The next night was again in Andasibe but in a different hotel. The afternoon was free and I went to see the town alone. The houses here were of brick and wooden planks unlike the straw and twig huts in the western part of the island.
A few buildings from the colonial past stood out – a couple of sturdy churches and a magnificent railway station built to last for generations to come. Passenger trains stopped running long time ago and the station building is now locked up. The railway tracks are still there and cargo trains sometimes pass through the town. Overall, according to one of our guides who visited Madagascar several times over a number of years, every next time he comes the country’s falling into ruins is more and more evident.
After we were done seeing lemurs, our group switched to reptiles. We went to several nature reserves with crocodiles, chameleons, geckos, snakes and alike.
One more bus ride and we returned to the capital city, Antananarivo, and civilization. The grandeur of La Varangue Hotel was dazzling – beautifully decorated interior, white starched tablecloths and a gourmet menu in the restaurant, clean and modern rooms. At dinner, we took our time to enjoy good food and to relax. There were a great many more temptations on the following morning at the breakfast buffet. It was hard to believe that I still was in one of the poorest countries in the world. However, the reality sobers you up as soon as you leave the hotel.
My flight was in the afternoon and I had enough time to go the market to spend the remaining ariaries. Two men volunteered to come with me and I was glad they did. The market was a big maze of narrow lines with stalls of secondhand clothes where it was easy to get lost and even easier to get robbed. The three of us kept close together and watched each other’s back. We did not find anything worth buying at the market and turned our attention to the shops nearby. Soon, every one of us got what we were looking for. I liked earrings made from a local semiprecious stone. They were shaped like cones with a fine silver thread wrapped around. The earrings cost 70 000 ariaries and I only had 65 000. The saleswoman and I bargained, either in her own language but we understood each other well. Finally, I turned my wallet inside out to show that was all money that I had left. The saleswoman sighed and packed the earrings in a small paper box.
After a short walk, we returned to the hotel. Antananarivo is noisy and polluted, it is not a place for sightseeing. All that was left to do now was to wait for the taxi to the airport.
This was my first trip to the Sub-Saharan Africa and I was spellbound by it. Poor or not, Africa attracts like a magnet making you want to come back again. One of the current hypotheses on the origins of modern humans proposes that Homo sapiens evolved in South-East Africa. Perhaps, it really was our common birthplace because there is something magical in this land and I hope to see more of it.
