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A trip to Madagascar, 2009
In summer 2009 I decided to visit Cuba with a friend, Emanuele
Castronovo. After one month without much planning, we thought about
visiting Brazil (Amazon rainforest), but at the end we decided that Nepal
would have been better. We planned to begin our trip in September, but
in late August we had not decided yet where to go: six days before the
planned departure Emanuele asked me "What about Madagascar?" and I said
"Yes". This is how one of my most unfortunate, yet interesting, trips
begun...
Since we did not know anything about the country and we
had very little time, we contacted a local travel agency suggested by a
friend (hmmm..) of Emanuele. The agency gave us a car with driver for
about 550 €/person, or 1100 total. This is one of the crazy things of
Madagascar...you can not rent just a car, you must rent a car with
driver. We have been told it is for safety, tourists may not be able to
drive the Jeeps on the dirty roads of Madagascar...I really doubt so,
considering that the few Madagascan who have a car
drive like crazy ;-)
With 1000 € we bought the fly from Italy,
and we kept about 500 € for hotels, food and souvenirs. So on
September 6 we arrived in Antananarivo, after 26 hours spent in airports
and planes. Our first thought about Madagascar was "wow, look how dry it
is!" ...we expected forest, abundant vegetation, instead the landscape
seen from the plane was dry. We met our driver in the airport and after
three hours of car we reached our hotel in Antsirabe.
On the way to Morondava: meeting Gabriele
The second day of our trip reveals us an unpleasing truth: we are going
to spend a lot of time in the car...A LOT! Reaching Morondava takes 10
hours. The roads are not much better than the road in the wilderness of
Tanzania, and 10 hours in the Jeep are a pain. I was not in my best shape
after the 26 hours of transfer from Italy, and now I have headache and
sore throat. We arrive in Morondava in late evening and we make a quick
trip in the local market...here I realize that Madagascar is truly
Africa. Before this trip, I imagined Madagascar as something like a big
Costa Rica - a country that is not rich, but not as desperately poor as
Tanzania or other African countries. Instead, Madagascar is much more like
Tanzania...outside the few large cities, people live in a kind of
"middle-age" world - poor houses made of wood and metal sheet, little or
no technology, 40 years old cars and poor hygienic conditions. In the
market there is a mix of smells, meat and fishes are left
on dirty counters, with thousand of flies enjoying the free meal.
After sunset we reach our hotel. It is 15 €/night hotel, so it is
way too expensive for locals: there are only other foreign tourists
there. Our room is pretty nice, comparable to a 2-stars hotel here in
Italy...far from Luxury, but much better than what you may imagine for a
15€ room. Our driver bring us
to a restaurant for dinner. And here begins one of the most interesting
experiences of our trip: the restaurant is called "La Capannina", and it
is clearly an Italian restaurant, so we ask to the waiter if he speaks
Italian.. "no, just a bit messieurs" he says, but after a couple of
minutes a guy arrives at hour table, asking to have dinner with us. He
is Gabriele, the owner of the restaurant, and one of my best memories
from this trip. He lives in Madagascar from 1996, when he married a
woman from Morondava; they divorced, but he decided to stay in
Madagascar and to go on with the restaurant. Gabriele reminds me Yanez,
the friend of Sandokan, the two brave pirates of Malaysia in Emilio Salgari's tales. He is a 50 years old guy with short graying hair and
with the tan typical of white people who have been here in Madagascar
for long time.
Talking with Gabriele-Yanez is like reading old
adventure books about Africa and the Indian Ocean...he tell us about the
beauty and the difficulties of "his" country. "The last year has been
difficult...few tourist and...you see" he says "there is no money. The
roads are dirty and cars are too expensive for locals. People live from
breeding and agriculture, they have barely the money to support their
family...school is mandatory until 14 years, but many children go
to work at much younger age." He tells us that "Here a family may have
15, 20 sons...well, actually a man can have three times as much! And
many of these children are not even registered to the registry office.
When - if - they go to school, sometimes nobody know their age, so in
the school registry they may figure as 'born about 1998'...but not all
families can afford sending their children to school."
Gabriele
goes on talking about Madagascan traditions. "For local people,
when someone die, he is not immediately a 'dead'...he is something in
the middle between life and death. He is buried, but after three years
from his death, his family dig out the bones, and for one day they dance
with the corpse. Many persons are invited to this 'celebration', and
often they drink a lot and it may even happen that somebody gets
seriously hurt while drunk in the collective rave. After the
celebration, the bones are broken and they are buried again. Only now
the dead has become truly death for them...now he has left forever the
world of living persons, and he has become an ancestor". We are a bit
perplexed, but he says "You must not think that it is morbid. It isn't.
It is part of the local traditions". |
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Baobab Avenue and Milky Way... |
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1) Madagascar from the plane... 2) People
washing clothes in a river near Tana 3) Driving along the roads of Tana
4) Colors of the houses 5) My friend Emanuele with children 6) View
of Morondava 7) Rural landscape 8) Can I have... 9) Our jeep during a
pause along the sandy road. |
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The safety pack: how (not to) visit Tsingy
We leave Morondava in early morning to take some photos of the
spectacular Baobab Avenue, a road surrounded by giant baobabs. The view
is awesome and the sunrise light is delightful! I take some good photos,
and since we are going to be there again two days from now at sunset, I
think how beautiful it would be to take a photo of the Baobabs at night,
with the Milky Way into background...
After the photos, we go on
towards Belo-Tsiribihina...another day spent in the car. Morondava is no
so distant from Belo-Tsiribihina, but the roads are bad to say the least
and it takes ten hours. This little city is not "on the way" - to go
there we have to spend one whole day in the car, and then another day to
come back to Morondava and to go on with the trip. The purpose of this
very long deviation from the main road is to visit some unusual rock
formations called Tsingy, we had never heard about them before, but in
these days we still trusted the itinerary organized by the agency (our
biggest error).
Along the road we see many fires: our driver tell
us that fire is used to burn the vegetation and to make room for
breeding. Considering the naturalistic value of Madagascar, it is sad to
see infinite portions of the land burning, with black clouds rising to
the sky... We stop the car near an immense fire, and me and Emanuele
walk for a couple hundred meters towards the fire: the landscape looks
like Moon, everything is grey or black, ash is falling like snow, and
the burning trees make a loud, scaring noise, as the roar of an huge,
evil beast. There are some burnt shells of some large snails that have
not been fast enough to escape from fire.
We arrive at sunset in
a small village somewhere north of Belo-Tsiribihina. Our hotel is about
a
dozens of kilometers from the city, away from civilization. The night is
awesome...without light pollution, the sky is impressively clear, and we
watch with awe the Milky way. We decide to try some night photos, and we
walk in the wilderness for ten minutes, until we reach a place that is
completely dark. With the 1DsIII and the Sigma 20mm f/1.8, it is a joy
to take night photos - a 25" exposure at ISO 3200 reveals every detail
of the Milky Way...marvelous. We spend an hour taking photos at the sky,
and when we try to come back to our room, we get lost in the bush...we
manage to come back on the right track after going back and forth for
half an hour! But the results are well worth the effort. I had never
seen before the Milky way with such clarity!
They day after we visit Tsingy. It is 9 in the morning and we have one hour
drive to reach the place...after twenty minutes, we stop and the guide
go to take two packs. "what is this?" we ask, and he replies "safety
packs"...we don't understand but we just put them into our backpack. Two hours later,
after one our walking in a dry forest infested by mosquitoes, we
discover the unpleasing truth: the safety pack contains climbing
gear...you don't have just to walk to reach the top of the
Tsingy..you have to climb! Overall the climbing/walking lasts five ours,
and it is a nightmare. I have tons of photo gear, but I don't take any
decent photo, the light suck, the sun is harsh and it is darn
hot...what a bright idea, climbing the Tsingy in the central, hottest
hours of the day!
When we finally come back to the car, I am so
tired I don't even have the strength to get angry. Emanuele is in a
slightly better shape than me, but he is very tired as well. An
unforgettable experience, no doubts about that ;-)
Delayed flight! One more day with Gabriele
and Rasta Man
The day after begins in a somewhat funny way. My travel mate Emanuele
has got sick as well (we are two zombie :-)), and while he has not the medicines he needs, I
have some Bimixin...but the cap has got stuck and we are not able to
open the can in any way, so we decide to break it. We place it on the
floor and I crash it with my heavy Manfrotto tripod..it works, but while
I watch Emanuele collecting the pills from the dirty floor and eating
them, I am somewhat dubious about the result :-)
We arrive in Morondava at night: tomorrow we should have
taken an internal flight to Tulear, but we are told that it as been
cancelled, I guess due to the lack of passengers. There are not many
tourists around... The flight will be one day later, so now we are blocked
for one day in Morondava, with nothing to do. Well, at least we have a
nice dinner with Gabriele, and he suggest us a pharmacy where we can buy
some medicines.
September 11 is a quiet day spent relaxing and
resting. We begin to get better, and at night we meet again Gabriele: it
will be the most memorable night of the entire trip. Gabriele greets us
with a loud "Porc putain..." - he is angry with a waiter because he does
not like the music "changez la musique..." This is not unusual - we have
seen this scene at every dinner, so for us it has become a "classic",
and even during the trip we laughed when thinking about it :-)
There are not many Italian tourists, and we are considered as friends by
Gabriele. As usual, he come to have dinner with us, he begin to talk
about his country. He has been recently to the ritual sacrifice of a
Zebu and he described us the ceremony. "The poor Zebu was bound to four
poles with ropes, so he could not escape. While a man kept is head
steady, another guy cut his throat" he says "..but you should not think
that the Zebu killed for food are killed in a better way. They just cut
their throat and let them die...it may take even half an hour...this is
why the meat is so hard". We have no difficulties to believe what he
says...a couple of days ago Emanuele had eaten a Zebu steak that was
hard as wood (and it had the same taste, too..)
After the dinner,
Gabriele invites us to go with him at the "Oasis". The Oasis is a bar
owned by a friendly guy called "Jean Le Rasta", it is easy to imagine
what kind of bar it is... Bob Marley and reggae music are quite popular
here, and Jean is a Rasta guy who has created a Rasta style bar...images
of Bob Marley are everywhere, people wear t-shirts with the colors of
Jamaica and long dreadlocks. Surrounded by people smiling and
singing we forget for a moment the difficulties and the bad experiences
of previous days...
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In many African countries, if you take a photo
of someone he will immediately ask you money. In Madagascar, in spite of
the poverty, they will greet you with a smile :-) |
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1) A large cloud of smoke from one of the many
fires we saw along the way 2) Little dancers 3) The "love baobab", on
the way to Tsingy 4) My dirty Canon 1DsIII 5) The Tsingy formation in
the harsh midday light 6) A ray of sun in the morning 7) A little boy
working in the fields 8) Emanuele with a child 9) View from the
window of the plane. |
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Friendly People
The majority of cars here in Madagascar looks so old and used that you
may wonder how is it possible that they still work. In early morning, we
take a taxi to the airport; it is a Peugeot from 70s and the driver push
the car along the road for some meters then he jumps in to start the
motor... But even the other cars in the road are not in better
conditions - some stone age trucks leave behind a thick cloud of black
smoke.
The airport of Morondava is very small and informal.
There are not safety controls and there is not much technology, the
plane timetable is written by hand on a blackboard. We wait a couple of
hours and then we fly to Tulear with a small, old plane; the view from
the plane is awesome, but the windows are so dirty that it is impossible
to take good photos.
From Tulear, we reach Ifaty with two
hours of Jeep. The landscape is almost desert. Ifaty is a small village
on the sea, here we have a bungalow at few meters from the beach.
The bungalow is nice and big; the only problem - very common in
Madagascar - is that electric power is available only for a couple of
hours from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., so charging the batteries of the mobile and
camera sometimes may be a bit cumbersome. We stay two days in Ifaty; not
many photo opportunities other than some good night photos with a bright
Milky Way, but overall they are two relaxing days. The beach is nice, even though it
is not as spectacular as some beaches I have seen in Malaysia. While
walking on the beach, I am often approached by people who try to sell me
something - food, shells, souvenirs, trips, "massages" and
marijuana...everything is for sale here. I end up buying a dozen of
necklaces: for about 2000 Aryary (0.50 Eur) you can buy a simple
necklace and you will make one person happy :-)
I spend some time
talking with Brigitte, a girl who sells the shells she find on the beach
for few thousands Aryary, as many other persons on the beach of Itafy.
She is 20 years old and she is pregnant, waiting for her second child.
As the majority of persons in Madagascar, she speak some French but she
is not too good with English; nevertheless, we manage to talk a bit. As the majority of people
in Madagascar, Brigitte is friendly, relaxed...this is a thing that has
surprised us - in spite of the poverty, the people of Madagascar does
not ask you money for photos, they won't try obsessively to sell you
something like it happened in Tanzania, when sometimes we had to close
ourselves into the jeep to escape from aggressive vendors.
After Ifaty, we move to the north and we visit the Isalo National Park;
a nice place both for landscapes and animals. We take some photos of
Lemurs - even though the light is not ideal, we visit the lemur area
around midday... If you decide to visit Madagascar for a photo trip, I
recommend to insist with your guide to make the trips at sunrise or near
sunset, otherwise you may miss the best light. Other than lemurs, we
find some large stick insects: they have an impressive camouflaging and
they stay still, so they are quite easy to photograph. I take some shots
with the 180 Macro and 2x teleconverter, to separate the insect from
background.
The next stop is
Ambalavao, and here we have another nice experience of the friendliness
of Madagascan people. We visit the market and we take hundreds of
photos, without anybody harassing us. In spite of the poverty, people
don't ask money for photos - actually, they are glad to be photographed
and sometimes we are stopped by persons who ask us to be photographed!
The market is a joy for the reportage photographer; colors, traditions,
everything mix together to create an unique and fascinating atmosphere.
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Child in the market of Ambalavao. People is
always friendly, Madagascar is a paradise for reportage... |
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Into the forest for one day
September 16 we visit the forest of Ranomafana. As Gabriele told us,
this is the only forest we are going to see, otherwise the majority of
forests are in the north of Madagascar... The visit begins in early
morning and we have two guides; the majority of parks in Madagascar can
not be visited by yourself, a guide is mandatory. Even though usually I
prefer to travel by myself, I must say that our guides in Ranomafana
park were well prepared, they were expert and they managed to find
animals that I'd have never seen by myself. As soon as we begin
the visit, we found a marvelous Comet moth (Argema mittrei)...I am
speechless, it is huge and colorful, it may be the occasion for a "once
in a lifetime" macro but...after few minutes, it fly away! I managed to
take just one photo and it is not sharp...bad luck! (well...one reason
to come back :-))
Anyway,
during the visit to the park we have other good photo opportunities. We
find many species of lemurs (even though they are far from easy to
photography, they are often hidden by vegetation), some frogs, and a
fantastic leaf gecko...the forest of Madagascar offers a lot of
photographic opportunities...I wish we had spend many more days in the
forest, instead of only one in the entire trip...that's crazy, in
particular if you consider that we clearly asked to the agency to visit
good places for nature photography...but it is likely that they knew
well only the south of the country, so they don't cared about our
requests and they sent us on their classic tour in the south of the
country, even though this area is not that great for nature photography.
From Ranomafana we reach Ambositra, for the last photographic day or
our trip. Ambositra is a little city in the highlands, and it is one of
the coldest places of Madagascar due to its altitude of 1500 meters
a.s.l. We stay in a modern hotel (nice, but with Lilliputian rooms) and
here we meet an Italian couple. They are here from six months and they
are studying the local population - she is a researcher, while he was a
3D artist and he left the work to follow her during the long stay in
Madagascar. When I think about them, or about Gabriele, I think that you
must be really determined to do such a radical choice as living here
for months or years...Madagascar is so different from our life in
Europe! Poverty, little or no technology, bad food, poor hygienic
conditions, no modern medical structures...even though I like Madagascan
people, and I think there are good photo opportunities if you visit the
right places, I'd never come living here.
We spend the next
morning visiting some artisans
with our new friends, and in late morning we are on the way back towards
Antsirabe. Two days after we are in the airport of the capital: it
is time for our flight back to Europe...
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1) Ifaty beach 2) Visiting the home of a local
artisan 3) The Italian guys we met in Ambositra 4) Artisan at work 5)
Children in the market of Ambalavao 6) A girl looking at the market 7)
A rasta man in a local market 8) Shop in Ranomafana 9) Me showing some
photos to children. |
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Final considerations
I must say that in some days I thought about this trip as a complete
failure...I can't believe we had been in Madagascar for two weeks and we
have taken little or no nature photos! Two lessons learnt in the hard
way: first, if you don't study the place you are going to visit, the
result of the trip is a matter of luck; second, don't trust too much
local agencies...in our case, the agency has done what was more
comfortable and easy for them, without caring about our requests...
That said, now that I look at the photos and I think back about these
days, I am more positive. Yes, not much nature photography, but I have got anyway some good photos -
I am very happy for the two night photos with the Milky Way and some
other landscapes, and it has been a good occasion to practice with
reportage and people. Other than that, in spite of the difficulties,
there are been a lot of nice experiences; my friend Emanuele is a great
guy and he has been a great travel mate, and I am glad to have meet some
truly cool persons as Gabriele...
I have left Madagascar with the
thought of coming back here one day...for sure I'll study well the
places to visit, I won't thrust an agency and I'll try to focus the next
trip on nature photography, but I'll be back...I can't wait to explore
the forests of the north! :-)
Do you have comments or questions?
If you have comments or questions about this article, feel free to
ask in the Juza Nature
Photography Discussion Forum!
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