When I start a travel blog, I never know how many parts it will take. I am sure over the next few days the blogs will come filtering through “mora mora”. Mora mora is the Malagasy phrase for “take it easy” or “ slowly slowly” and it was a phrase we heard frequently throughout our stay in this beautiful island country.

Madagascar is the world’s fourth largest island, behind Borneo, New Guinea and Greenland – Australia is treated as a continent so is not up there on the largest island stats. The people of Madagascar are known as Malagasy as is the language spoken. However, while Malagasy is spoken, most signs and menus are in French so there was always an internal dialogue in my mind when ordering food and drink trying to find my GCSE French rather than my other current spoken foreign language of Mandarin! Our Swiss and Canadian travelling companions had no issues conversing and when all else failed there was always the universal language of miming.

When Janet compiled her list of countries to visit it seemed fitting that her 100th country to visit would be the 100th alphabetically. At the time, Madagascar was the 100th. To be asked to join her on this trip was very lovely. The trip turned out not be her 100th since she squeezed in Mauritius on her way to Madagascar and Cuba a couple of months before but since I didn’t make a 100th country banner for the occasion I wasn’t going to hold it against her!

The trip was advertised as “explorer” with a level of difficulty of 3. I hadn’t quite worked out what that meant but I knew that within the trip we would camp on sandbanks by a river. Before the trip started, Janet gave me the heads up to watch the BBC episode of “Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan” when he went to Madagascar. He did some of the things we were going to do and once I had watched that I was excited by things to come.

Many of the group we were travelling with had travelled extensively in Africa and elsewhere around the world, and over our first dinner with the Intrepid 11 the table was buzzing with conversations as everyone was sussing out everyone else in finding out what we did for jobs, our families and more importantly where we had travelled and where we hadn’t travelled! Many of the group had travelled extensively with Intrepid and so that was reassuring that people had had good experiences with the company.

All of us ate in the hotel restaurant, and in a pattern that would be repeated for the next ten nights we would eat and then go to bed or at least go our rooms. During the trip we would all socialise during the day and then meet for drinks and a couple of games of Monopoly Deal before dinner, but as soon as dinner was over we would all get up and go to our own rooms. This was mainly in part due to our early starts the following mornings.

Janet and I shared a room and in the first hotel, Hotel Belvedere in Tana, we had a small twin room. At the end of the trip we stayed in the hotel again and found ourselves in a hotel room with a double bed on the ground floor and a double bed on a mezzanine floor – we ended the trip in relative luxury. Janet and I were the only two who knew each other and had chosen to stay together. The men and three of the women all had single occupancy while three women didn’t pay the single occupancy and therefore shared. Every night one out of the three would have their own room on rotation. Janet and I have camped at Glastonbury for nine nights so we felt comfortable in our routines.

Barnabus, our guide, warned us at the briefing that drives would be long and the roads not great. On Day One we were told that Day Two we would be leaving at 6:30am. We were to leave our bags outside the door and they would be taken to the bus. This would become our routine and on the days when Barnabus told us we could have breakfast at 8am most of us would still wake up earlier.

Day Two arrived and with an air of excitement we had breakfast and departed on our bus with driver Etienne. We all had a seat each.

Day Two was a long day as we drove from Tana leaving at 6:30am to Miandrivazo and our hotel Princesse Tsiribihina. We arrived at 7:45pm with a 30 minute stop to buy a picnic lunch and water at Carrefour in Antsirabe. We were instructed in no uncertain terms that we needed enough water for the next 5-6 days. 3 of those days we were spending on a boat and 1.5L per day would be supplied to us, but it was advised to buy more. Between us Janet and I bought 12L of water and with our additional 9L from the boat we only bought an additional 3L between us to finish the trip. Neither of us drink enough water in normal circumstances but Barnabus had put the fear into everyone by telling us that he had had to send one of his last travellers back to Tana after 2 days due to severe dehydration. None of us wanted to be that person. At Carrefour we bought baguettes, cheese and ham and made our own sandwiches. We bought Braeburn apples, crisps and 2 bottles of red South African wine. The essentials.

The drive was broken up with a few “bushy bushy” stops.

Bushy Bushy

When I had gone on the International Award expedition we had introduced the students to peeing and pooing in the woods. They had been embarrassed and unwilling to countenance it – eventually it had to be done. Many of the girls had “what if” questions about their periods and the female members of staff on the silver trip had been open and honest with the girls.

Bushy Bushy became our catchphrase introduced by Barnabus when the bus stopped for us to go to the loo. On the first couple of occasions there was a hesitance to go en masse into the bushes but after a day or so that hesitation had gone and we kind of went in two waves. One group would go first, find their bush, drop down, do their business and then pop back up again and come out and then the second wave would go. The men, of course, had it easy. A few of us got too close to the bush and got prickled in some sensitive areas! While we all tried not to look, will all at some point saw a white bum.

We had some great views and smells during bushy bushy and in our last one before going back to Tana we smelt pine as we were in a pine forest – it brings a whole different meaning to pine fresh and indeed mint fresh as one of the bushies was also in an area where mint was growing wild.

Day Two hotel

Our hotel for the evening was lovely, though it wasn’t without issue. The bathroom door squeaked. That had also been an issue when we had stayed at the AirBnB in Italy too. But the door squeaking wasn’t as much of an issue as the fan. When we arrived, the room was a bit stuffy. Not wanting to let mosquitoes in (Madagascar is a malarial area) we turned the fan on to at least get the air circulating. Problem one – the fan was halfway up the wall. Standing on my tip toes I could just about reach the pull cord. I pulled it and nothing happened. Then I noticed the fan speed was 0 but that dial was beyond my stretch even standing on the beds and then the chair. Janet got a guy and he stood on the chair and turned the fan speed up. All good we went to dinner. For the second night I had zebu, but this time in a masala sauce. Jon did as well and so did Linda and David.

All of us went to bed knowing the electricity would turn off at 11pm. The fan was still on when we fell asleep. Problem two – at 1:50am I woke up to find Janet fiddling with the solar light, and an odd sound. We worked out that while the electricity was off there was still something surging through the circuit as the fan was trying to turn and Janet’s phone kept pinging as it got intermittent electricity. Unplugging Janet’s phone was easy but pulling on the cord and turning the fan speed back to 0 was not easy and we had no wee guy we could just go and get. I managed it – just at full stretch standing on my tip toes on a chair with only torch light to guide me. As we were both awake we went to the bathroom through the squeaky door and went back to sleep.

Transport

Janet and Jill had, on the morning of my afternoon arrival, gone on a walking tour around old city Tana with a guy called Nelson. I didn’t have time but what I did see and hear of Tana was a bustling capital city on a hill top. Cars were straight out of France in the 1980s and some probably predated that too! Citroën 2CVs, Renaults, Peugeots. Taxis in Tana are all cream and my take away from seeing these cars is that there must be some magical mechanics keeping these cars going. These are cars that seem to have been built to last.

Further out of Tana in other towns, tuc-tucs powered by engines and humans were prevalent and the mode of transport for many others were zebu or cow drawn carts.

Our modes of transport for the holiday consisted of buses, boats and 4x4s but more on that and the “roads” later.

Stay tuned for an unexpected twist to Day Three.