this place is Hot and Sweaty - we're talking high heat and high humidity.   It might be hard to imagine in the cold and frosty northern hemisphere, but Madagascar is a blistering hot ... tropical paradise.  The only problem (well, maybe not the only one) here is the widespread poverty of the citizens, it's a poor country.  As I said before, it's pretty rough here. 

So, with all that being said, we finally arrived at our destination 

 

We traveled to the West Coast of Madagascar to the legendary Baobab Forest (pronounced Bah-o-bob).  We were not disappointed.  This is such a surreal place; when you're here it does not quite seem real.

 

These gigantic trees are kind of unbelievable - it's one of those places where being there is hard to capture in words or pictures.  I have done my best to show some of the views and the scale of the enormous size of these things.  It was thrilling to walk among these giants.  In fact, it was rather mesmerizing. 

 

 

What kind of animal is that?

And it gets better - the exotic animals of Madagascar are literally unique in the world.  they are one-of-a-kind, and are found nowhere else on earth.   I was woefully uneducated on animals like the White Lemur, or the Brown Lemur for that matter.  

We were walking through the Kirindy Forest and saw these critters hanging from trees and swinging around on the branches and generally having a good time in their own very specific environment.  It was fascinating; they had some striking features, such as their eyes.  

A Lemur is sort of like a monkey, but a different species.  It's described as a primate, on the list with apes, chimpanzees, baboons, etc.  Pretty big and not really afraid of people, as they have few predators in Madagascar.  We saw a couple kinds, white and brown, and got up close.   

And the Fossa (pronounced Foo-sah).   It's a bit like a skinny cougar with a really long tail.  It's also fairly big.  It can climb trees, and the Lemurs better watch out for this bad boy. 

And this area is right on the ocean - Sunsets, Fishing Boats, waves. 

 
So after all this excitement, we had to make the long trip back.  It took all day, and then some.  I think it was worth it, but I'm glad to be back to a reasonable imitation of reality.  

Tomorrow we leave for Ethiopia.