THE VANILLA ISLE (PART 3) or FROM PARADISE TO HELLVILLE (AND BACK AGAIN)

THE VANILLA ISLE (PART 3) or FROM PARADISE TO HELLVILLE (AND BACK AGAIN)

From our discussions with our new friend Jean, we had decided to take him up on an offer of a tour of the west of Madagascar, including a trip on a boat down to the coast.  So we visited the Air Madagascar offices the next day to book our flight back from Nosy Be that evening.  We spent the rest of the day on Andilana beach and we were sad when it came to the evening and we had to get into our taxi to the airport.  I vowed to return here one day to myself.  

The taxi was a beaten up old Renault 5 and the taxi driver had a teenage girl in the front with him who he seemed to be showing off to.  He was quite aggressive about the fare and I decided not to argue since we had a plane to catch.  He started throwing his badly maintained car around the corners of the one, very windy road that went from Andilana to the airport.  There were no seat belts.  As we rounded one bend at breakneck speed I could see he had seriously misjudged it.  It was one of those instances where if he had held his nerve and not slammed on the brakes then he would have probably been ok, but he slammed on the brakes.  The car skidded and the left front side slammed into some concrete at the side of the road.  In a moment that will live with me for a while I expect, I saw the girl in front of me (no seatbelt either), sail through the front of the car and collide with the driver as the car bounced off the side of the road.  We came to a halt in the middle of the road.  The girl was ok.  So was the driver.  We had been jammed up with our luggage in the back and the luggage, it seemed, prevented us from moving far when the car hit.  I was fine.  Ro had a bruise on his left leg, but otherwise was ok too.  We were shocked though.  I was annoyed with the driver for being so reckless (but didn't think expressing this would help) and relieved that everyone was ok.  But what to do now?  It was dark, we were in the middle of nowhere and there was no passing traffic.  The plane was in an hour and a half.  We looked at the damage and his driver side tyre was scraping against the back of the wheel arch, and seemed to be slowly deflating.  The car started again but the the wheel was so out of alignment that it was going nowhere.  I felt a bit selfish feeling predominantly concerned about getting our flight, but then I also felt that it was not my fault that the car was a wreck.  The taxi driver, to give him his credit, did get on his mobile and phoned a friend.  About 45 minutes passed and this guy turned up, concluded the same as we had that the car was going nowhere and dutifully drove us off to the airport.  

25 minutes to take off we arrived to an airport that was as dead as any I have ever seen.  No people, no lights, no sign of life at all.  No flight certainly.  The icing on the cake.  I felt a bit like Krusty the Clown in the Simpsons in one of his depressed sigh moments.  We asked the taxi driver to drive us back to the capital, Hellville (which is so named after Admiral De Hell rather than being descriptive of the place itself, although there isn't much for visitors there) and we had to book into a noisy, nasty guesthouse overlooking the main road.  The taxi driver tried to criminally overcharge us for the taxi drive and I almost lost my cool in a fairly major way at this point.  I think he might have realised this actually as I expressed my indignation, and he knocked off a significant amount.  It was the end of a pretty hellish evening and I was in no mood for people taking advantage of our misfortune.  We tried to blank out our room by applying ear plugs and eye shades before sarcophagising ourselves in our silk sleeping sacs on our very dirty bed. I slept fitfully.

I woke feeling a bit unwell next day and had the runs.  The previous day I had received an answer phone message on my mobile (we have bought local SIM cards), but Madagascar being Madagascar the top up cards weren't working on my phone so we couldn't access it.  We bought some more top cards and tried them in my iPhone.  This worked and I then listened to a restless Malagasy lady from Air Madagascar telling me the flight last night was cancelled.  No shit.  But then it seemed to say it was rescheduled for 10:30 this morning.  It was 8:30.  We rushed into the nearest taxi.  Another mistake.  This was an even older Renault 5.  It required hot-wiring to start it and, even more to our disquiet, the fuel tank consisted of a water bottle with a fuel hose running out of it next to the passenger's leg in the front.  Nice and safe.  I thought Bob Crow could've done with a drive around the island a few times in it actually.  It might have had the decency to blow up.  The car kept stalling and cutting out.  I was stressed.  Finally it cut out completely and the driver jumped out, produced an old rag from somewhere and rushed over to a nearby shack where he persuaded the people sitting inside to let him dunk the rag in a barrel of water.  He then trotted back to the car, opened the bonnet and clasped this sodden rag over some part of the engine, before sealing it shut with the bonnet and trying again.  The car started and whatever he had done seemed to do the trick as we then made it to the airport without major problems.

No plane though.  Dead airport.  Again.  Eventually I managed to ascertain the plane is in fact scheduled for 6pm. To be fair this was because I and my could-do-better French had misunderstood the answer phone message.  Another Krusty style sigh.  It was a nice day so we decided to just wait it out at the airport.  I was beginning to feel more ill, and fell into a listless sleep after snacking briefly on a few Doritos and a bottle of water.  It was all we had.  6 hours later the Air Madagascar staff turned up and it looked like the flight was actually going to run.  Whether we would get on was another matter, and added to which I had managed to mislay the tickets.  Happily they were able to trace our booking and we waited with baited breath in the departure lounge.  An hour or so later than scheduled a bigger plane than expected touched down and we boarded.  I was feeling really ill by this point- fevers and chills probably compounded by lack of food.  Two glasses of Air Mad supplied coke didn't help.  I passed out twice on the plane and remembered thinking as my brain metabolism faltered for the first time that this is what it must be like in the first stages of dying.  This wasn’t an entirely self-generated morbid thought as I had been reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which tends to go on about such things.  As I remember it the place I briefly occupied was rather beautiful (just like the book suggests it is).  Anyway, I came to with Ro trying to rouse me and looking very concerned.  I was sweating, pale and my heart was racing.  I felt better for a while then it happened again as we were landing.  I wondered if had malaria or something else nasty.  As a doctor one tends to catastrophize about such things.  Ro helped me off the plane and retrieved our bags.  I am very grateful to him for helping me otherwise it could’ve been a lot more difficult.  It underlines why it’s good to travel with someone.  We were met by Jean, who could see I was unwell.  He had brought a driver with him (another lifesaver).  He took us back to the hotel we had stayed in before.  Thankfully they had a room.  I felt very weak but managed to eat something, stuck myself on a three day course of Ciprofloxacin from Dr Jim's self-prescribed pharmacopoeia pharmageddon that occupies a small yet significant proportion of my bag, then collapsed into bed and slept like the dead for 12 hours.  It had been a pretty taxing 36 hours.

I guess, writing this in retrospect (I am much better now btw :)), that this illustrates something I remember from traveling before, and that's how lows and highs juxtapose themselves often with little in-between.  Compared to our comfy lives in London we have less to 'buffer' our existence here and went from the paradise of Andilana to the hell of our return to Tana with giddying speed. But really, it is both the excitement and the fear that come with this that make the traveling experience what it is, and worth doing.  We've only been gone a little over a week and it feels like we've experienced more in the time we've left than I would normally experience in a couple of years.  Sometimes I feel so cosseted by my western lifestyle.  Along with all the risk and randomness seems often to go all the emotion- the excitement, the fear, the trepidation and tremulousness of not really knowing what is going to happen in the next 10 minutes, still less the next day.  But that same emotion makes me feel more alive.  Maybe it’s the threat of death in all its guises that makes life worth living, and puts the other existential trifles that I otherwise have time to dwell on in London into perspective.

Oddly enough I have no photos of the past 24 hours so here's one of the sunset at Andilana.  It's better to remember the good times :)