We left the Tsingy with an extra bag. Rowe who I had shared a flight with had been without her luggage since the first day of the trip. She had bought underwear and flip-flops in Carrefour, and others had lent her T-Shirts, malaria tablets and even a dress. She’d the confidence to go into the pool and waterfall pool in her underwear too. However, she had foresight to wear black matching underwear – and it looked like a matching bikini set. If I had been in the same position, well – let’s just say it would have been obvious I was in my underwear to all who saw me! Anyway… I digress. We had all been playing Monopoly Deal on the night of the Great Tsingy, and Barnabas came up to Rowe and set down her bag beside her. There was great joy. Amazingly everything was still in the bag, she had been sure that if the bag ever got to her again, it would have been riffled through and things taken. It restored faith in humanity – even more so when Barnabas had plainly told us that the country was corrupt.

We left the next morning, there was a scramble for the cars to ensure Janet, Jill and I were together for the journey. We had worked well on the first leg and so we wanted together for the long journey to the coast and indeed be in the 4×4 that we knew was fully functional!

4 hours later we rolled into Belo. We sat down at Le Mad Zebu and then some of us disappeared to go and see the local markets. We promised Barnabas we would be back within 10 minutes. The previous evening Barnabas had given us a talking to about timings for meals. Janet and I had had a bye because of our massage but others had been later than the agreed 7pm for the briefing which had meant that dinner had been later than agreed too.

Le Mad Zebu is a delight of a professional restaurant in what seems to be the middle of nowhere. While Belo is 4 hours from the Tsingy and right on the river, it isn’t obvious that this is a restaurant of gourmet quality.

From the menu below, I ordered #2, 1, 1. I am not sure anyone ordered #3 starter or #2 main course, those dishes didn’t appeal and none of us liked the sound of the trotter pancake! Janet ordered starter 1 and main course 3. Which would have been my second choice, so we did share a little bit of our main courses. As it turned out, I did have the squid to start with as someone had taken Jon’s snapper or it had been incorrectly ordered so there was one more squid but I gave Jon my snapper while I took the squid. The squid was well cooked, not rubbery and all the flavours complemented each other. It was unusual to have the pulled pork inside the squid but it was delicious and the portions were just about right.

The glasses of wine that we all ordered at 10:50am may not have perfectly paired with our mains and as they equated to about £2 maybe we had been placed too much faith in the quality of wine in the first place. I had a rosé which was better with food. Over the number of restaurants that we had eaten in, I had had zebu usually done in a stew, but this zebu was prepared medium and was so tender it was melt in the mouth.

In a country famous for its vanilla and other fresh spices I couldn’t not have the vanilla ganache. The ice cream with green pepper was a taste sensation that paired beautifully with the creamy ganache. Mmm – I really enjoyed my three dishes.

Lunch was over too soon. Sadly one more person had succumbed to feeling unwell. She had a bit to eat, appreciated the greatness of the food but was too fragile to eat all of it. I on the other hand cleaned my plate. Most of us did which said a lot about the quality of food.

With next to no time to digest our food we were back on the “road” and heading towards a boat that would take us and the 4×4 to the start of our next “road trip”. We were on a tight schedule as we had to be at our next venue by sunset.

During this journey another car ferry came close to ours and a bag was exchanged from our boatmen to the other boatmen. It was fascinating to watch the exchange and we all wondered what had been given over.

Our adventure today was to see the Avenue of the Baobabs at sunset. The “road” from the river to the trees was worse (if that was possible) than the previous 4 hours to Belo. At one stage we were shuggled violently up and down and side to side. A couple of minutes later, we slowed down and passed one of our vehicles. Someone had been sick – though unsure whether it had a consequence of the road or something else.

Baobab Trees?

The billed highlight of today were these majestic trees. It hadn’t been the first time we were up close a personal to them since our second day on the boat trip we had stopped at a local village to see them.

These trees are endemic to Madagascar but they can also be found on mainland Africa and Australia as well. These trees are anything between 500 and 1000s of years old and in a country where only 10% of its original forest exists it is a wonder that these trees have remained. But they have remained because they serve no actual purpose to the Malagasy people. These trees are not actually trees, but the largest succulent in the world.

This wasn’t the first day that we had seen the baobabs. When we had been on the boat cruise, the second day we had stopped at a village where we saw the village baobabs with no other tourists! I had been at the back of the group with Barnabas as we walked through the village and in a vegetable patch, Barnabas told me to stop, turn around and look down. He asked me what I saw. I saw the shell of an African land snail, I saw sticks but I had to admit I had no idea what I was looking for until Barnabas pointed out the snake. The others came back down to see it and we were all told that the snake was harmless as are all snakes in Madagascar- there are no poisonous snakes on the island.

But the main attraction that day was the trees.

However, that village on 27 July didn’t have as many of the Baobabs as what we saw after our Tsingy adventure. Our first main stop after lunch was to see the entwined Baobabs.

We weren’t the only ones here, the other tourists were children from Tana. Here I also bought a magnet. There are definitely no Starbucks in Madagascar, so the next best thing was a magnet for our fridge.

We had another photo opportunity before pressing on. We were making great time and Barnabas had relaxed.

Back in our 4×4 we arrived some 10-15 minutes at the avenue. It is still a “main road” despite its iconic status. We were allowed to roam free and Barnabas said that either we could go to the right of the road for sunset and get a red hue on the trees, or we could go left and get the sun setting behind the trees. Andrea and I went right and everyone else went left but only after we had walked down the avenue and I had a conversation with some Chinese tourists in broken Mandarin, French and English.

Andrea and I went to the right and everyone else went to the left and were rewarded with this… the red hue that the trees took on wasn’t quite as visible to the naked eye, but I was really pleased as to how the first picture came out.

Once the sun had set, we then moved to where everyone else had been – they had seen this.

While Andrea and I didn’t see the sunset we did see the aftermath of the sunset and it resulted in some fabulous pink, orange and red skies that the camera didn’t quite capture but it was good enough.

It was dark by the time we got back to our 4×4. We journeyed onto Morondava, on the west coast of Madagascar. There was delight as we did the last 45 minutes of the journey on a tarmac, SMOOTH road.

We knew we were by the coast, but we didn’t see the Indian Ocean until the next day.