Morondava
At breakfast, we exchanged our first experiences of sleeping in bungalows. Some group members told about lemurs on their roofs that screamed all nights, others found frogs in their toilet bowls, not everyone had hot water in the shower and so on. One couple took their dinner to the bungalow and left the plates covered with foil on their nightstands. They were awakened by foil rustling made by a rat that ate from their plate.
That day, we were going to Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park, an area of 1,500 sq. km with unique limestone formations. Everyone put on safety harnesses, got into the cars and we were off. I already noticed that any time intervals in Madagascar should have a correction factor of 2.5, i.e., if you hear that something takes one hour, this means it will be 2.5 hours. Finally, we got to the park entrance.
Tsingy are razor-sharp pinnacles with rough surfaces. We were told to bright gloves to keep our hands safe. The word “tsingy” in Malagasy means “where you cannot walk barefoot”. It is a loop trail 8 km long. We climbed up on narrow shelves fastening our harnesses to installed steel cables, squeezed ourselves through tight passages in caves, got to the top and descended on the other side of Tsingy. We made it in 3.5 hours although the day was hot, +33⁰C.
We spent the rest of the day by the hotel pool. In the evening, I started feeling sick. We drank only bottled water. However, it was impossible to prevent the local microflora from getting into our systems. The kitchen staff naturally used tap water to wash tomatoes for our salad, the same water probably was in the fruit juice, etc. Almost daily, one of us skipped a meal complaining of nausea and stomach issues. Nobody became seriously ill and required medical help. We took medications from our first-aid kits and all recovered in a day or two. After several Imodium pills and a difficult night, I felt all right and could eat breakfast as usual.
