After breakfast at the hotel we headed out. First stop was a supermarket so that we could stock up on snacks and drinks as we have a few long days on the road. Fully stocked up we hit the road towards Antsirabe, 170km from Antananarivo.
The road took us through the countryside, once we escaped Antananarivo. Winding through little villages, rice paddie fields and lots of vegetables fields. In some ways the scenery reminded us a bit of our trip in Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos…
It was slow going on the road, it took nearly 6hrs to travel 170kms. This was partically due to the traffic. Once stuck behind a slow truck or an Ox-pulled cart, it sometimes took a while before we found a spot to overtake. The huge pot holes also slowed us down in some sections of the road. And finally our bus, is definitely of the slow and rickety variety!
Along the way we stopped at Ambatolampy, there we saw an aluminium “factory”, and we use that term very loosely, as Robyn’s dad actually built an Aluminum plant, Alusaf is South Africa! This was not on par with his standards… The main product they were making were aluminium pots, cast in sand. We saw how they were breaking up scrap metal, melting it and pouring it into the casts. They were really cracking out those pots whilst we were there. What was amazing is that all the people there were working with no shoes on… HSE was definitely not top of their priority list.
For lunch we stopped at a restaurant in one of the small towns, and we tried their speciality duck and chicken. The flavours were great but we all agreed that their birds are more on the lean side, also known as Marathon Chickens (for the long and slim legs).
We learnt about the Famadihana tradition in Madagascar. People here traditionally have crypts that house family generations, up to 30 deceased in a single crypt. Every 7 years the family remove the deceased and re-wrap them in silk cloth before holding a huge celebration that includes dancing with some of the dead, before returning them to the crypt. Un/fortunately, it seems that this tradition is starting to die off as these celebrations tend to be very expensive.
Eventually we arrived at the hotel in Antsirabe, and decided to have dinner there. We got a few of the local Malagasy dishes, and we are starting to figure out that the locals really love garlic in their food. We assume that this is one of the french influences that they brought to the island.
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