Bandits, breakdowns and bananas

After finishing an amazing few months at Akany Avoko, I'm now on holiday and seeing the most amazing sights of Madagascar. What an incredible place. And what adventures there are every day!

Four Akany volunteers hit the road a week ago. Taxi brousse journeys are known to be long, risky and tiresome, with the trip from Tana to Morondava last Saturday confirming this... Estimated time in the guidebook is 12 to 17 hours, and our timing was not bad considering we seemed to have the worst van on the road. There are bandit attacks on this route, so taxi brousses to Morondava leave Tana in the afternoon in convoy. Our van was being left behind the convoy by the other vans. It almost sounded like it was saying "I think I can" up the hills. There was almost enough room for your legs.  It's an overnight trip so breakdowns are dangerous. Police patrol the roads. So when we were woken by a loud clunking sound at midnight, we wished we were in a different car. Another car with a man and rifle pulled up and it wasn't until after the 5km per hour crawl to the next (very dark) village that it was explained that the man was accompanying us - yippee he was a policeman! So 2 of us naive vazahas needing a wee were heavily warned not to go out of sight of the group. It was cold. The clunking wheel and axel were pulled to bits by the light of our torches, the reconstruction didn't seem to contain all the same parts and some glue was used...but the clever driver come mechanic got us back on the road and we made it to Morondava in 20 hours.

10ish hours in a 4x4 gets you to the Bekopaka, the village at the entrance to the Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park. This road is only accessible in the dry season, which had not long started. It's a pretty rough road with 2 ferries across rivers and it's obvious why you simply would get stuck in mud in the rainy season. We were almost at Bekopaka when, upon rolling into a deep river almost up to the car floor, the car STOPPED. Our funny bastard driver Lulu waded out in his Timberlands and fixed the problem, a leaking radiator, well a band-aid fix probably, but it worked. 15 minutes wondering if we'd have to sleep on the shore and we hit the road again. Everyone helps each other though, the car in front stopped and waited to see we were ok and the 2 trucks whose road we were blocking offered help too. I guess we wouldn't really have slept on the shore...

But it really is worth the 3 days travel to get there. We felt like we were in a computer game for most of the time, it's so surreal! We explored the gigantic pointy rock formations, in and out of forests and caves, walked and climbed up and over more rocks, spotting lemurs, mongoose and gorgeous birds along the way. Food options are somewhat limited in Bekopaka, we got a bit tired of the "duck and pasta with butter" menu...but it is an isolated village, food transport is expensive, although the bananas here were the best I'd ever had! The honey for our breakfast was also incredible, drizzled on Malagasy moof gasy (rice bread) - like a crumpet and Denise-intolerance-friendly!

The children in Bekopaka are the sweetest, cutest, most interactive and least begging kids I have seen in Mada. I'd bought stickers before leaving Tana and was handing them out along the way. I gave 1 young girl carrying around her baby sister 2 stickers, which she kindly passed onto 2 other kids. We had Malagasy chats with them, taught them songs and took photos. They were adorable.

After a river trip, cave exploration and introduction to the Petite Tsingy on day 1, we planned to go on to the Grand Tsingy, a 1 hour squashy (taking a guide with us, we had 4 in the back) and bumpy ride. We fumbled about half awake after breakfast squabbling over the bill with the restaurant who seemed to think we were a bit rich and tried to charge us too much and thank goodness they did because we could have ended up in a sticky situation if we had left 3 minutes earlier.

As we started out on the road to the Grand Tsingy, another tourist car was coming back, eyes wide open and looking shocked. There was a man up ahead who had been shot by a bandit, a victim of zebu theft. They arrived 3 minutes after it had happened. They went back to tell the police, who never ended up turning up as they were too scared. A truck passed through carrying the man and apparently all his family, the wife wailing. They were taking him on the 10 or so hour trip to Morondava to hospital. The guides took a punt that the zebu theif would be concentrating on getting the animals out of the area rather than robbing the vazahas and we continued on our way. We passed 2 empty, broken zebu carts. It was eery. Then we got on with our crazy day in the Grand Tsingy, the creme de la creme of National Parks.

We delivered a football to the Bekopaka secondary school and watched their PE lesson, they were practising high jump and the teens thought it was hilarious that vazahas find them so interesting. They were very thankful for the football. We delivered 2 more footballs to schools en route, 1 school was about 20 kids in a shack the size of our large hotel room in Bekopaka.

Our trip back to Morondava was eventful. A car in front of us had a flat tyre and no spare, so we gave them ours. Hmmmm I guess someone would have to do the same if we also got a flattie?! The road is only wide enough for 1 car at time and our driver was flooring it (but safely) to get us back to the Avenue of the Baobabs in time for the sunset. A car coming the other direction on a bend wasn't so careful and although our driver braked fast, the other car wasn't so onto it and we ended up in a head on, as there was simply nowhere to go. There was only a broken light on the other car, and we had slowed enough for there to be very little impact so everyone was fine. Sooooo....insurance details exchanged? No such thing. They all know each other on this road and just decided to continue the day.

Then there was the policeman who waved us down. He needed a lift to Belo, the village 3 hours away. We had a seperate compartment in the car with all our luggage and where the spare tyre should have been. Would we mind if we take him? Of course not, he's a policeman, and he has a rifle, but that will keep us safe, right? Then another guy appeared and climbed in as well. Why were there 2 rifles in there with them? It must have been a super uncomfortable ride for them, lying on empty water bottles on that bumpy road. We were about to offer them a banana each when Katherine, our French speaking comrade, scared us with her eyes wide while Lulu told her about the men in the back. The policeman had arrested a bandit, and had confiscated his gun, that's where the other gun was from. The other guy was the bandit. We had a bandit in our car for 3 hours. Under arrest of course, but still... He had been arrested for zebu theft but it wasn't the guy from Bekopaka. The policeman and the bandit seemed to be having a right old good chat in the back, while we kept suspicisously looking around. We dropped them off and I felt more than just their physical weight lifted from the car.