Our 1st Day in Madagascar

We were awakened quite early by the cows mooing and the dogs howling.

Some of the dogs at the hotel. Dogs are not pets. They are pests. There are wild dogs everywhere. They just roam the streets looking for food. They aren't mean at all.

We got up and showered as best we could (see here for the story). Then we decided to do some sightseeing around the hotel grounds. Hence the following pictures.

This is a really old merry-go-round. It reminded me of my childhood.

I thought this picture was funny. This is a 4th world country and they actually have satellite tv here!

Just some pictures of the view from our hotel. This is the capital city of Antananarivo.

The picture of the bottles is actually a hedge for the garden. The Malagasy people don't throw anything away! They are the epitome of recycling!

Chickens are everywhere! They roam wildly. The picture of the hole we think was the start of a pool that never got finished at the hotel.

We met up with Bro. Pritchard, looked around for a while and then went in to the hotel "restaurant" - if you want to call it that. Some versions of a restaurant are quite different than others.

Breakfast consisted of a light and airy baguette with butter and jelly, a 1 egg with ham and cheese omelette, minus the ham and cheese. You see, you can order the omelette the way you want it and the people will tell you that they have all the ingredients. But when you get your food, you might be surprised to find out that you got something different than you ordered. Brother Pritchard asked the waiter why there wasn't any ham and cheese on the omelette. His response - "We don't have any ham. But there is cheese on it." If you looked thru a magnifying glass you might see a speck of cheese here and there! Anyway, we left there quite hungry.

This picture is of some of the little "shack shops" that seem to dot the whole country. The people will just set up a little shack like this and open their "business" selling basically the same thing everybody else does. How they make a living selling the same thing I haven't figured out yet. Bro. Pritchard stopped there to buy a bunch of bananas for $.20. Yep, you read right!

This little guy was very happy to let me take his picture.

We picked up Bro. Kristoff and started our journey to Antsirabe (Ant-se-duh-bay). What was supposed to be a 3 hour drive turned in to a 5 hour drive. Antsirabe is only 70 miles from the capital. But the roads are very windy; sometimes not paved; the bridges are only passable with one vehicle at a time; and there are a TON of potholes! Hence the loooonnnggg drive!

The countryside is beautiful. Lots of little villages dot the countryside. People walk along the roadside; ride their bicycles along the roadside; herd cows down the road; all while the cars and trucks go by.

All the cars and trucks use diesel fuel. Drivers tailgate really badly there. Imagine being in a car driven by a Malagasy man. Then imagine him tailgating to the point that your car was less than an inch behind the car in front of you. Then imagine all the diesel fumes pouring into your car! And not just once on the drive, either. Over and over and over time after time. Yuck! I got several headaches because of the fumes!