Cycling Madagascar

We’ll do a bunch of more in-depth posts when we return, but since we have an hour to kill before the restaurant opens, I’ll get this up to date. We finished the 400km ride much more quickly than we expected. In some cases the roads were great, in some cases they were ridiculously terrible, but in most cases they were quite ridable and went through many little coastal villages with bamboo huts and children in the yards shouting ’sali vazaha!’ over and over. We’ve slept in everything from shacks on stilts with tilted floors to big beautiful bungalows on the beach. We’ve enjoyed many zebu steaks and more white rice than I ever care to see again… I must quote Dave the Aussie that “All the Malagasy do is eat rice, [reproduce], and raise chickens!” The chickens are everywhere and there is not an ounce of meat on them! We spent 3 expensive days on Masoala with Dave and Andy the Scotsman, and got to see some wild lemurs and pretty birds; the snorkling there was excellent. We find ourselves with a few extra days to fill so we’ve bought a taxi brousse ticket to Andasibe and we’re going to go see us some indris and visit some swank nature lodges. For now we’re drinking citrus fanta in an internet cafe and looking forward to a good supper of soupe chinoise or…. you know it… more rice!