DAY 44
We've one day here so we plan to make the best out of it. The main (and only) tourist attraction here is the Pangalan canal. It was built “by the french” as a way of transporting goods from Manakara to Tamatav while avoiding the treacherous Indian Ocean and its cyclones. The region has lots of lakes with brackish water and it was “just” a question of connecting all of them. It's 665km long with 420 of it artificial. In a pure colonial manner, the work came from local labor and it was unsurprisingly forced labor. Its name come from that, it's a Malagasy word meaning “the taken”. The canal is in an advanced state of disrepair with the banks collapsing into it but local guides want to keep it that way and encourage Eco-tourism. Nature is taking over again and kingfishers especially are all over the place.
Here we are in a pirogue again! For a day only this time and we have no paddling to do ;) We go the river mouth first to buy freshly fished fish for our lunch. There's not much to buy, the sea is rough today with huge waves breaking on the sea walls into immense splashes. Our guide is super chatty but also very knowledgeable. We learn that a government program to fight against malaria was very well received here but not for what it was intended. The mosquito nets turned out to be excellent fishing nets :/ We also talk about Madagascar politics a lot and get a disastrous impression of corruption, cronyism and waste... with petty politics for the benefits of a very few getting in the way of the greater good; sounds familiar?
After lunch in a fishing village, we walk a but on the beach, watching them go out. They are going beyond the reef to drop their nets for then night. Even though there's a reef, the waves crashing on the shore are unforgiving and before our eyes one poor guy will capsize. It'll take him 10 minutes to get back into his balsa canoe and gather all his gear floating around. They use balsa because it's so light it helps them go past the breakers “easily”. The downside is it does not last very long and the canoe have to be repaired and changed frequently.
DAY 45
It has become a second nature by now, we're up for sunrise again. Our train leaves early. Our driver will drop us at the railway station in Manakara and pick us up at Fianaransoa. The train ride should take around 8h, going through mountains and small villages; an adventure. The sun is rising while we have breakfast at the hotel and it's a sight. The fisherman are on their way out on the protected lake with the waves breaking on the seawalls behind and the red sun and sky in the background. Madagascar definitely have the best sunrise and sunset I have seen. It's a treat for photographers like me ;)
The train station is hectic but we get in and we even have time to check out the “new” diesel locomotive. Even though it does not look new, it's replacing an older one that was breaking down all the time. Let's hope this time does not! The platform is hectic too with piles of bananas, people everywhere and even a film crew shooting. We leave only 15min late which I'm tempted to call on time considering. Leaving the city, the train crosses the runway of the closed airport. It's a weird decision to build a runway over train tracks and could lead to interesting encounters between trains and planes... Trains still have that strange aura; they get people exited. Everyone is stopping whatever he's doing and wave at us. With nothing else to do we wave back of course ;) The train is next to the road and we see Andry, our driver, catch up on us and match our speed for a few minutes. It's flat for now and we're going at a whopping 34 km/h... it won't last.
Each stop at a "station" turns into a intense session of people leaving and entering the train with some time lots of goods (including chickens). All around the train merchants are selling lots of different kinds of food (fruits, fried things, cookies,...) in and out of the train. Most of the time the tracks are surrounded by walls of vegetation with sometimes openings on villages or fields or a river and a pitch black tunnel. Sometimes the train brushes against odorous plants and trees and their fragrance invades the train. Sometimes the plants try to invade the train. The train was slowly getting emptier each passing stop and we were enjoying the more quiet atmosphere but it came to a stop in an unknown station and a throng came rushing in, pushing and shoving. At the same time, in the 2nd class car, a pig was being loaded, letting its great displeasure being heard. To add to the chorus, the rooster stuffed under the seats next to us starts singing. Condensed farm life for us. At one village we stop for 1h15 for unknown reason with no communication of course... it felt familiar. It seems to be the standard way railways handle problems all over the world ;) The scenery right after that stop is stunning though. We're entering a mountainous area and the views are getting really dramatic. Hours pass slowly and on the GPS we seem to be making very slow progress. The sun sets and we're still nowhere. It drags on and on and on and on... Until Andry rescues us unexpectedly when the tracks join the N7. We leave the train on one last odd scene. One of the pigs is being dragged out of a goods car by his hind legs, very unhappy. The train was not a great idea after all. Maybe it could do it in 8h and it would still be long and only mildly interesting but after 14-15h we were still probably 1-2 hours away from Fianaransoa and bored to death.