Our adventure started at 5am on a Sunday morning. Eager and bleary eyed we slumped on the bench at the taxi brousse station waiting for our noble steed to be loaded up. Then it was only 400 odd miles and 36 hours on a heavily pot holed dirt track until our first destination of Ambalavao.
Our mobile instrument of torture
My best sardine impression
I’ve read a lot about taxi brousse journeys and I was fairly apprehensive. I’d heard nightmare stories of breaking down miles from anywhere and having to wait days for parts or until another taxi brousse passed by. Music screeching constantly, screaming children, livestock everywhere, crazy drivers, vomit and other bodily fluids flying around with the jostling of the truck and four people plus children squeezed onto a seat designed for two people. I think I was right to be a little apprehensive!
Our first 36 hour epic ride took us through the spiny desert of the south in to the granitic highlands of central Madagascar. It was eventful as we’d expected. Along the way we broke down twice (problems which were rectified fairly quickly), a kid almost threw up on Lisa, we picked up a woman with a broken leg, we didn’t sleep at all (no head rests, very bumpy ride and relentless very loud music) and we completely lost all feeling in our hips, knees and feet. I remember waking up wondering what the squashy thing was under my feet. I turned on my head torch to discover that the eight children sharing the back seat with their extended family were all bedded down under our chair and I had been stomping on the faces of one of the kids, oops! I have never felt so cramped for so long.
Having spent one night in Ambalavao we headed off to Andringitra national park for the day. It was an amazing day and was even better than I’d hoped. Sadly we were there in tavy season (the time of year when local people burn the land to ready it for planting and grazing) so the air was really hazy and the views not as good as they could’ve been but it was still incredible.
First glimpse
Walking in
From Ambalavao we headed north in a wonderful taxi brousse (we got to sit in the front!) to Fianarantsoa, Madagascar’s second city, where were going to organise a trip to Ranomafana national park. We got mobbed at the taxi brousse station and managed to get a ride within the hour which was lucky as Fianar station isn’t a particularly nice place to hang around.
Taxi brousse ride number 3 was the second worst one we had. Shoehorned into the back of a minibus, we hurtled along to Ranomafana. Just when we thought there wasn’t space for a newborn child, let alone an adult, seven grown men would somehow fold themselves into the bus and off we’d go again. Very very unpleasant, especially when the man sat next to us was obviously very drunk and reeked of sick.
But we got to Ranomafana in one piece and it was as beautiful as I remember. We had one night there with a night walk and a 6 hour trek in the day to try and find lemurs for Lisa. Sadly, we had a seriously crap guide. We seemed to know more than he did and we didn’t get to see the black and white lemurs Lisa wanted to see. Very frustrating, especially when a group came back about 10 minutes after us saying they’d seen them five minutes after we’d left!
From Ranomafana it was back to Fianar in a wonderful 4x4. The ride itself was smooth, peaceful and relaxing until I felt something substantial on my head. In the back of the car were several huge bunches of bananas. A huge spider had been lured out from the bananas and taken up residence on my hat. Lisa kindly flicked it off on to the man sat next to me and we spent the rest of the journey terrified that it was going to make a return and crawl up our trouser legs.
On arriving at Fianar we were told that our taxi brousse back to Fort Dauphin had been brought forward from the scheduled time of 6pm the following day to 2am that night. After a manic few days this was not the news we were wanting to hear. We had a leisurely day of bumming around Fianar planned. Instead, we were back at the taxi brousse station at 2am to be told that the bus wasn’t actually coming til 4am. Great.
Eventually it arrived, we squeezed in and we were on our way home.
The ride home was awful. I have never gone so many days consecutively with so little sleep. I felt like the living dead and lost the will to live after about 6 hours. It was so hot, so crowded, so noisy and I was so tired, and the best was still to come!
At about 10pm (18 hours in) we were stopped in the middle of nowhere to say that there was some trouble on the road (still don’t know what that elusive trouble was) and we had to wait til morning before we could continue. A whole 8 hours stuck in a taxi brousse and not even moving anywhere! So we slept, ate crackers, played eye spy and discussed where we would like to live and how we’d decorate to pass the time.
As the sun was just starting to rise we lumbered off again. In all, it took us 40 hours to get back to Fort Dauphin. I was completely broken, starving hungry, coated in sweat, dust and god knows what else and desperately in need of a wee! Never have I ever felt so delighted to stand up in all my life!
We made it!
So we did it. 7 days, 7 taxi brousse rides. It was a hilarious experience but I won’t be doing it again in a hurry.
