The 2010s: A decade to remember

Tbilisi, December 12, 2019

A mere 19 midnights separate me from the first day of 2020, the third decade of the 21st century.  (Yes, I know; the century should really start in 2001, but who really thinks that way emotionally?)  It is hard to believe that I have been blogging on this site intermittently for just over a decade now.  A few days ago I did my year-in-review post; now it's time for a decade in review.

One of the more terrifying aspects of getting older is that not just months and years pass by, but decades, without me being really aware of how long I've been alive.  This year was full of thirty-year anniversaries:  the Tien An Men massacre and the fall of the Berlin Wall were both pivotal moments in my conception of the world, with the gloom and menace of the Cold War suddenly replaced by an exuberant, giddy freedom in Eastern Europe, while the Chinese Communist party stamped on humanity's face with a jackboot.  I was barely 21 when those things happened; now I'm 51 and the optimism of December, 1989 has morphed into the dystopian ethnonationalism of Hungary, Poland and the United States, while the Chinese state's relentless authoritarianism has plumbed new depths in the repression in Xinjiang.

So I think that the spinning of the decades counter on our calendar is a good time to take stock of what I have been up to for the past ten years, mostly from the point of view of travel.  I don't have much time to write this, so it will necessarily be a cursory summary of a lot of travelling!

2010--The post-Silk Road Travels

I welcomed in the 2010s in Malta, That same morning I hopped over to Italy and rented a car to explore Sicily, a fabulous corner of the world, before making my way up Italy with a stopover of a few days in Naples, once one of the richest cities in Europe and now a poster child for urban decay, although blessed with Pompeii, Herculaneum and smaller amazing Roman ruins.  I then headed into Venice on my bicycle for the symbolic final ride into the city that Marco Polo returned to in 1295.  

After a brief skiing and job-hunting trip to Switzerland, where my sister Audie was living (and still lives), I hopped a flight to Ethiopia in early February for a cycle tour.  I spent two and a half months exploring Ethiopia's mountainous landscape and ancient culture, and dodging incessant rockthrowing by a substantial fraction of the youth of the country.  I also crossed (by public transport) into Somaliland and Djibouti before looping back to Ethiopia after my hopes of getting a Yemeni visa were shot down.

In late April I flew with my bicycle back to Canada to find a job offer from a school in Switzerland waiting for me.  My mother had taught at Leysin American School from 2001 to 2003, and now I was about to follow in her professional footsteps for the second time (after my miserable first international high school teaching experience in Egypt in 2004.)  After a few months of relaxation in Canada, including a car trip out to Newfoundland for my mother's 70th birthday, I flew off to Switzerland in early August.

2010-2015--The Leysin Years

I ended up spending five years teaching in Leysin.  It wasn't a fabulous school (despite the eye-watering tuition fees) but it was a wonderful place for an outdoors enthusiast like myself to be based.  I lived in a century-old building that was once a tuberculosis sanatorium for the wealthy of Europe (Stravinsky and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia both visited in the glory days), with an unbeatable view out across the Rhone valley to the Dents de Midi and (on clear days) a tiny sliver of the peak of Mont Blanc.  The skiing in Leysin was decidedly sub-par most weeks of most years, but there were always places to explore via ski touring.  The cross-country skiing was excellent, and in the fall and spring the road riding on a racing bicycle was incredible.  There were tennis and squash courts, and great hiking to be had.  It was a busy schedule, with teachers worked absolutely to the bone, but I generally always had energy for adventures whenever I could fit them in.  I ran the pub quiz in our village pub for almost the entire 5 years, which was great fun and an intellectual break from trying to hammer physics and mathematics into my students.

That first fall I mostly explored around Switzerland, by bicycle and on foot.  I stayed in Switzerland for the Christmas break and tried to ski (although it was the beginning of an epic months-long snow drought).  I also ran into a sporty New Zealand woman named Terri who turned out to be a wonderful partner in exploring the mountains and the world, and who is still with me nine and a half years later here in Tbilisi

2010 new countries:  Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somaliland (or Somalia, if you don't regard Somaliland as de facto independent).  

2010 year-end country count:  93

2011

I prowled around Switzerland all winter in a fruitless search for decent snow.  Eventually my supplications to Ullr the snow god were answered and enough snow fell for two weeks of excellent ski touring cabin-to-cabin in the mountains with some of my similarly skiing-obsessed colleagues.  

That summer I spent the entire break cycling from Tbilisi, Georgia (where I am typing this now) to Tallinn, Estonia, via as many of the ex-Soviet and Eastern European countries that I could.  I rode through magical Svaneti tragic occupied Abkhazia to Sochi in Russia, where Terri flew out to join me for a couple of weeks of hard cycling along the Black Sea coast, through Crimea (then part of Ukraine), Trans-Dniestria and Moldova.  Terri had to return to work, but I kept cycling across Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine again, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and finally Estonia.  I covered 5500 mostly flat kilometres and really fell in love with the countries I was crossing.

In the fall Terri and I got away hiking most weekends, all the way into early December since it didn't snow at all in the autumn.  When it started snowing, though, it didn't stop and we had a memorable ski season.  

At Christmas, I zipped off to the Persian Gulf to explore (very briefly and superficially) the UAE, Qatar and a tiny corner of Oman, before returning to Leysin for New Year's.

2011 new countries:  Denmark, Abkhazia, Russia, Ukraine, Trans-Dniestria, Moldova, Romania, Slovakia, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, UAE, Oman, Qatar.

2011 year-end country count:  108

2012

The winter of 2011-12 was epic for skiing and ski touring, probably the best of my five winters in Leysin.  Spring break was spent doing more ski touring before finally retiring the skis and taking out the bicycle.

The summer vacation was spent in the highest mountain ranges of the world.  Terri and I flew to India and trekked through the magical mountains and plateaux of Ladakh for a memorable month.  Again Terri had an earlier work deadline than I did, so I flew off to Kyrgyzstan to indulge my Reinhold Messner-inspired fantasies of mountain climbing.  I had had my eye on Peak Lenin and Muztagh Ata for years, so it seemed like a good time to try my luck.  My luck wasn't in on either peak, with terrible weather, heavy snowfall and poor conditions.  I decided that really high mountains weren't really my thing and flew back to Leysin to start my third academic year.

That fall I finally made it to Slovenia, the one Balkan country that I had not yet properly visited.  At Christmas I decided that I needed a bicycle tour, so I flew down to Lome and spent three weeks cycling around Togo and Benin.  It was a good  bike trip, but I didn't really warm to the two countries as much as I would have liked.  It was my first taste of West Africa after several trips to the north and east of the continent, and I resolved to come back one day to explore in much greater depth.

2012 new countries:  Slovenia, Togo, Benin

2012 year-end country count:  111

2013

The 2012-13 winter was also fabulous for snowfall in the Leysin region, and I had a great winter of skiing, ski touring and cross-country skate skiing.  Terri and I had a March break that overlapped for once (we worked at different schools with very different schedules) and we had hoped to do a week of ski touring.  Instead it suddenly stopped snowing at the end of February, and after waiting with crossed fingers for a while, we eventually booked a last-minute trip to the Maldives instead.  It was slightly self-indulgent, but it was also a reintroduction to diving for Terri, which proved to be a great thing for our future travels together.

That summer we set off together for Iceland with our touring bicycles.  We had a wonderful time exploring this tiny gem of a country, even if Terri did find the steep hills on dirt roads a bit challenging and annoying.  Then Terri returned to work and I flew to Canada for the first time in three years, visiting my mother in Ottawa, my father in Thunder Bay, my sister in Jasper and my friend Greg over the border in Montana.  The summer vacation was not yet over (I loved my epic summer holidays in Leysin!) and I returned to Europe to try my hand at a new (for me) form of bike touring:  riding a racing bike, travelling ultra-light and sleeping indoors.  I cycled from Avignon back to Leysin over as many Tour de France cols as possible (Galibier, Izoard, Agnel, Iseran, etc), then returned to southern France with Terri for another week of cycling.

That fall, the start of my fourth year in Leysin, did not go well.  I was teaching five different fairly challenging IB science and math courses, and I burned out spectacularly from overwork.  Not long after a long weekend in Dublin with Terri, I ended up having a minor nervous breakdown in early November and being sent off on medical leave for a few months, during which I went exploring Gran Canaria by bicycle and Laos by motor scooter.  It was a sobering reminder of my own mortality and of how unsustainably hard I was working at LAS.

2013 new countries:  Maldives, Iceland, Ireland

2013 country count:  114

2014

I returned to work after Christmas on a reduced teaching load and had a reasonable time of it, although it was a miserable ski season.  A few skiing friends and I spent spring break skiing in the Dolomites in Italy which was an incredible time, although I couldn't ski the last few days because of an incredibly sore back.

That summer Terri and I decided to take it physically a bit easier than usual since we weren't sure how recovered I was from my breakdown.  I flew to Bali via a brief visit to sad, ruined East Timor, and then Terri and I spent a month diving our way around Indonesia, with visits to Bali, the Togean Islands and the amazing Derawan Archipelago and its manta rays.  Terri had bought a small house in northeast Bali a few years earlier, and it made for a perfect base for our expeditions. After Terri's inevitable return to work, I stayed on, exploring the Solomon Islands and expensive, dangerous and deeply unpleasant Papua New Guinea before crossing back into Indonesian New Guinea for a few weeks of birdwatching and diving. 

That fall was the start of my last year at LAS.  I had already decided that I was going to leave, but LAS' deeply autocratic First Family had decided that I needed to be forced out, which didn't make the final year much fun at work.  Luckily it was a charmed autumn with perfect weather almost every weekend and a never-ending series of hiking and biking weekends that lasted almost into December that left me with a permanent grin and indelible memories of the fall colours blanketing the Alps.

I flew off that Christmas with three colleagues to show them the Japanese powder that I had been pining for during the many snow droughts of my Leysin years.   

2014 new countries:  East Timor, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea

2014 year-end country count:  117

2015

After some epic skiing in Hokkaido, I returned to Leysin for my final ski season there.  The snow was miserable for most of the winter, and when it did snow, I nearly got myself killed in an avalanche that took away quite a bit of my skiing mojo.  During spring break Terri and I flew to Georgia for a few days of skiing which reminded me of how much I liked this small, historic country in the Caucasus.

2015-18:  Three Itinerant Years

Mid-June saw me say farewell with affection and great memories to my colleagues and friends in Leysin and to the outdoor playground of the Alps.  Terri and I headed off for a month of cycling down the Danube, followed (for me) by sailing and cycling in Finland and Norway while Terri finished up her 15th and final year at Kumon Leysin Academy.  When she was free, we abandoned the bicycles and set off on foot to trek in the Pyrenees and then the mythical GR20 hiking route in Corsica.  Terri flew back to Switzerland for her Swiss citizenship ceremony, and then we were off, both finally free of work and commitments for the foreseeable future.

We visited our families and then rendezvoused in Ushuaia, Argentina for the extravagant splurge of a lifetime, a trip to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula on the MV Ushuaia.  Despite a fire on board on the first night, and having to dodge between South Atlantic hurricanes on the return journey, it was an incredible, life-altering trip that always seemed to have a David Attenborough voice-over playing in our heads.

After that, we started cycling north through Patagonia, stopping to hike in places like Torres del Paine and El Chalten.  We said good-bye to 2015 in a little town along the Carretera Austral, the little-used dirt road linking the remote communities of southern Chile.

2015 new countries:  Finland, Sweden

2015 year-end country count:  119

2016
We kept cycling north in early 2016, finishing on the island of Chiloe.  After a few days visiting friends in Santiago from my year of working there in 1999, we took an interminable bus trip to Paraguay with our bicycle and spent a few weeks cycling there before ending our South American sojourn in the genteel urban settings of Buenos Aires and Montevideo.

From here we switched continents.  We had talked for years about driving a 4-wheel-drive through Africa, and now it was time to put the dream into action.  We flew to Zambia where we spent several weeks working at Olive Tree Learning Centre, Terri's school that she helped establish in an impoverished shantytown in 2006 and which she has been supporting and growing ever since.  A group of Japanese students from Terri's former school flew down from Switzerland to meet us and do a service trip for which they had raised a large amount of much-needed funds, followed by a wildlife safari to incompable Chobe National Park across the Zambezi River in northern Botswana.

Afterwards we flew to Cape Town and started searching for vehicles, preferably already fitted out for overland exploration and camping.  Just as we were starting to despair, we got tipped off about a vehicle for sale in Johannesburg, and flew up to inspect it.  It was love at first sight, and so Stanley (as in Henry Morton Stanley) entered our lives.  

Most of the rest of 2016 was spent driving Stanley around southern Africa.  We explored Kruger National Park, then cruised through southern Mozambique before being turned around by civil conflict further north.  We drove back to South Africa, survived a potentially deadly car crash and then (after repairs) drove north into tragic but beautiful Zimbabwe for a month.  We popped out into Zambia and then turned east into Malawi before returning to Zambia, where we explored the north before heading down to Livingstone and spending more time at OTLC.  Finally we headed south across the wildlife paradise of Botswana before popping back into South Africa.

We took two-month break from Stanley from late October to mid-December, doing some tour guiding in Greece and some road-tripping through the Balkans before flying to Madagascar and its enchanting, endangered lemurs.

It wasn't until nearly Christmas that we were back in South Africa, picking up Stanley after some expert improvements had been made at Blinkgat, the camper manufacturer who had first put Stanley together a couple of years earlier.  We spun down through Swaziland and into KwaZulu-Natal, where we welcomed in 2017 in a wonderful wildlife refuge, Bushbaby Lodge.

2016 new countries:  Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Madagascar, Swaziland.

2016 year-end country count:  130

2017
The year started with some of our favourite bits of Africa.  We drove south through KwaZulu-Natal and the Orange Free State and drove across the breathtaking mountainous country of Lesotho before getting tired of the rainy season and bolting north towards Namibia.  Namibia was incredible, and we had many unforgettable nights camped out in the depths of the Namib desert or the semi-desert just inland of it.  All good things must come to an end, though, and what ended this idyllic period was a summons home to Thunder Bay, where my father was trying to recover from aggressive thyroid cancer.  We drove across the Caprivi Strip for one last visit to OTLC in Livingstone, then bolted back to Windhoek to store Stanley until we could return.

The next few months for me were a blur, as my father's recovery stalled and then a terminal decline set in.  He died at the end of June, and most of July was spent cleaning out the house where he had lived for 46 years (and where I had grown up and returned to for three decades after leaving home).  At the end of July my mother and I drove to Ottawa with a U-Haul of family heirlooms, and I flew off to Bali to rejoin Terri.

We spent the rest of the year in Indonesia, doing a lot of scuba diving and (in my case) learning how to take underwater photographs of the strange and wonderful creatures that live on tropical reefs.  I was also hard at work finishing the manuscript of my Silk Road cycling book.  In mid-November I crossed to the next island to the east, Lombok, and spent three weeks training to become a scuba instructor.  It was an intense course, but I passed the exam and set off immediately with Terri for jobs in Raja Ampat, the legendary diving area off the western tip of Indonesian New Guinea.  The job wasn't all it was cracked up to be, but it taught both of us a lot, and we got to dive almost every day with manta rays, which is a priceless experience.  We said farewell to the year on tiny Arborek Island in Raja Ampat, after a whirlwind 365 days.

2017 new countries:  Lesotho, Namibia

2017 year-end country count:  132

2018
Terri and I said goodbye to Arborek early in January, glad for the experience but keen to move on.  We stopped off in Ambon for some memorable muck diving, then returned to Bali for a month of heavy rain and occasional diving.  I was still hard at work writing, and in early February I finished the first draft of my manuscript, just in time to fly to New Zealand for 2 months of exploring with Terri.  We covered much of the North Island of the country, more than a quarter century after my first visit there in 1992.  We hiked, biked, paddled and drove around many of the incredible natural sights of the country, and were amazed afterwards at how much we had seen.

A very brief sojourn back in Bali, and then we were off again, flying to Namibia to pick up Stanley.  We had had some serious problems with Namibian Customs about Stanley not having the right paperwork (we thought he did!!) and so we had to move him to storage in South Africa.  We decided that we should explore Namibia in greater detail while we did, and we ended up spending six memorable weeks in the Namibian desert, camped out under the stars, looking for elephants and zebras and giraffes.  Eventually we drove down to rainy Cape Town and put Stanley into storage there.

While we had been in New Zealand, I had accepted a job offer to teach in Tbilisi, so when we returned to Bali, I packed up my possessions and flew to Canada to visit my mother and then, at the end of July, on to Tbilisi.

2018-2019:  The Tbilisi Years

I had always enjoyed Georgia during my three previous trips to the country (2009, 2011 and 2015), so I was looking forward to living there full-time.  Terri and I spent the late summer and autumn exploring the beautiful mountainous regions of Tusheti, Khevsureti and Mtiuleti, with fall break in the enchanting western region of Svaneti, then loaded up our expedition van (Douglas the Delica) as the Christmas break began and headed off on a three-week skiing roadtrip.  We welcomed in the New Year in a small homestay in the frosty mountains of the Goderdzi Pass area.

2018 new countries:  none (first time since 2005!)

2018 year-end country count:  132

2019

I've just written a long blog post looking back on this year, so I will be brief about this year's travels.  There were a number of (generally disappointing) ski weekends north of Tbilisi, a week in France skiing with my sister Saakje and her partner Henkka in March, some fun camping weekends in the spring and then a summer of mountain exploration in Kyrgyzstan and back here in Georgia.  This fall we drove around Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh (now renamed Artsakh) and today (in a few hours) we are flying to Panama for a Christmas get-together with my mother, Saakje and Henkka.

2019 new countries:  Panama

2019 year-end country count:  133

I hope that the 2020s will be just as active, if not more so, in terms of exploring new corners of the globe.  With a new and much longer-range installment of Stanley's Travels coming up starting in September, 2020, I hope to add a lot of the countries that are still missing from my collection.  I still have roughly 90 countries left to visit; I would love to have that total down closer to 30 when I'm writing the next installment of the decade-in-review.

Farewell to Madagascar: Our Southern Sojourn

Channeling my inner Ansel Adams in the Tsaranoro Valley

Windhoek, February 19^th

Seated in a warm, dry hotel room while rain comes down outside on this capital city, I am trying to cast my mind far away from mainland Africa, where we have been for the past two months, to the last leg of our Madagascar odyssey, our two-week swing through the south-central highlands of the country.  This section of the trip, although somewhat shorter than we had anticipated in terms of distance, still gave us plenty of scenery and wildlife to take away and provided a fitting conclusion to our trip.  It will also be good for me to start catching up on my much-delayed blog; after a burst of writing energy in early January, I haven’t written a word in over a month, so it’s time to get back at it.  Here goes.

Taxi rickshaw in the back streets of Ambalavao

Terri and I headed out from the squalour of Antananarivo very early on the morning of Tuesday, December 6^th on the most luxurious bus we could find, the Sonaotra+.  The bus was clean and the seats were well spaced.  We had bought an extra seat just in case, and the space and legroom were luxurious after some of the taxis-brousses we had taken up in the north.  It couldn’t compare for luxury with a Chilean, Argentinian or Turkish bus, but it was a relief to our battered backsides.

Our destination was the large town of Fianaratsoa, and it was, by the standards of Madagascar travel, a quick, pleasant and comfortable trip.  We could even look out the windows at a rolling landscape of hills, irrigated valleys and straggling villages of red-brick houses.  I put on my headphones and listened to a big backlog of podcasts, stopping only at the mid-trip meal stop.  One of the sad things about travelling by bus, compared to travelling with your own vehicle or (even better) a bicycle, is that you race past landscapes and sights that you would love to stop and look at, unable to cast more than a cursory glance at them.  In the end you get dozy and stop paying attention, stultified by the swaying of the bus and the fact that you were up at 5 am, and this is the worst thing:  you travel halfway around the world to ignore the country passing past your window, dozing in a stupor.

The main street of Ambalavao

Fianarantsoa is a big, sprawling town built between a series of low hills.  We caught a taxi to the tiny, cheap and friendly Hotel Arinofy and were in bed early.  The long day of imprisonment in the bus and the fact that there was no power both sent us to sleep sooner than expected.  We woke up in the morning to the sight of brilliant red Madagascar fody birds frolicking in the garden, had breakfast and then trudged down the hill to the chaos of the taxi brousse stand.  We enquired about rides to Ambalavao, then went into town looking for a supermarket to buy supplies for our upcoming hike, while I ran off to a gas station to fill our MSR stove fuel bottle.  The supermarket was a bit dismal in its selection, but we scrounged together some potatoes, instant noodles, instant soup, canned tomatoes and a few other items before heading back to the taxi brousse stand with our booty.

The staple of life in central Madagascar

It was a lot less comfortable ride to Ambalavao (despite booking extra seats), but it was a fairly short trip, and within two hours we were tumbling off the bus at the main market square in Ambalavao.  The landscape had changed, growing distinctly dryer and more open, and Ambalavao had the distinct air of a Western cowboy town, with lots of wiry men in Stetson hats and carrying big walking sticks marching up and down the road.  Right in the square there was an office for JB Trekking, and we stopped in to find out about transport to the Parc National d’Andringitra, our next destination.

Another beautiful chameleon

We discovered that we could have saved ourselves the effort of buying food, as an all-inclusive 4-day hike, with food, cook and porters included, was about 120 euros per person, not significantly more than we would pay trying to negotiate a 4WD lift to and from the park.  We signed up and then spent the afternoon in the delightfully French atmosphere of the Relais d’Andringitra, run by an expat Frenchman who regaled us with tales of life in Ambalavao and fed us magnificently on magret de canard and zebu bourguignon.  We strolled around the streets later in the afternoon, drinking in the atmosphere of market day, with the local Betsileo farmers thronging the streets.  The houses along the main street were picturesque in a decaying colonial era sort of way, and it was pleasant to stretch our legs after two days of bus travel. It actually reminded me a bit of a spaghetti Western set, between the wooden balconies, the hand-painted signs and the cowboy hats, and I half-expected Clint Eastwood to come around the next corner instead of another tuk-tuk.

Rice terraces on the way to Andringitra

Thursday Dec. 8 found us up early and piling into a decently maintained 4x4 pickup truck with our guide Tovo, lots of food and equipment and a live chicken, its legs tied together.  The chicken was going to be dinner on the second night, and Terri immediately took a shine to the little fellow, feeding him bread, bits of flour and water to ease his last 36 hours on earth.  We stopped in to see the zebu market, a huge bustling open area on the outskirts of town full of cowboys and big zebu, some of them escaping from their owners from time to time and causing much shouting and chasing and corralling.  From that point on it was a 3-hour slog over a truly awful road, comparable to the Daraina track still burned into our nightmares.  At least the scenery was very pretty, with distant mountains closing in on the road as we climbed past emerald rice terraces towards the forested higher peaks.  By 10:30 we were at the national park office, where interminable paperwork was filled out and we looked at the surprisingly good displays at the visitor’s centre.  We were the only visitors to pass through the gate that day, which is surprising because Andringitra is one of the very best national parks in Madagascar, with great scenery, fantastic hiking and good infrastructure.

Looking up at the King's Waterfall and the jumble of peaks behind

Eventually we piled back into the truck along with a couple of porters that our guide had engaged.  We climbed up an ever-deteriorating track until we could drive no further (the next bridge was a gutted mas of burnt timbers), then got out, distributed the gear and food (and the unfortunate chicken) among the two porters, picked up our park guide Fleury and set off uphill, relieved to be walking at last.  We climbed steadily through lovely forest (a rarity in these parts; only the protection of the national park has saved a small area of native bush), with occasional stops to pant in the cloying humidity.  The forest was full of chameleons, lizards, crickets and noisy but unseen birds.

Nice reflection of the high peaks of Andringitra

After three kilometres of steady climbing past two impressive waterfalls (the King’s and the Queen’s Waterfalls), we finally found ourselves on flattish open moorland on a long plateau at the foot of the high peaks.  The next 3 km were easy and pleasant and full of birds that were easy to see.  The orchids for which the area is famous weren’t in season, but the rugged granite peaks and undulated heath made up for their absence.  We made camp beside a burbling river (a location known as Camp Three), ate a great beef stew, fed the chicken again and were in bed early in the big tent provided by the trekking company.

Pretty mountain peaks seen from near Camp Three

Terri, Fleury and Tovo on the way to Camp Three

Granite shining bright in the morning sunshine

We slept well, and were up early the next morning for our summit push.  A recent change in park regulations meant that we couldn’t leave at 3 am for sunrise on the summit, so we settled for a 5:15 wakeup and a 5:45 departure.  Our guide from JB Trekking was feeling unwell, so we had Fleury, our National Park guide, as our only companion.  It was a very scenic climb, first along the plateau, then steeply uphill across steep granite faces scored with streams and waterfalls, across a second, higher plateau and finally, at 8:45, up to Pic Boby, at 2658 metres the second-highest peak in the country.  (The highest peak is inaccessible by casual hikers, so this is the trekking summit of Madagascar.)

The jumbled, eroded granite outcrops on the final push up Pic Boby

We had perfect bluebird weather and endless views across the jumble of shattered granite peaks (some of which actually look higher than Boby itself) south to the start of the southern desert and north to the forested peaks of Parc National de Ranomafana.  It felt good to be standing (almost) on top of Madagascar and to be walking almost free (with the exception of Fleury) through a wonderful landscape.  We returned to camp in a jubilant mood, swam in the stream, had a quick early lunch and set off across the lower plateau towards our next camp by 12:20.

Made it!  Two tired but exultant trekkers at the summit

The view from the top

The landscape of that afternoon’s hike was wonderful, a mixture of open grassland, exposed granite (the “Lunar Landscape” for which Andringitra is known) and a descent through more dense forest.  Accompanying us most of the way were views of the immense vertical granite walls of the Tsaranoro Valley, into which we were descending.  It was a long day, and we were a bit footsore by the time we got to Camp Yetaranomby, on the boundary of the national park after a 1000-metre descent from the summit.

Our serpentine visitor and his unfortunate dinner guest

The campsite had another great swimming hole and Terri and I bathed, feeling the cool water refresh our dusty skin and tired legs.  While we were in the water, the chicken met his demise and appeared in our dinner.  He was more skin and bones than meat, and it seemed almost criminal to kill a chicken for so little nutritional benefit to us, but we were both hungry and were able to salve our consciences.  Ten minutes after dinner I realized I had left my sunglasses at the table and when I returned to our outdoor dining area, my headlamp picked out the slightly gruesome sight of a boa constrictor halfway through the process of swallowing an unfortunate rat whole.  I called Terri and we watched the rest of the meal; it took almost half an hour for the snake to finish ingesting its prey, and watching the convulsive bursts of peristalsis was fascinating, if grim. 

The spectacular wall of Tsaranoro Peak

The next day we bid farewell to Fleury after breakfast as we left the national park.  He headed back over the mountains to park headquarters while we continued mostly downhill into the heat and rice cultivation of the Tsaranoro Valley.  The views were stunning, with Tsaranoro Peak giving us different colours and angles every few minutes.  When we dropped low enough to be in rice fields, young kids raced uphill to try to sell us trinkets and souvenirs and ask for money, candy and pencils.  They were quite persistent, but Terri managed to divert them into singing while I walked ahead to take pictures.  It saddened me a bit to see how the presence of tourists, as is so often the case, turns kids into beggars and salesmen, diverting them from school and working in the fields.

Terri near the bottom of the long descent into the Tsaranoro Valley

Terri being serenaded by village children in the Tsaranoro Valley

It was properly hot down at 1000 metres’ elevation and we trudged along the valley, wishing that the local farmers hadn’t cut down every single tree for firewood, leaving us in a shadeless oven of a landscape.  The colours of the young rice and the contours of the terraces were beautiful, but they were also reminders of the natural beauty and diversity that has been lost as Madagascar’s population has mushroomed over the past few decades.  We got to Camp Meva, a rather ramshackle camp owned by JB Trekking, at 11:30.  The heat was intense, and after a quick picnic lunch, Terri and I decided to walk uphill to the fancier digs at Camp Catta for a swim and to look for ring-tailed lemurs.  The “eco” swimming pool was delightfully cool but not terribly clean, but it was a great way to beat the heat. 

Eventually we hauled ourselves out of the green water and went off to look for the ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) that live in the area.  It didn’t take long, with the help of one of the Camp Catta employees, to locate a troop of lemurs right in the hotel grounds, and we spent a very happy hour following them around and photographing them.  They don’t have the ethereal beauty of the silky sifakas that we saw in Marojejy, but they are very cute, very active and love to cross open ground with a strange sideways skipping gait, so it weas a lot of fun to take pictures of them.  We watched them marking trees vigorously with scent using their paws, first rubbing their paws up and down their tails where their scent glands are located.  I felt (not for the first time in Madagascar) that I was in a BBC Nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough.  The mothers carrying babies on their backs were of course the cutest photo subjects.  We returned to Camp Meva buzzing with excitement from seeing the lemurs.

Ring-tailed mother and child

We slept well that night and awoke early, ready for a long, hot slog out to the road and a crowded taxi brousse, but a phone call while we were breakfasting told Tovo, our guide, that another trekking party from JB Trekking was on its way to Camp Meva in a 4x4 and the truck would give us a lift back to town once it had dropped off its trekkers.  We were doubly fortunate:  not only did it save us a rather grim walk along the main track, it also gave us more time at Meva where we got to watch a troop of ring-tailed lemurs walk right up to the main building, jump through the windows and start licking and chewing whitewash off the walls.  We had wondered why the walls looked so chipped and ragged, and now we knew:  it was the lemurs!

Ring-tailed lemurs licking the paint off the walls

Apparently the whitewash contains salt and minerals that they crave.  We watched them gnawing away at the walls for a good 45 minutes before they finally gave up and headed off towards the nearby village.  As they were crossing an open field, a domestic dog suddenly raced out in pursuit of them and they split up, two young males heading in one direction and a mother and infant in the other.  We saw the two males sitting high in a tree in the village as we passed in our luxurious truck, but saw no sign of the mother and child.  The two males were calling plaintively and looking around for their troopmates, and we hoped that the dog hadn’t caught and killed the pair.  As with most species of lemur, the ring-tailed lemurs are fairly rare, with a fragmented habitat and falling numbers, so the death of even a couple of them is significant.

Ring-tailed lemurs at Camp Catta

We drove back to town with the owner of JB, his driver and our guide Tovo.  It was a quick, comfortable ride (the road on this side of the park is far less abysmal than on the other side) and quite soon we found ourselves back at the Relais d’Andringitra, tucking into more fine French cuisine and then taking a well-earned siesta.  That evening over dinner we made the acquaintance of Allegra, a fisheries biologist from Alaska, and had a pleasant evening comparing notes on where we had been in Madagascar.

Intense colours in the Tsaranoro Valley

Ring-tailed lemurs fleeing an oncoming dog

It was hard to tear ourselves away from this little oasis of good food, and the next morning found us lingering over breakfast and internet, trying to book accommodation for our upcoming sojourn in Swaziland and trying to upload photos.  Finally by 10:30 we tore ourselves away, found a taxi brousse back to Fianaratsoa and another one to Ranomafana, arriving late in the afternoon after one of the slowest taxi-brousse rides yet, albeit through spectacular scenery.  We found rooms in the Hotel Manja just in time for sunset beers and were in bed pretty early.

It was at this point that our onward progress ran into the sands of lassitude.  We had planned to spend a couple of days in Ranomafana, seeing the lemurs, before continuing north to do some community-based trekking.  Instead we woke up the next day thinking that we wanted to minimize the number of hours and the number of days that we spent on Madagascar public transport, and that Ranomafana seemed like a beautiful place to kick back for the remaining week of our trip before heading back to Antananarivo and our flight back to South Africa.  The trekking option was going to involve a lot more taxis-brousses into the back of beyond, and after six weeks of taxis-brousses this was a prospect too horrible to contemplate.  I don’t know if it’s my advanced age, or the years of travelling by bicycle, or the past six months of comfortable travel driving ourselves around Africa in our beloved Stanley, but the hours spent contorted inside a taxi-brousse, crawling past scenery without stopping (or, often, even being able to see it) really sapped my will to continue exploring.  Madagascar has so much that is worth seeing and experiencing, but unless you’re willing to shell out the big bucks to have someone drive you around, or unless you’re willing to pedal yourself around on a bicycle, it’s a bear to travel around by public transport. 

Wonderful chameleon in Ranomafana town

Having made up our mind to stay, we were in no hurry to race off to the park, especially given the unsettled weather.  We spent our first day wandering lazily along the town (strung untidily along the bottom of a river valley tumbling down off the central highlands).  It was a small hot spring spa in colonial times, and the French infrastructure still exists, albeit mostly in a state of overgrown decrepitude.  The old suspension bridge over the river lies in ruins, with a jerry-rigged temporary bridge meandering beside it.  Many old French buildings associated with the hot springs lie in dereliction behind the modern springs, a complex that was closed that day for cleaning.  We decided to visit the next day when the water would be at its cleanest.  Near the bridge, we spotted a huge, spectacularly-coloured chameleon climbing a tree, but before we could take pictures a disagreeable old woman grabbed the chameleon, said it was hers and demanded money for photos.  We walked off, Terri giving the lady a piece of her mind, and made our way back to the Manja.

The next day was devoted to a long visit to the hot springs.  We got there early and had the hot water swimming pool to ourselves for most of the morning.  It was almost too hot to swim lengths, and we had to climb out from time to time to cool off in the shade of the trees, but it was a pleasant place to read, to watch birds and to do yoga.

 

Ranomafana butterfly

While there, we struck up a conversation with a Swiss guy and a Malagasy woman, Cyril and Mushu, who wanted to share the expense of a guide to the park the next day.  We agreed to the idea, and the next morning Terri, the guide and I were crawling into a crowded passing taxi-brousse for the 10 km drive uphill to the main gate of Ranomafana National Park, where we met the other two travellers waiting for us outside their accommodation.  We paid for admission and the guide (pretty steep, at 65,000 MGA per person for admission, and MGA 75,000 split between us for the guide) then set off into the park, past the cheeky “community levy” desk which extorted a small fee from all visitors on top of the large fee we had just paid for the park ticket and guide.  Terri was not amused.

 

Golden bamboo lemurs in Ranomafana National Park

Ranomafana’s claim to fame is the presence of a couple of species of very rare lemurs, the golden bamboo lemur (Hapalemur aureus) and the greater bamboo lemur (Prolemur simus).  We were hopeful of encountering both of them, but had to content ourselves with the golden species.  We had several close encounters with these gentle creatures who are studied by scientists curious as to how they are able to get rid of the cyanide present in their diet of bamboo shoots.  They were tough to photograph, as we were always looking up through dark branches towards dark lemurs silhouetted against a bright sky, but in the end we got a couple of decent shots.  The same can’t be said about the other new species we spotted, the Milne-Edwards’ sifaka (Propithecus edwardsi) and the critically endangered black-and-white ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata), which we saw in short bursts as they moved rapidly across the forest canopy.  We spotted a few chameleons and saw lots of beautiful forest, but it was a rather low-key finale to our Madagascar wildlife experience.  Our guide Angelin was also a bit of a loudmouth, so we weren’t broken-hearted to say goodbye to him.  We walked downhill back to town along the main road, an hour and a half of trudgery that made Terri’s injured leg pretty sore. 

The last few days passed in a lazy haze, with some blog post writing, some running and lots of watching the huge and amazingly coloured Parson’s chameleon who lived in the hedge outside the Manja Hotel restaurant.  We were sad when he finally disappeared on our last day.  We also had the good fortune to meet Jannico Kelk and Jasmine Vink, an Australian couple who are passionate herpetologists (“we love herping”, according to Jasmine).  I had seen some of Jasmine’s amazing photos on Instagram, and it was great to meet the two of them in person.  They had just come from Andasibe, and from India and Bangladesh before that, and they were looking forward to lots of night-time exploration.  Seeing their exquisite photos, I realized that although I’m quite pleased with the wildlife photos I’ve taken on this trip, there are many levels of proficiency above me to strive for in the future.  (You can see some of their photos here and here, if you’re curious.)  Terri and I also ventured out to the botanical gardens just outside of town, where we saw a number of rare Madagascar species, including one that has exactly one known tree in the wild (the one we were looking at).  It’s amazing, and rather sobering, to realize that there are so many species just being discovered, or still unknown to science, at the exact moment when so much of Madagascar’s unique forests are being cut down rapidly. 

The amazing Parson's chameleon in the garden of the Hotel Manja

Farmer bringing his crop to market in Ranomafana

And then, suddenly, it was December 18^th and we were on our way back towards our flight.  That afternoon we sprang for a private transfer to Fianaratsoa (MGA 100,000 well spent, although the first guy whom we had reserved cancelled about 20 minutes before our scheduled departure, leaving us scrambling to find a replacement).  In Fianar, we stayed at the bizarre Soafia Hotel, a gigantic Chinese-themed complex that seemed half-deserted and half-derelict.  We had dinner that night in the restaurant, where we made up half of the evening’s clientele and where we were told that they had no water and no beer in stock.  Terri got cross with the waitress and finally they found some bottled water, but it was a strange experience.

December 19^th found us on the “luxury” Sonaotra+ bus back to Tana.  Again we sprang for 3 seats to have more space, and again it was a long but reasonably comfortable drive across the endless hills and valleys of the central highlands, binge-listening to podcasts and admiring the emerald green of the rice fields.  It took absolutely forever to fight our way through traffic the last 10 km into central Tana, and more time to fight our way back to the Hotel Sole, our oasis away from the hideousness of Tana’s mean streets.

Mother and child ring-tailed lemurs

December 20^th we lingered over breakfast, packed, wrote blog posts and sorted photos and napped, ready for the sleep-deprivation exercise of the coming night flight.  We dined as usual at the Taj Mahal, an Indian restaurant that had become our local hangout for its excellent cuisine and low prices.  At 10 pm we caught a taxi through the dark and somewhat menacing streets of the capital out to the airport and caught our 2:40 am flight to Nairobi, followed by our connection to Johannesburg the next morning. 

In total we spent six weeks in Madagascar, and we should probably have spent longer if we wanted to see all the amazing animals and plants and landscapes of this huge island.  However, as we had to admit to ourselves by the end, we were burned out by local transport and ready to get out of the country.  I loved being able to see so many species of lemur (23 in total), and the hiking in Marojejy and Andrangitra was a particular highlight.  Seeing the aye-aye and the other species in Daraina was a lot of fun, while swimming with whale sharks off Nosy Be was a wonderful experience.  If I went back to Madagascar, I would want to have my own transport:  a car, a motorcycle or a bicycle.  I would want to explore the remote northeast coast and get down to the south.  However, I think that we got a reasonable taste of the country’s diversity, and I didn’t fall in love with Madagascar enough to want to return immediately.  There are still a lot of countries left for me to visit in the world, and returning to Madagascar would be a diversion from that mission.  I also didn’t fall in love with the Malagasy people or the food, and I really loathed Antananarivo (not quite as much as Dhaka or Jakarta or Manila, but pretty close) and the fact that we had to pass through Tana so often didn’t fill me with great joy.  I was very glad that we visited Madagascar and that we had enough time to see so many highlights, but it might well end up being a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Definitely one of the cuter species of lemur!