Justins World

I honestly don’t know where and how to start this blog entry other than tosay its been a simply wonderful and amazing introduction to Madagascar. Dare i say it i may not have had the same experience if i was doing this myself also, so as much as I am not a fan of tours, so far the tour has delivered.

The chaos of getting out of the airport wa soon forgotten whe. one of the ladies on tour noticed the sunset was about to get special and we were right in front of rice paddies. The timing couldn’t be any better. A great little stop to start out our photography tour.

Today was an early breakfast and out the door to get to beat the Antananarivo traffic, which is pretty bad. We headed out of the city to the Royal Hill of Ambohimanga. A small and modest by european standards palace, perched on one of the 12 hills of Antananarivo. We had a fascinating guide explain how the kings had 12 wives and the other 11 each stayed at a seperate palace on the other 11 hills and the favourite wive would stay with him. The guide certainly had a welath of interesting stories.

Our next adventure was a little “thing” or secret our guide Diary (pronounced Dee-air-ree… or something like that). The surprise was to ride in convoy with the Citroen 2CV club to our lunch destination. I managed to get a striking green one and the car had been restored by the drivers father and he worked with his father on cars. Well thats all my limited french got me. We drove into Antananarivo like french colonialists, which had me thinking, was this a good thing, but of course it was. It was fun and the people who restored and maintain these cars and are part of the 2CV club, do this for a hobby or job. We did get some strange looks once we got onto the busier streets, but we’d get that in any car, being foreigners.

The icing on the cake was visiting the home of our guide Diary, whose wife and family had put on a massive feast for us. Lynn, our photographic guide has known Diary for many years doing trips with him in the past. But even for her this was the first time visiting his amazing house and meeting his amazing family. we were dined with amazing food, Dairy’s mates who are a band played music with cameos from the entire family. Diary’s wife taught me how to dance, and we basically ate too much food, much like family gatherings we have at home. There was no leg ham to get people to take home though. It was such a special welcoming surpise to their country. I’m still somewhat speechless everyone was great, they were just so happy to see us and get us fat and happy! Oh the dessert was to die for! Very similar to a christmas pudding in testure and flavour I thought.