NDBT

Hanging around the hostel today mostly. I got up early to double check how to get to the aquarium, only to realize that there were 2 (possibly no) buses running on the route I needed because today is foundation day. Luckily Andy – a girl at the hostel here, said the Sydney aquarium is much better, so I don’t feel so bad. I went grocery shopping instead, to get some fruit and sandwich fixings for the train ride. Finished Alias Grace (I felt like the ending wasn’t her strongest, but it was entertaining and thought-provoking otherwise). Reading my new E. George; hopefully I’ll only have 3 books with me on the train. Been feeling a little out of sorts, so perhaps its just as well I didn’t go traveling major distances. I’m excited for the train journey and getting back into visiting museums and such. Another girl at the hostel said Adelaide is her favorite city in Oz, so we’ll see how it goes. I’m still trying to decide whether to splurge on a tour of kangaroo island. hmmm….

Cleolinda posted this:

http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=TYV15043&sop=1&cat_sc=7B&cat_pg=004#LargeImage which fits in nicely with the title of my last blog entry. The site also has a fizgig for sale, but as cleolinda pointed out, it only has one row of teeth – so what’s the point?

Belgian troops deployed to battle marauding caterpillars.

(http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070601/sc_afp/belgiumhealthmilitary_070601185536)

I love this headline. I also love the idea of guys in the Belgian army getting psyched for deployment… then finding out it’s against caterpillars.

An interesting article on how more people are following box office reports (I personally enjoy box office mojo, myself):

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/2007-06-02-boxoffice_N.htm?csp=34

And an interesting bit of trivia, from a really fabulous film: “American Psycho: Two scenes featured unexpected improvisation by Christian Bale. When Bateman is jumping rope, he starts to skip and cross his jump rope as a schoolgirl would. Bale surprised director Mary Harron even more by starting to dance as Bateman was preparing to kill Paul Allen. That time, she says in interviews and the commentary, she collapsed with laughter.” More fun trivia here:

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/12817577.html

Hee!: Léon: During the filming involving all of the police cars on the street, a man ran from a store he had just robbed. When he encountered the movie set by accident, he saw all of the “police” and gave himself up to a bunch of uniformed extras.

Oh no: Sleeping Beauty: Princess Aurora’s long, thin, willowy body shape was inspired by that of Audrey Hepburn. Darn it! That’s my favorite disney princess movie (granted, mostly for Maleficent), but I hate to think that she was inspired by a malnourished anorectic. Not that it’s surprising for disney, but still…

Hey – these titles need some spice. Where were we?
I think it was the 20th of April, Patrick and I were taking a much needed break in Tana. We mostly ran errands all day; the post office, tourism office, booking our last nights at the Isoraka, etc. We had a picnic dinner on the balcony of the Moonlight, and wrote postcards. At this point in my notes it says, “I miss my ipod”. ’nuff said.

21st – After another early morning at the taxi brousse station. I had heard horror stories about this leg of the ride, so I took a dramamine, which I had never had before, and promptly passed out. When I did come to we were driving through lots of pretty forests. The sort of palm fronds, wood hut scenery that is stereotypically ‘African’. We got a flat tire on our way there, and hung out on the side of the road with some guys running a food stand who seemed to dislike us for speaking English. Our hotel that night (the Salaam) was the only crap hotel we got on the whole journey – it was blistering hot, the filthy in-room shower was separated by a flimsy partition, there were roaches, and the one fan installed on the wall rattled, screeched, and threatened to come off and decapitate us in our sleep. We went out to get money, only for me to find my visa card didn’t work (I had been changing euro till then). So after a scare and a long phone call to the US, things were sorted out. We got fabulous won ton soup for dinner. (Soup chinoise was the local speciality).

22- Another early brousse. We were conned into picking a not full one, because they started the engine up any time someone was near. When we packed in about 25 people (thank god Patrick and I were up front) we had a good journey. The roads and driver were both good, despite frequent passenger changes. The scenery the whole was very ‘tropical-African-paradise’; lots of palm trees and really beautiful, especially the closer we got to Soaniera-Ivongo. We had one detour to a village a bit out of the way to drop off some tin. The vazaha in the front were clearly a novelty. Once we reached S-Ivongo, 3 guys chased us down to arrange our passage on the boat, visiting the gendarmerie to register our names for the passage, and got us bungalos out the back of a restaurant, very close to the waterfront. The bungalos were quite nice. We met up with two Germans; Andy and Rabiyah who decided to cross with us. Patrick and I wandered around the village for a couple of hours; I had the Rocky Horror line “even smiling makes my face ache” stuck in my head, because we smiled and said bonjour to absolutely everybody. We passed a church, wandered along a beach, picked up a stray dog, saw a defense post, and wandered to another beach where we attracted a troop of children who sang to us. They actually burst into unanimous song and dance at the sight of us; they were all about 5-7, I’d guess?

Back at the bungalo/restaurant (overrun with kitties), we had an absolutely amazing sunset over the rolling hills across the bay from us. The whole place felt very undiscovered. Then we had a blackout during dinner, and there seemed to be a village gathering nextdoor to us, who sang for hours into the night.

23rd – we got up early to go down to the boat. We were booked onto a local fisherman’s boat. Once we and our stuff was loaded, we turned around to find practically the whole village walking down to the docks. We couldn’t figure out what was going on (saying goodbye to the vazaha?), until a truck came down and several men pulled a coffin out. Then the whole procession came down to the boat, and installed the coffin, wreath, and cross on the boat. It was certainly different. The captain (a seriously salty old sea-dog type) and his crew, meanwhile, were frantically preparing to launch, which culminated in the captain getting some rum, sprinkling it around the boat while muttering, and then sprinkling the navigational controls and swearing as the electrical equiptment sparked. Awesome.

We slowly pulled out of the bay, but past the harbor was a sandbar where we had to go through some serious swells to get into the open ocean to cross to ile ste marie. These wouldn’t have been so nerve racking if the captain and crew weren’t praying really loudly every time we hit one. Once we were though that; the rest of the crossing was fine, albeit very hot and it was a little weird to be sitting next to a coffin.

When we got to the island, it turned out there was no boat going to Mananara (*sniff* oh well – next time I know how to get there), and Patrick and I went to La Baleine, which had a bunch of dogs hanging out next to our bungalo, which was right on the waterfront. (There were also some chickens on the small beach, which was kind of an odd sight). We walked the several km into town, and 3 of the dogs followed us the entire way, despite the heat. We went to the Pirate cemetery, which was kind of cool. We had to cross some planks and rocks to get up there The island was used as a pirate hangout for a while. Most of the guys, however, seemed to have been knocked out by malaria pretty quickly. (Much of our tour (by Gregory) consisted of ‘this is pierre. He was a pirate. He died of malaria. This is marie. She was a pirate’s wife. She died of malaria.’)

All of ste. Marie was really lovely. Much like Ifaty – it was all very ‘resort bungalos on a tropical paradise.’ Except with more vegetation. (Go check this photo out: http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2670138680053218738WDomAV) We found a restaurant that was open air on the main street of the main town (sort of a one horse town, really). They served the most divine pineapple juice and played mtv at the bar. We had crab back at La Baleine, which took us about two hours to finish, but was very delicious.

24th – I spent much of the next day in bed. Patrick had gone diving. The day before at the cemetery, Gregory had taken us to get coconuts. A guy knocked them down with a stick, hacked open a hole for the juice, and then took part of the husk to make a spoon for the meat. Although I hate coconut-flavored things, it was super delicious (the juice was so refreshing after haking in the blazing sun). Turns out though, that my stomach did not like coconut. So I borrowed Patrick’s 2 books about templar knights and read them; in the bungalo, in the hammock, in the restaurant. It was lovely to sit still and recuperate after all that traveling. We had dinner with Merrill (peace corps), Adonys (Malagasy, who used to be a dancer for the lion king (he met Julie Taymor!!!) and cruises) and his partner, whose name I’m spacing on, who used to cook for cruise lines. We had a drink at the expat bar that serves the really good juice, and then dinner at a seafood place that was a new place (delicious). Adonys and his partner had just bought land on the east side of the island and were going to build on it.

25th – Slept in again. Had breakfast with the dogs and walked to endemika park (with the dogs following), which we got to as it closed for a two hour lunch break. We walked around looking for a place for lunch, and settled on a place named the shark. We asked for fanta. Didn’t have any. Asked for bonbon anglaise. Didn’t have any. Asked for, and finally got, sprite. Asked for food. Didn’t have any. Paid for our drinks and – wouldn’t you know? – she didn’t have any change. WHY ARE YOU OPEN IF YOU HAVE NOTHING??

Once Endemika reopened, it was well worth the wait. Our guide didn’t speak English, but he had a small booklet printed up with facts about the animals in English. We saw lots of chameleons, and our guide fed some of them, like the Panther, so we could watch its tongue. A few snakes, birds, and 2 lemur cages of rescued domestic lemurs, that we got to go into to socialize with them. Again – I’m sorry they had to rescue domesticated animals, particularly when they are endangered, but it was fun to have a lemur crawling and leaping all over you. We caught a ride back (I felt so bad to leave the dog behind that had followed us – but he knew the couple of km back).

26th – I caught a truck at 4:30am to the harbor, where I ended up getting a ride with the owner of La Baleine back to S-Ivongo. He had a speedboat, which he had going at such a fast pace I was sure it was going to flip up and over. It was raining in town, but I caught a brousse to tamatave that left within five minutes of my getting there. I must’ve had some super-good karma going or something. We hit a chicken on the way. Oh – and on the RN5 along the beach (you could see the ocean), there was a giant wooden statue of santa claus on the side of the road. So Weird. When I reached Tamatave, I got a ticket to go to Andasibe. Hung out with the guys in the brousse office over lunch time until the brousse was going to leave. Then, just as the brousse was almost ready to leave, someone mentioned the fact that there were no ATMs there (so NOT something I’m used to), so I arranged to pass Andasibe and spend the evening in… hmm… I think it was called Morondava? Another flat tire on the way, and it took about 6 hours to get there. The scenery was great; lots of lush valleys, and flowering plants, and quite a few fruit stalls on the way. We also saw young boys holding up animals on the side of teh road to sell as food; tenrecs, eels, fish, etc. Got money out at Morondava – no problem, and had more great wonton soup.

27th – Got a local bus to Andasibe (very slow – I think walking might have gone quicker), my hotel was RIGHT on the reserve. There were lots of bungalos, a small clearning where I set up my tent, then a small stream, and the forest on the other side was the reserve. Just after setting my tent up, we actually saw a troop of Indiris up in the trees. Indiris are the park’s speciality – they are the larges living lemur, and have no tail and round ears, so they look like giant teddy bears. I had lunch in the restaurant, which had a balcony overlooking the reserve (and a cat that claimed my lap). Then I walked to the reserve, found a guide for a night and a day walk, Zenu, and walked to the village. There wasn’t much to see in the village, so I came back (the walk was lovely though). On the way I was accosted by a group of children demanding pens and sweets. Oh – and I bought myself a souvenir safari jacket, because it was too awesome to resist. Back at the hotel I had a THB and talked with Roland, who was a British guy that worked in earth building. That night, Zenu and I went walking along the road with our torches and saw several chameleons, a mouse lemur, some common brown lemurs eating in a tree, and waht might have been a dwarf lemur, but was too far away to tell.

28 – had breakfast (overlooking the forest again). Then Zenu and I went for a long walk in the reserve. We saw lots of lizards and some birds (a blue coua, a paradise flycatcher, a bulbul, and some kind of turtledove). Then a brown lemur, and then we found a troop of Indiris! We watched them for quite a while, but the longer we were there, the more tour groups that found them, so we eventually moved on. They were very cool though; quite large, they could leap astounding distances, and they grazed a lot at the tops of trees. Then we saw a woolly lemur (avahi), a grey bamboo lemur, and then I FOUND another Indiri group. Haha! After a while though, my guide got tired of walking and didn’t want to go further, which kind of spoiled things (I didn’t give him a tip). But I was very lucky to see 4 species in Andasibe – lots of people only see 1 or 2, and that isn’t including the night walk. That afternoon some brown lemurs crossed the stream and came into the hotel grounds to eat the guavas planted around the property. I met a couple of Americans who were working in Madagascar; Katie and Alana and talked with them for the rest of the night.

29th – (happy birthday to me!) Caught a brousse with a guy who retired early and had been travelling for 7 years. This is not counting the 6 years he travelled around Asia after leaving university. It was very inspiring, and he told me lots about all the places he’s been to. The ride back was a bit queasy (I had forgone the dramamine), but I was okay. It was upsetting to see how little forest was left outside of the reserve. Getting back into Tana, I checked back in at the Isoraka. Most things were closed (it being sunday), but I treated myself to a milkshake and some quiche at the cafe attached to the Colbert (a hangout for homesick expats and very posh – the Colbert is the 4 star place to stay in Tana). There was a concert going on just outside the Isoraka when I got back. That night the city blacked out, and we were all given candles by reception (all together now!).

30th – Spent most of the day running errands before leaving. Had Italian for lunch, burned photo CDs, did laundry, caught up on internet, and had dinner with Katie and Alana, and another Katie (who works for the world bank) at Sakamanga (which was a really great restaurant – but packed wall to wall with expats – all the people seemed to know each other). They traded lots of notes about trying to work for American deadlines in a country that doesn’t really adhere to the same time schedule, having long distance relationships, forming a positive relationship with your intestinal parasites, etc…

31st – got to the airport early, and watched mythbusters in French (funny how blowing up things translates well). Then flew to Mauritius – and I’m all caught up!!! YAY!! I probably haven’t explained everything particularly well – so feel free to leave questions.

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