We met our guide in a car with the driver by his side. After brief introductions he asked me for the money. I reached into my daybag and pulled out a plastic bag stuffed with 240 10,000 Ariary notes and gingerly handed it over. He counted carefully but nervously as people rushed by in the crowded street. It felt more like a drugs deal than paying for a tourist trip!
The first part of our journey took us past the clay soil of the highlands, littered with piles of newly made bricks. The soil here is poor for growing rice and after a couple of harvests is good only for making bricks. Lots of them. We stayed overnight in Antsirabe, famous for its pushy pousse-pousse drivers but we'll remember it for the delicious Gastro Pizza delivery we scoffed in our room over a game of scrabble and a bottle of SA Merlot.
As we headed away from civilisation we passed through bustling villages and our car squeezed by people and zebu. Zebu are the local cattle and essentially the only meaningful asset and sign of wealth. Each one costs upwards of one million Ariary - about £300. A chicken, we learn later, costs less than £3. The local children must see plenty white people but that has not apparently reduced their fascination for us. They call us 'faza', wave, smile and sometimes ask for 'bon-bons' or 'stilos'.
A grand lightning storm kept us entertained over dinner and I was still excited by the enormous butterfly with a pink and white striped body that I'd seen earlier. In the morning we travelled to the village where we met our two boatmen and were introduced to our dugout canoe where we'd be spending the next 140 km over two and a half days. So, three locals, two faza, one chicken, camping equipment, food, water and luggage all made their way in this lovely wee boat. We saw chameleons, crocodiles, several bird species and our first lemurs! A Sifaka (Verreaux's lemur) to be exact. Quite a few of them actually. So gorgeous as they leap through the trees and bounce along like kangaroos.
The first night we made camp early to shelter from the biblical rain storm that howled around us. This hadn't been mentioned in the itinerary! The next night was spent near a small village under a perfect star-filled sky with lightning in the distance and our crew singing us local songs while they cooked our dinner. The children were there to wave us off soon after dawn and we completed our river journey later that day. Our tour continued however at the Kirindi national park where we saw more lemurs, really close up. As well as the brown lemurs huddled cutely together we also saw a nocturnal lemur asleep in a tree, before completing our trip at Baobab avenue where we gaped in awe at these amazing old hollow trees.
Time for a breather in Morondava before setting off on the next leg of our trip which will take us down the RN7 (road number 7) by taxi broussé. Meantime the poor boatmen will take 6 days to return to their village, pushing their boat upstream punt-style. Hard life but they seem to love it.
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