Southbound! Adventure in the Southeast

Train Station in Manakara, one of the only rail networks in the country connecting Fianarantsoa & Manakara

Vanilla! Near the Taxi-brousse Station

Glimpses of Manakara

It looks like a real road on the map...

After leaving Anosimparihy & catching a conveniently timed Taxi-brousse headed South, we continued are trip into the familiar coastal town of Manakara (which we visited several times during our stay in the village). We almost immediately found another taxi-brousse connection continuing South, to a town called Farafangana and eventually Vangaindrano. The roads were for the most part great & paved, except for a stretch of the last 20 km getting into Farafangana, which must have taken a painstakingly long hour to go through and around all of the potholes and puddles present, a stretch made all the more difficult due to a long overdue need to eat lunch. 

After Farafangana and lunch in a little Malagasy restaurant with the name "Texas" (although the food was nothing like Tex-Mex), we continued the road south with almost the entire taxi-brousse to ourselves with the except of maybe 3 other riders. (usually they're filled to maximum capacity of 18 passengers, with the occasional additions crammed in beyond the number of seats as well). I was very curious about going into Vangaindrano, my guidebook failed to mention any towns further south than Farafangana, except for it being notated as a dot on the map.

Market at Vangaindrano

Kilometer Marker for "Vang"

The town itself seemed almost like a blend between a village and a town, many of the roads were dirt or cobbled stones, although there was a few pousse-pousse's around to help us find a hotel and carry our luggage. After getting into Vangaindrano we tracked down a car going on the route to Fort Dauphin and made a reservation to start our journey the next day at 8 am. 

Another usage for large vehicles-clothes line- spotted while waiting at the station

Waiting...

In the end we left the taxi-brousse station at about 1pm the next day, after a lot of time waiting at the station, wandering through the street markets, and coming back to wait again, undergoing a discussion with the driver about the possibility of taking a different car, the luggage was finally loaded onto the roof of a 4x4 and we set off.

The road

Unlike the roads further North, south of Vangaindrano, were very slow going, and sometimes questionable as roads. Looking at a map of Madagascar there's a line that shows a road running down the east coast. What this line does not tell you are the side paths, puddles, streams, sand and deep ruts that will be your route as you make your way South. 

Another interesting feature about the route South is that route contains total of 10 ferries ("Bacs"- from which the name Bac Namorona, the village on the road near ours comes from, it used to be a ferry station before a bridge was built over the river). We crossed 3 ferries our first day of travel, and stopped for the night at a small rural hotel/restaurant at the edge of the next crossing. It was actually a bit of luck that we stopped where we did, as there were rooms with beds to sleep in for about $5, and the alternative had we stopped for the night elsewhere, would have been sleeping crammed in the car. 

First Ferry experience in Madagascar!

Bac Crossing at Sunset

Began the second leg of our trip early the next morning, for a while we were treated with stunning views of mountains with clouds hovering below them, to the West, and a sparkle of the distant ocean to the East. For much of the stretches in between water crossings there was nothing but grassland, making me wonder as to how long ago there had been forests there. 

Some of the views along our trip

 Besides a stop for breakfast, our second leg of the trip traveled without stop (with the exception of the 7 remaining ferry crossings). We bought fried fish, and cassava from villagers at the ferry crossings, and snacked on the parting gift of litchis that the Mayor of Anosimparihy had given us. The last 4 crossings were hand-cranked instead of motorized, amazingly enough, with a cable to keep the platform in line. 

Waiting for the hand-cranked ferry to get back to our side so we could cross (it took a little while)

It was interesting getting close to Fort Dauphin, I could sense the changes in the landscapes and communities that we were getting into the Anosy ethnic region, (where we spent much of our time during my study abroad program in 2010) although I couldn't really put my finger on what about the landscape seemed so familiar to me. Those last few hours stretched on, not helped by the fact that additional passengers had been picked up along the road and crammed into the car alongside us. We finally made it into town at about 8 pm, I ate a dinner of sweet potatoes and peanuts, and was very happy to sleep that night in a bed in a familiar town. I think all this time travelling via taxi-brousse has improved my travelling stamina; after this trip even the 36 hours of travelling to get back home seemed relatively bearable, although a lack of fried fish, litchis, and the views, do take away a bit from travel by air. :)