Madagascar - Rolling Down The River

June 21-23

Getting around Madagascar can be tricky. Roads, though often paved, are littered with potholes and aggressive drivers. One way to avoid this is by choosing the road less travelled: the river.

Praying Mantis - probably praying that I shave soon...

Who needs a road?

In some places the river is actually the road. To get to some of the villages along the Tsiribihina river, which flows west towards the Mozambican Channel, the easiest and sometimes only point of access if from the water. The Malagasy will use pirogues, a dug-out canoe carefully crafted from a tree.

A local villager using a pirogue

The river is about 120 kilometres long

Other travellers - such as my group - had a more powerful, and much noisier, vehicle. In times gone by, these would have been used to transport cargo. This one was going to take us on a three-day trip to a town near the coast called Belo-Tsiribihina.

Our boat - with sun loungers and cooks on board, it was
far more luxurious than I was expecting

The dark blue is the route we took on the Tsiribihina

We had travelled across to a town called Miandrivazo from Tana. About 500km, it took the best part of 12 hours, with some stops being familiar and some fairly unique to Madagascar.

My heart skipped a beat when I saw the prices in this Shoprite - I
'd briefly forgotten that prices in Madagascar Ariary have
much higher numbers than Malawian Kwacha!

A chameleon on a bush - I still don't know
how our guide spotted it from the bus!

From there we drove to the river...to find that it was too shallow for our boat. Two trips for a 4x4 later took us to a slightly deeper area from which to start.

There were many zebu in the local village

We entertained ourselves by showing local children photos of themselves

The banks either side of the river undulated as we progressed slowly west, offering a variety of views. 

Mangrove trees, seen on the right, were a frequent sight

Wildlife was surprisingly limited near the river itself. In a way it was a nice reminder that this isn’t like the rest of Africa, where I would expect us to be meandering to avoid rafts of hippo. There were a few crocodiles, all of which looked quite small, and some beautiful birds such as egrets, kingfishers and bee-eaters.

About about 1.5 metres, this croc was quite small  

Birds sometimes accompanied us on our journey

I wasn’t expecting to see many animals on this boat trip. It was an amazing surprise when we stopped on our first afternoon and caught a glimpse of some white sifaka lemurs. They were at a great distance, not to mention a great height, but still looked great as they chomped on leaves and fruit up high.

Hanging high up in the trees

It was an even bigger surprise when our guide was able to attract a family of brown lemurs to a tree right next to us (turns out lemurs are suckers for a banana). They were very popular with our group, most of whom hadn’t seem a lemur up close before.

The brown lemur is the most common in this part of Madagascar

Their fur can be different shades - not sure why

We hadn’t even stopped to look for lemurs; instead, we were after a refreshing waterfall (and the only shower we were going to have for the best part of three days). The Cascade Anosinampela was gentle enough to stand under for a while, helping us cool off from the surprisingly intense heat from the winter Sun.

A chance for a shower!

The water nearby was a lovely turquoise colour

The only shower I had for 3 days

Going down the river on what was essentially a boat cruise, seeing lemurs and waterfalls, seems like quite a touristy thing to do. It’s not quite set up like that. There’s nowhere to stay so you camp on a shore where you hope crocodiles won’t appear.

Our second campsite

Our toilet cover - there was a seat with a hole in the ground

Moments after we had set up our tents on the first evening, a wall of dust raced its way along the riverbank towards us. I just about managed to run and take cover behind the other side of my tent before it smashed its way through our site. Many of the tents blew away, even with luggage inside them.

Our guard had to help grab tents to the point where he
gave his gun - we naturally assumed it was an AK-47 - to a
member of the group to hold whilst he chased tents

We saw lemurs the following day as well in a local village. One had taken up residence in a bar! The villages we visited are difficult to access aside from using the river.

Bit early to start on the rum, I think...

After his drinks, the lemur tottered precariously on the edge of a pole

Local children seemed to love any attention, often fighting amongst themselves to hold the hand of a fazhady (foreigner). Though the first village seemed desperately poverty-stricken, I also felt it was a bit staged - there seemed to be a lot of shops.

The kids were desperate to hold hands with
us as we were led around the village

One of many T-shirt stalls in the village

The village highlighted the sheer number of children in Madagascar. The percentage of children that make up Madagascar’s population is worryingly high. Many don’t go to school - it used to be compulsory. The second night a dance troupe came to show us - and get us involved in - some local dancing around a fire. I always hope that they want to be in the group and aren’t forced to do anything they don’t want to.

The guitar was patched up with reused materials

The second village had some beautiful examples of my favourite tree, the baobab. Apparently there are six types of baobab endemic to Madagascar. Later in the trip I will visit one of Madagascar’s most striking sights: The Avenue of the Baobabs.

There are many endemic baobabs in Madagascar

Possibly the most beautiful sunset of the whole trip

Travelling by boat is an interesting way of seeing many different aspects of Madagascar. It was a very relaxing adventure, completely free of the digital world for a few days. 

Lots of time to read Lord of the Rings

Sunset on the Tsiribihina

They took 20 beers onto the boat. We got through 48,
after some beer runs in local villages.

Love you all, 

Matt