Its been a lot of fun, Madagascar is a pretty incredible country. But I am definately looking forward to moving on. I think I have seen what I wanted to see and a huge amount of everything in between. I would advise all those that wish to visit Madagascar to do it soon, cause its true what they say, the place is getting severely beaten up. People are cutting, burning, digging up, and killing just about everything that makes Madagascar unique and interesting. But prepare yourself, travel here is not particularly easy (at first the laid back attitude and the poor road/car quality is funny, eventually it just gets really old) and 9 out of every 10 tourists you'll meet are just sex tourists (and all 10 will only speak french). But other than that, its a pretty amazing place.
Things have been fairly slow since my last post, things have gone fairly smoothly. I went from Tana out to the west coast to Morondava to see the avenue of the boababs and the Tsingy be Bemaraha. After the 22 hour taxi brousse ride, during which it was necessary to stop for a few hours so that would could wrassle up a posse of other taxi brousse drivers to dissuade the highway bandits from stopping us/killing us and stealing all of our belongings. At least thats what I was told. Once arriving in town I found out that you couldn't get to the Tsingy by public transport, only by private car. Which, after all told, would end up costing nearly $500 for the 3 days necessary to make the trip. I ended up lucking out, and find another tourist, a girl from Japan that could speak english, that was going and was willing to split the cost. Went and saw the Tsingy, very interesting, whether it was worth the $200 that it cost to get up there has not yet been decided, but I know that if I didn't go I would be kicking myself for a very long time. These are the Tsingy.
During the trip I found out (after being told not to mention how much I was paying to Yuki (the girl from Japan) - therefore it became the first thing that I talked about) that the owner of the care was charging Yuki the full price, and then was going to pocket all my money. I gave Yuki a pep talk, told her not to let them charge her full price, and am awaiting the results currently. However on the way back to Morondava from the Tsingy, Yuki got sick. I don't think it was anything more than what everybody gets when they first get to Madagascar, but she wasn't dealing with it very well. I was dropped at Kirindy to try to see some Fossa (no luck there) and the drivers took her back to the doctor. I cut my Kirindy trip a day short (potential to get the flight on the 3rd - which I did - and saw all the lemurs that there were to see) and decided to stop in to see how she was doing. I got there and standing at the doorway to the hotel were both drivers, looking very concerned, and what looked to be a number of doctors, also very concerned looking. They showed me to her room and what was the first thing I saw? An IV! The room was covered with little vials of medicine and needles. In my opinion IVs are used after surgeries and to stave off death, so I automatically assumed that it was a heck of a lot worse than it turned out to be. It was, just as I thought, what everybody gets when they get to Madagascar. It was just handled... differently than I would have done.
Other than that, I returned to Tana, and have sat around here for about 5 days waiting for my flight to come. I went souvernir shopping, bought way to many things, including two stupid wall hanging things that don't fit into my back and therefore are strapped to the outside where I fully expect them to break before I reach Paris.
As for Paris, got two couches to stay on, both located just on the outside of the main centre. One of whom seems to be very keen on going into the Catacombs to show people around, which I am A-OK with. Going to stay there for just about a week, and then head up to the UK. Not really sure what to do there, if anyone has been there and has some ideas, feel free to give me some advice.
And thats about that, I've got to be at the airport at 4:30 in the morning, so I have to get to sleep pretty soon. Have a good night.
