Madagascar Paddle
The paddling in Madagascar was probably secondary to seeing the people, landscapes and lemurs, but overall it was a joy. The paddling part of the trip did not start until I had been on the island for a week so I was ready to go. The group first met in the capital, Tana. I ate dinner with Sandra and two other customers. I was immediately suspect of one of them when after hearing what I am doing travel/life-wise that I will be good for the other guy because he is a little lost in life. Of course, the other person was not present. I told her that I didn’t think my situation would help anyone else and I wondered where she came off talking about someone else who she had known for less than a day. She also talked on and on almost all about herself and her glorious kayaking historywhich also did not endear her to me. Another member refered to her as the monologue lady. She reminded me in almost all details to a woman on the Morocco trip that drove me nuts so being only three in the future from that adventure I was disturbed. We spent the first 2-3 days in Tana, driving to Perinet NP where we stayed and saw lemurs, driving on to the coast and flying to the small town of Maronsetra where Pierre met us with the kayaks.
We had mostly double kayaks and in the morning teams were announced. I would have bet $100 I would get stuck with the only person I did not want to get stuck with. Sure enough, I would have won that bet except I didn’t have one and therefore there was not to be any up side 🙂 So me and monologue lady took our boat out with me in the back as the main steerer since I controled the rudder. I immediately felt the boats were very tippy and would take time to get used. Monologue lady had a quirky stroke with one side much stronger than the other so this added to the instability. The boats also had no back support and this did not make them comfortable at all. I just tried to get used to it as we went down the river headed for the bay that we were suppose to paddle along its peninsula side to the Cap Masoala where the bay meets the Indian Ocean. We ran into wind-whipped sea when we got to the bay. Monologue lady was telling me how well I was doing to the point where I knew her over-exuberance during an easy two kilometer paddle would be a big problem as soon as we met challenges. We had to cut across the top of the bay near shore in order to get to the peninsula and this was parallel to the waves. I decided to try and do exactly what Pierre our leader was doing. Monologue lady disagreed and told me we should head out away from the shore and let the winds carry us back in later. This made no sense to me and was exactly what Pierre and Sandra said we should not do so I was not listening to her plan. She became fairly indignant soon and was yelling at me just minutes after we started. I was doing everything wrong. I just remained totally quiet, focused on what Pierre was doing and envisioned smacking old monologue off the head with my paddle. On and on she went for an hour. She was all freaked out about us flipping which a couple of boats had already done and I thought we should just get wet from the start to get past that stupidity. We were all taking a water break when my water bottle got loose on my boat. Pierre told us to come over to his and he would get it. I was focused on getting us there and forgot about an incoming wave and we flipped. The flip was definitely my mistake. Maybe subconscious??? Well, the water was warm and it felt great. We flipped the boat back over quickly since Pierre was right there to help and got in pretty well. Monologue lady’s water camera had come off her PFD because it was not tied right and it sunk. I could have felt bad, but I did not.
The strangest thing happened not too much longer after enduring more yelling. I started to get sharp pains down my legs. I adjusted my position and started to think the rudder peddles must be set at the wrong position for my legs. Soon the pain was excruciating and it was running up through my arms as well as my legs. I was a bit freaked because I had never felt such pain and this was just the start. While going through the spasms, monologue lady continued her abuse. I got Sandra’s attention and told her what was wrong. She said we’ll make changes to the peddles when we get to the shore. We continued on, but I could barely hold the paddle with spasms going through my body so I told Sandra that we have a big problem. They immediately rafted all the boats and had me lie down. After the spasms stopped, I got in Pierre’s boat and he paddled us into shore. All I could think about was the pain and that I might have to abandon the trip. Onshore, someone commented on all the abuse I was taking and suggested the spasms were due to the tension that caused. I didn’t think so, but I was not sure. Meanwhile, monologue lady was admitting after having another partner that this was difficult. I paddled on with Pierre and soon discovered how good he is at commanding the boat. He took our boat right through the surf and we were going again. Unfortunately, my pain came back. We tried different positions, but I realized that I could not stay seated in an upright position and the bad positioning would bring the pain back. Halfway to the first campsite, I had to abandon the kayak and ride in the motorboat. Uggh.
Another guest had brought seats for the ground and we tried those two days later and that seemed to do the trick so I was able to paddle and not abandon all as I feared for two days. The rest of the trip I was partnered with Pierre and I really enjoyed that. Also, for the rest of the trip I basically avoided and did not speak to monologue lady. We all learned that she was a huge complainer about everything and a real drag on all. She had diahheria at one point and told us that she never gets it while traveling yet she went on about all her wild world travels and I had to comment that I found it difficult to believe that she has traveled so much and not had any of the normal illness problems. She maintained her story and I decided that she may have done the travel, but it was certainly maintained in a bubble (i.e. she never really left the USA and got into the countries she visited). Money can afford you that “luxury” I suppose. Best to get down and dirty with the locals and have some of the side effects so I believe.
Our first day after the paddle was spent hiking through a village called Nivana. This is where we got our first real taste of Malagasy living especially from the Masoala perspective where life is really good due to an abundance of food and no over-population. The people were amazingly warm and gracious. Their little market featured fish and other food from the sea as well as local produce and staples like rice. The Malagasy people eat upwards of one kilo of rice per day! We met people in their nineties as well as a million kids. Taking photos of them and showing them their images and seeing them get so excited (some of the adults moreso than the kids!) was definitely a highlight. We walked through rice fields and eventually came to a river where some of us paddled downstream to the ocean and the rest of us took a boat. At the mouth of the river, we discovered that the winds were wild and the sea very rough. Three kayaks went out and they had a serious challenge. I was at first disappointed that I had decided my back was not ready for another try, but after seeing what they were going through I decided that it was best not to be doing that. One kayak flipped and we picked them up, but two kayaks with three people made it back to camp safely. The little cove where we camped for two nights was beautiful. In the mornings, Malagasy women waded in the cove with nets catching small shrimp and men took out pirogues for fishing.
We then moved on to the Masoala Forest Lodge where we enjoyed hiking to see lemurs especially the red-ruffed lemur. A minor disappointment was starting the hike well past dawn which is kind of counter-productive to wildlife viewing and also caused us to hike during the rains rather than before they started which is also counter to good wildlife viewing. I was up every morning of the trip around 5:00 AM to see sunrise and enjoy the best part of the day. This was not the group’s mentality, though, even when everyone went to bed around 9:00 PM. I have the opinion that clocks should be changed in these cases so that sunrise is whenever you like to get up. For example, you like to get up at 7:00 AM then change your watch so that 5:00 AM is 7:00 AM if that is what it takes. I made the best of each early morning with Sandra, Pierre, Felix, Martin and their team and thoroughly enjoyed each one even the day it was cold and rainy.
We started to camp again the day we paddled onwards along the peninsula. Each of the campsites was on a beach and they were truly spectacular sites. Two of them had adjoining rivers so we had fresh and salt water. One paddle went up one of the rivers and that was absolutely beautiful and seemingly absent of crocodiles although I would not bet on that. During one of the paddles we also went up a short river to some pools created by large rocks and we hung out in the water and cooled off. All of these sites were basically absent of people although we sometimes saw locals taking the peninsula path (“highway”) on foot or paddling their pirogues just offshore. The snorkeling was good albeit a bit murky at times due to the rains that pass through regularly. We later discovered by Pierre’s help that the best snorkeling was just offshore of their lodge. The coral varieties were many and there are a lot of tropical fish species including dangerous lionfish and scorpionfish. We did not see any sharks, but the locals caught a few including a five meter long tiger shark not far from where we spent most of our camping days on an island at the mouth of the bay.
This island is a very special place. It has an old, abandoned lighthouse and a beach that faces towards Cap Masoala and its lighthouse as well as the Indian Ocean. The winds can really whip out there, but when things clear it is unbelievable. I told them that I plan to go back there on my next honeymoon and have them drop us off on the island for a few days of Robinson Crusoe living. The beach and surrounding area is littered with great shells including giant clams which are abundant in the ocean. I would love to visit this area in August when the orchids are blooming and the whales are regular guests in the bay. The time of year not to visit is February and March when frequent cyclones pass nearby.
After the island stay, we boated back to the lodge for a night of camping and then we boated back to Maronsetra during which time we saw a few bottlenose dolphins. We also stopped next to an island and viewed the flying fox bats hanging from trees. They are the largest bats and absolutely scary looking for anyone who does not like bats. I guess they might be a half meter in length hanging upside down from the branches and maybe a meter in wingspan when flying. The end of the trip included a boat ride on a section of the 600 kilometer Pangalenes Canal that runs along the east side of the island to a lodge that had lots of lemurs. I thought another couple of days in ho-hum Tana would be horrible, but the capital city grew on me more and I had fun with some of the guests including a trip back to the zoo to see the famous Aye-aye – one of the world’s most scary looking animals, an oddball lemur. I am now a big Aye-aye fan and will get back to Madagascar someday to see them in the wild. They have a long finger they use to get food such as coconuts. Unfortunately, locals believe they are evil due to their crazy look and they kill them so they are very endangered. Oh well, that’s life and death on the heaven and hell island of Madagascar. I found more heaven than hell, though. Can’t wait to see more of the country in the future.
Tags: Africa, madagascar, Travel
vagabondrick
What a fantastic trip you had! Did you ever decide if monologue lady triggered your spasm attack or something else?
Great sounding trip, but how traumatic! (I won’t even TRY to think who it might have been on the Morocco trip that annoyed you!) How could you have known that your back wouldn’t adjust to that sitting position? Too bad your kayaking was tainted by monologues and pain…but you’ll rise above it. You seem to be indomitable!