Adventures of NaDave: H'moon 6 - Madagascar Andasibe NP

We awoke to a beautiful sunny morning, and the overlook from our Hotel Door. It was our last day in Madagascar, but the rain from last night had passed. We packed up all of our things, and headed down for breakfast. We stuffed ourselves and hopped in our van for Andasibe National Park.

Today was our chance for an amazing hike to see Lemurs and other wildlife in the rain forest part of Madagascar. It was a short drive and then we met our guide for the hike (same as the night walk before). He led us all around the park, seeing chameleons, giraffe beetles, and of course Lemurs! The best part of the hike was the Indri Indri lemurs. We spent about 30-45 minutes there, and they amazingly did their call. It almost made us cry it was so beautiful!! But you also had to be careful of dripping water...bc it was the Lemurs peeing! They get all of their water from the leaves they eat.

We also packs of brown lemurs and also lemur nests. It was Lemur City. We could have stayed there for hours, but we had to get back to Antananarivo. So we got back to our car, said our thanks and headed back.

It was back on the same road, and again it was pretty to go up and over the mountain pass, travel through local cities, and watch the countryside change over. As we crept back into the city, more and more farms and dwellings popped up. We passed sports field where we saw futbol and rugby being played. Then eventually we were stuck back in the city traffic.

Before heading to the aiport, we stopped off at the souvenir market. Nadine was a little nervous being in a market with close quarters and local people that appeared more sick, but we did the best we could to stay healthy. We were dropped off, and then walked back and forth through the shops. One of the shop owners was an aggressive younger guy who would not leave us alone. But we eventually rid him, and bought a few items with the cash we had remaining.

We eventually made it to airport. We unpacked everything, said goodbye to our driver, and also Maggie showed up to say goodbye! She told us thank you and gave us a nice gift coffee mug saying Cactus Tours.

Off we went back into the airport, and again things got crazy. We had to fill out a form and again needed a pen. There were locals there trying to earn a quick buck, and offered to help Nadine with her form. She let him help, and then afterwards asked for money! We had to ditch him quickly and head quickly into the ticketing line. As we entered line, we handed the security our form and then they checked our ears for an elevated temperature (Le Pesta!). We passed through and onto ticketing. We had no issues, and made to the security. Dave made it through with no problems, but Nadine was stopped for our Lovers Tree souvenir. The security lady spoke poor english, but took the souvenir out of Nadine's bag and was motioning to bang her head with it! Ugh! She headed back to the ticket counter to check her bag, while Dave waited for her to return. There was a nervous delay for Dave, but Nadine returned back in sight and made it through no problem (but with no bag!)

We had some time to kill and looked around at the shops. We found some Madagascar Liquor in the duty-free and I wish I would have bought some Mada rum, but thought it'd be able to find it in another airport (no such luck!).

They announced our flight and off we went out to tarmac. We hopped inside and took our seats for Mauritius. We looked at each other and said, we survived! We survived all the fears and stress (and the Plague!) of Madagascar. What a first week! We were hoping to be headed to Seychelles but instead it was east to Mauritius & Reunion.

Arrive to Mauritius
After a nice flight where we let the stress of Mada quiet down, we landed in Mauritius when it was dark. We were excited to enter a country where water was safe to drink, and raw vegetables weren't going to attack your GI system.

We arrived off the plane to a very modern airport (compared to Mada) but a little bit chaos. We first had to fill out entry paperwork, which we weren't provided on the plane. We eventually found the paperwork, but then the challenge was finding a pen. We asked an airport staff member, and she was a b****!. We remembered we had one in our bag, and filled it out quickly. Then we got in line for immigration, and everybody was pushing and shoving and trying to get through quickly. We held our ground and made it up to the line. We were nervous with our prior 6 days in Madagascar, and whether or not we would be allowed into the country! We were asked how long we stayed in Mada and why, then waited patiently, and sure enough we were let through! The gentlemen then told us to go over to another line, specifically for people coming into Mauritius, and not just passing through to another flight.

We got to this next line and showed another friendly gentlmen approval paperwork from the previous line. Then he asked for information we had on where we staying in Maur and for how long. Good thing Nadine had printed out all of reservation info! He reviewed it then asked for the phone number of the place we were staying. Since we were in an AirBNB there was no phone number (compared to a hotel). We went back and forth trying to explain our situation, he then asked if we could make a phone call to confirm, but since we had no SIMcard (we had no plans to get one), we couldn't call anyone. Eventually we showed him text messages through the AirBNB app, and then he said OK, and let us through (phew!).

We had made it through the border crossing after Mada, and were ready to get our overnight. We got to the main lobby and noticed all businesses were already closed, ugh! We found an ATM and got out some currency, the Mauritian Rupee! (The Indian influence was showing through!)

We headed to car rental spot, again Nadine pulled out our reservation to ensure we knew where to go. We got to the counter and nobody was there, hmm. Other counters had people, but we had recently booked this reservation and it was through a cheap-o brand. We rang the bell, and a gentlemen appeared smelling like smoke. He greeted us in French, but then quickly turned to English. We worked through all the paperwork, then he recommended the gas station for drinks & food, and off we went. We got the car, and the driving was on the opposite side! Another challenge just to get home. Since it was so late for the island community, the roads were clear so driving was ok. We stopped at the gas station, grabbed some local beers (Phoenix & Bourbon) and wine, got some snacks, then continued on. Using the old school method of just a map, we finally found our place. It had a gate with code, and looked real nice! We knew we'd have someone waiting for us to check us in, so we saw their car.

The code worked on the gate, we parked our car, then headed inside. We were greeted by a lovely French woman, but she only spoke French (oh boy!). We learned were the only ones in the house for our stay, but Nadine tried to figure out which room was ours. Oh man, it was an Abbot & Costello bit...we were trying to use google translate (using the house wi-fi) but that didn't work. She couldn't understand our question of which room was ours, so we eventually Facetime'd the owner who lived in the UK. We finally got the answer we needed and spread out in the house. The place was amazing! It several floors, several rooms, laundry, etc. We spread our stuff out and queued up our dirties. We opened some wine, beer, cheese, crackers, and finally relaxed. We ventured up to the top floor and made our way onto the porch overlooking Blue Bay. Since we were near the airport, the planes taking off went right over us, and created some nice entertainment for the evening.

The excitement of the night came from when Nadine hit her heel really bad on the way to the bathroom. She went down hard and was worried she would have trouble walking. We also got into a argument, but the booze eventually won and we retired to bed.

Tomorrow was exploring Mauritius, and trying to setup some snorkeling and a boat trip to a nature preserve!

Morning View from Andasibe Hotel Door (Madagascar)