Day 026: It was time to leave the comfort of the beach. We ate our second breakfast at the Le Vezo Hotel. Jay is sipping on his morning juice. Rather exotically, this was a glass baobab juice. One of the many seed pouches we saw yesterday was used to create the drink. I saw an alcohol version for sale in bottles too.
We'd arranged with Freddy to leave at 7:00 am today as we had quite a drive ahead.
The trip back to Antananarivo will take a day and a half just as it did to get here. Although we headed back on the same highways: R35, R34, and R7 our schedule was different. We knew that we'd be spending the night in Antsirabe, the third largest city in Madagascar. Tomorrow, we should have just a half day drive to get back to the capital.
We wondered why so many itineraries for trips in the country are for 10 days or more. We understand now distance seems much longer because of the conditions of the roads. Canadians are used to assuming that if a site is 100 kilometers away it should take just a bit longer than an hour when driving leisurely taking time for breaks. Here, that distance requires more than twice as long.
I feel lucky to have witnessed all the scenery from 8.5 hours on the road today. We saw such a variety of landscapes and such a variety of villages. We passed through this landscape in the comfort of our 4-wheel drive vehicle. We passed van-type busses completely packed with passengers and all sorts of cargo tied to the roofs. Some villages were little more than huts without access to electricity.
People in much of the west are so spoiled and yet apparently unhappy with life. The joy of travel is seeing how others exist. It puts a lot of things into perspective. It can change the core beliefs of a traveller and ensures that their worldviews will never be as they were. Indeed that is maturity and a good thing!
