Daniele Somenzi's Madagascar

Madagascar and Mauritius March 2008

A trip made with Marco Meneghini, my chance travelling companion, only 3 trips made with him, but this one to Madagascar was really last minute. For him an escape to forget.

We left from Malpensa with an Air Italy Boeing 767, with a stop at Fiumicino to board other passengers, non-stop to Madagascar at Nosy Be where we arrived the next morning; then the plane was going on to Mauritius.

The seats on the Boeing 767 ex-Britannia are not very reclinable, and don't have adjustable headrests, as a result I slept badly, even though as every time I put in my earplugs and the eye mask for the dark.

This is my 553rd scheduled flight. The stewardesses wear a nice uniform, green skirt and white blouse and red hat, like the Italian flag.

On arrival we come down the steps onto the runway; the biggest plane landing at this small airport is precisely ours. The first impact is with the climate, hot and humid, typical of tropical places where there's also the risk of catching malaria; in fact I took my Lariam before leaving.

Marco speaks French as his mother tongue, so I let him talk since French is spoken here. We get into a taxi and have ourselves taken to some hotels; the first is too beautiful and expensive for us. Nosy Be, moreover, we discover is the most expensive place in all of Madagascar.

The taxi driver stops and shows us a beautiful green chameleon so big I'd never seen one; that little rascal with those cunning little eyes darting here and there.

In the end we find a kind of little guesthouse at the edge of the beach. 60 € for a double, not that cheap. But we're tired of looking and we like the place. It also has satellite TV that lets me watch the Formula 1 GP.

Our room has air conditioning; it's nice when it's on, less so when in the middle of the night, no one knows why, it switched off and the humidity woke us up.

We find Klark, a local guide who speaks Italian, who organises the following days for us with various excursions.

The first was the following day: by boat he took us to the little island of Nosy Komba where we saw lemurs, snakes and turtles. How nice lemurs are, they even came onto my shoulder to eat a banana I had in my hand.

Then we moved to another little island where we swam and did an excursion to the local lighthouse. Bats a kilo heavy put on a fine display, they looked like Boeing 747s, flying in search of a fruit to eat.

We ate with another small group of tourists all on the ground, some local delicacies based on fish and fruit. Back on the main island of Nosy Be with the usual motorboat, we organise a 3-day, 2-night trip to mainland Madagascar in the national park and then up to Diego Suarez.

The next day we leave the hotel and set off, Marco and I with the guide Klark, heading for the harbour of the ugly local town. A fast motorboat takes us in 20 minutes to the mainland, where a 4x4 with a driver awaits us and stays with us the whole time. The road is immediately dreadful, jolting galore for some twenty km, and that's just the appetiser, who knows what's next. Instead, once we reach the tarmacked main road, things improved. Shortly after we arrive at the national park, where we finally get out of the car, we have lunch in a little mini restaurant, and then we enter on foot. The heat under the very strong sun, but in the forest it was fine. We spot a nocturnal lemur in a hole inside a tree. It stared at us with 2 big eyes. There are many chameleons, snakes too, and from a distance even a group of wild lemurs.

The guide also takes us to a place with a big hole where a river disappears into the bowels of the earth, but only when it rains hard; then another suggestive lunar landscape full of rocks made of points, impossible to walk on. The locals have invented many legends about that place.

We set off again to reach Diego Suarez where we'll stay 2 nights.

Some walking in the town, naturally we're talking about an African town with few very old French cars and little shops run by Chinese. They, like Italian restaurants, are everywhere in the world just like crows.

The next day's programme was very tempting. An Italian cruise ship had arrived in the harbour, the Costa Marina, which had disembarked dozens of Italian tourists in the town and also on the excursion we were about to do. To the beach with a wooden boat, under the sun and the low tide, to the other side of the river where we got off and walked for a km among the greenery, then crossing to the other side where another boat with some twenty people awaited us to take us to the little island further out in the Indian Ocean. There we kept a proper distance from the Italians of the Costa Marina and ate grilled fish caught with a harpoon as we arrived.

The swim in the sea was a relief from the heat. Beach and sun. Until in the afternoon, when the tide was high, we set off for the return; unfortunately a downpour hit us, and I feared for my camera, certainly not about getting wet, so I wedged myself below at the front of the boat in the only dry spot.

What an adventure.

At the hotel a nice shower and ready for a short walk and a game of billiards before going to sleep.

We set off again for the return towards Nosy Be, 400 km from Diego Suarez, which we reach in the afternoon dodging chameleons here and there on the road. The usual little boat, and who do we find at anchor? The Costa Marina again, which during the night had moved there.

Marco and I then return to the usual hotel and decide to spend the remaining two days, those of Easter, hiring two 125 motorbikes, which allowed us to see the island far and wide. We also went to the Alpitour village where all the Italians who were on our flight were corralled.

On Easter day the beach in front of our hotel fills with black people from everywhere, a day for making new acquaintances, they walk up and down the 2 km beach, until towards evening the high tide pushed them away.

The two bags full of used things brought from Italy to give away or swap with the locals are now transformed into little souvenirs that I've brought home.

The Air Italy plane was on time; we ask to be able to get off at Fiumicino rather than Malpensa from where we'd left, for Marco who lives in Grosseto it's better and for me too, since I saved another transfer from Rome to Milan and then it would have been too late to catch the train for Il Cinquale.

bye