Field Notes from Madagascar

Memories of mouse lemurs, edible pigeon poop and 14 wasp stings

I’ll start at the end because that’s what we’ve reached. Bloodshot, scattershot. Flatlined by timelines and two days suspended in the sky flying over Mogadishu, Eritrea, the Adriatic Sea, the puzzle pieces of Greece, Verona, the snow-softened spine of Mont Blanc and the expanse of the Celtic Sea before splitting Newfoundland in half back to Toronto’s Lite Brite grid.

Our house was sitting at a sharp 13°C upon our return but Kim and I were quickly consumed in a tailspin of sorting sea sour laundry, punky from three weeks in a blast furnace. In Madagascar, the dust is equivalent to all the Roombas in North America being emptied at once. After crawling around in the bellies of four sandstone caves through keyhole slots and fish eye tunnels, we looked like we’d had a fight with chalkboard brushes. My bikini, stiff with brine and sweat, looked like I was still wearing it.

But, let’s get to the goods. We avoided being bonked by dropping mangoes—a true feat as they were falling out of the sky. Their sweet flesh matched the colour of the smeared sunsets that ended the drowsy days of full throttle heat. The roads were as promised—there was no need to chew gum. You could simply put a piece between your teeth and let the potholes do the work. It was like traversing 200 km of meteorite strikes as we trampolined westward to the serrated limestone pinnacles of Tsingy de Beharama National Park to fry our nerves on the via ferrata (iron cable routes).

The biggest travel miracle was that we didn’t hear Celine Dion ONCE. Everywhere in the world, Celine has elbowed her way in from a staticky radio in a Cairo shawarma shack to the canned music of a Yangtze riverboat dining room. Instead, we heard Shania Twain (“From this Moment On”) and I almost gave her a standing ovation. From a boombox, Bette Midler’s “From a Distance” poured out over the din and whiff of the fish market. We heard Lionel Ritchie Fiesta For-evah (“All Night Long”) and The Cranberries “Zombie” oozing out of a naked bulb-lit rum joint near Hellville.

Another pleasant surprise was the free pour of champagne in Economy on our Air France flights. “Oui and merci!”

The not so pleasant surprise: our carrot intake. Kim and I ate more carrots in three weeks than we have in our entire lives. Who knew you could slice carrots and serve them on a bun with cheese? This was the very dry in-flight snack on Madagascar Airlines. It sat in our throats like a carrot. Across the island, carrots were juiced, slawed, braised, julienned, stewed, garnished, curried and used liberally as a pizza topping. I’m quite confident that after so many carrots that I could drive a vehicle without headlights at night for another two weeks from the beta cartone residue.

In between carrots we had our fill of the sea (crab, shrimp, barracuda), duck and edible pigeon poop. Caca pigeon became a fast street vendor fave—it’s a simple mix of flour, yeast, egg, parsley and oil deep fried into twiggy, crispy bites.

There was also an unexpected amount of camembert and zebu every which way. By day two we smartly decided to give up on coffee as it proved to be nothing but hot cups of beige. What could we rely on? Nightly dog sing-a-longs (but only after midnight), flappy cicadas as big as bats, centipedes as long as Kim’s shoe (size 8), hissing cockroaches, geckos as big as wieners in the curtains of our ecolodge, giant jumping rats and nimble lemurs that rivaled Romanian gymnasts parallel bar routines.

Upon reflection, the trip stats appear daunting and may be best enjoyed virtually. In 24 days we experienced:

8 flights (this equates 41.5 hours of flying time, 10.5 layover hours and 20+ hours spent in airports consuming 5 euro lattes and the most expensive beer we’ve had to date. At JFK (insert four hour layover here), one 573ml can of Sapporo Black at Soy & Sake rang in at $19.51 (USD) or, worse, $27.08 (CAD). On the flip side, at the domestic airport in the capital city of Antananarivo, Madagascar, we bought two tall boys (500ml) of Three Horses Beer for 9,000 Malagasy Ariary ($2.71 CAD), asked for glasses and went outside to drink them in the sun with pigeon poop. So civilized.

11 beds (all very chiropractic and cement-firm in nature with the exception of two nights on sweat-inducing foam in a dome tent along the chocolate milk ribbon of the Tsiribihina River) with a pint-sized supervising audience. Here’s a close-up of our en suite bathroom (featured to the left in the image above), clearly designed for someone under 5’ tall.

4 tuk tuks Each commute to Andilana Beach involved slowing for zebu herds, chickens and/or goats. We passed one tuk tuk that seemed to double as a school bus with eight children sandwiched inside. We actually had two drivers (one adult and one child). A poker-faced four-year-old stood at eye-level with traffic, his pudgy kid hands gripping the handlebars of our tuk-tuk as he balanced between his dad’s legs.

2 car ferries These were more like crude rafts that snugly fit three Land Cruisers. The crossings were the stuff of Hail Mary’s or Bloody Mary’s, preferably.

1 riverboat We spent three days switchbacking down the Ovaltine-tinged Tsiribihina over 170 km avoiding the boat marooning sandbars with our private crew. We had a Captain, Skipper, a mechanic, the “cooker” and our bro guide, Joe. It sounds like a royal, high falutin’ time but I should mention that there was no running water and no toilet but there was Rhum Arrangé (a sugarcane alcohol-based drink steeped with ginger and lychee that offered a silent kung-pow and whiter teeth by morning). And, we were camping with lurking Nile crocodiles. If you watch Below Deck, we were the “primaries” but our vessel wouldn’t pass any safe decibel or inspection test (sanitary or sea worthiness). And then there were the high winds that we had to contend with, sandwiching us in our upper deck fun foam lounge cushions as we chased down our flip flops and beer cans.

4 speedboats My rump can attest to the eight hours spent bouncing on “tur-kwoz” waves (*as described by our fixer) while seated on outriggers that made us grateful for tetanus shots. Kim’s life vest was missing critical pieces of foam and one of the crabs destined for our lunch escaped from the bottom of its cardboard box cargo hold adding to the onboard dangers as it skittled around threatening our bare feet with its supersized front claw.

1 pirogue (traditional wooden boat) *See above notes about my butt. Though, on the pirogue, it was the pinching that Kim and I had to contend with. Two pieces of wood were placed across two parallel pirogues and as our sinewy guide pushed us forward (using a long pole for momentum along the shallow but muddy river bottom) the boards shifted, leaving a gap and a yeow pinch with every push. The inside of these traditional fishing boats would narrowly fit my 28” hips—I might get in the canoe but never get out and there would definitely be a panic attack in between.

4 wood-fired pizzas There was a tandoori, a Margherita, a corn + blue cheese with a fried egg + ham and then there was the best: a charcuterie pizza with merguez sausage, cured pork, ham, gruyere and gherkins! This combo is definitely going into our at-home rotation.

4 paperbacks (each) And then, it was the great void. We read our stash too fast (I LOVED The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell) and were left scouring the hotel libraries of yellowing French and Dutch titles. Other inclusions on the shelves: maps of Portugal, a juicing cookbook, dusty encyclopedia sets, a German Dictionary of Synonyms, sticky French Vogue mags from 2008 and a deck of Tarot cards. Kim found a Patterson and I settled on the only other English option, The Best American Short Stories 2006 (edited by Ann Patchett). Moment of synchronicity: in Ann Beattie’s “Mr. Nobody At All” one of her characters names her dog Madagascar! There’s some woo-woo for you!

2 mouse lemurs They were a thrill to lay eyes upon and their wide-eyed gaze was returned. Small enough to cup in your hands (which we didn’t!), the nocturnal mouse lemur is the smallest primate in the world and achingly cute.

2 barn owls We have seen barn owls in the most unexpected places. The last one was in a cave in Puerto Ayora, Galapagos. On our riverboat journey, the two owls were spotted in a nook as we split through an area of steep cliffs and sheer gorges. 

Other awesome bird sightings included the congregations of pied crows (above) in their tuxedos, Malachite kingfisher, olive bee-eaters, white-faced whistling ducks, paradise flycatchers, giant couas and hoopoes.

14 wasp stings (me, ow) I thought I had been electrocuted or shot up by poison dart arrows. Kim had innocently suggested that I walk over to a surreal looking rocky outcrop for a photo and just as I turned I found myself in an angry swarm that nabbed me in nanoseconds. My knuckles, my forearms, my legs—and three on my ass. The fierce bites turned into fat hot welts as we progressed on our climb and I didn’t die though I was waiting to suddenly timber. It was an endemic wasp species (there are 28 tiphiid wasp fauna species in Madagascar), making this attack a genuine once-in-a-lifetime experience.

1,608 images Who wants to come over for a basement slide show?

I said this was the end but it’s really just the beginning. There’s more to come but my eyes feel like they’re full of ground pepper. Which reminds me of the very best thing we had at the Mad Zebu in Belo sur Tsiribihina. Green peppercorn ice cream. And I’m not even a fan of ice cream. It was fire and ice all at once and just like Madagascar, this trip was ripe with juxtapositions. You’ll see.