The setting chosen for another week of gallivanting with just the parents, and some non-GFAs (Grandma Friendly Activities), was the northern costal city of Diego Suarez. In the Year of Our Lord 1543, Portuguese explorer Diogo Soares sailed into the harbor and murdered a number of the local inhabitants, earning the city and harbor their names, continuing the ever-fashionable trend of naming cities after historical figures with dubious human rights records. Area history would only grow more sanguinary as European merchant fleets took over the Indian Ocean. What attracted to Europeans to Diego was the massive, visually pleasing and incredibly defensible deep water harbor that juts into the island. Any naval planner worth his salt would be able to recognize the military advantages of controlling this impregnable marine-fortress. Thus, the French pried the harbor out of the hands of the Malagasy monarchy in the First Franco-Hova War in 1883. The Russians of all people used the harbor to re-supply the Imperial Navy in 1905 before getting themselves seriously spanked by the Japanese at Tsushima. Winston Churchill, worried that the Japanese would entrench themselves in Diego during WWII, authorized a major operation in 1942 to wrestle the harbor from the Vichy French. We hoped our visit would be slightly less bellicose, though it did turn out to be interesting.
The parent’s hotel was set on a vacant side street, the entrance looked like the backside of a bad Chinese buffet, and behind the heavy brown steel doors was a long dank hallway. Mother was concerned. I flashed her a pleasant smile and reminded her that ‘Peace Corps recommended’ hotels tend not to have bell boys or complimentary mints on the counter. I left them on the curb and went with the taxi to find my own accommodations at the PC transit house. When I returned an hour later I met the hotel proprietor in the reception area. Wearing nothing but a sarong, he was earnestly berating a fiendish haggler who was trying to extort money from my parents who were sitting nervously on a sofa. Once the other characters had cleared out, I was pleased to discover that the hotel was actually quite homely, pleasantly decorated, and featured the only functioning air conditioner I have ever seen in a room for less than $20.
Without any real direction as to where to go for lunch we found ourselves dining at an establishment that local Peace Corps volunteers have given the moniker “The Prostitute Bar.” Prostitution, as we soon discovered, is a booming industry in Diego. The whole of Northern Diego seemed heavily populated with elderly European gentlemen in optimistically youthful clothing chasing around brazen young Malagasy in tight outfits and painted faces. Curiously absent from the streets, however, were the throngs of Malagasy poor. There were no skinny men hauling sugarcane, no street vendors pushing sequined scrunchies and cheap flashlights. Only broad, shaded sidewalks, overpriced multi-ethnic restaurants pleasant vistas over Diego harbor.
On our first morning in Diego, I had arranged a trip out to the fabled Emerald Sea. We booked through the highly reputable “I have a friend who knows a guy who has a phone number for another dude” method so Friday morning found us wading through a slimy polluted harbor in drizzly weather to a wooden skiff with a musty sail and a little outboard motor accompanied by three Malagasy men we had only just met. Our fortunes improved significantly as the weather cleared crossing the harbor and we slowed to a stop above a vibrant coral reef. We paused for a bit to allow one of our guides to harpoon some of the local wildlife. Having collected four brightly colored, possibly endangered, reef fish, we skirted out of the harbor to the North, spread our sail and entered the Emerald Sea.
The Emerald Sea is what happens when white coral-sand accumulates on the ocean floor for some umpteen million years until the sandy bottom is just a few meters from the surface. The sea water sits gently on the sand, reflecting the sun’s rays turning the whole area a bright shade of unreal green. Our boat pulled up to a pristine beach on an island where the only structures are picnic shelters. Whilst we bobbed in the shallow sea, our crew was busy fixing us lunch. By noon there was a monstrous salad, four grilled fish, five crabs, three beers, and a heaping mound of coconut rice sitting on the table that our guides indicated was exclusively for us to ingest. We set to work and made a wonderful mess of things over the next hour before took to the sea to wash the bits of crab shell out of our hair.
Though stuffing ourselves with fresh seafood on the beach was a hard act to follow, we hoped that an overnight excursion to Ankarana, prepared for the next morning, would be to our taste. We set out by land rather than sea with a portly mustachioed driver in a Mitsubishi pick-up. The road (there is only one) out of Diego was rife with heavy artillery craters left over from the Malagasy Civil War. Although the historical record lacks any mention of this internecine conflict, there is no other way to explain the state of the RN 6 so I’m sticking to that story.
Our driver stopped us in some nameless rural hamlet and purchased for himself a leafy bush of lime colored leaves and placed them prominently in over the parking brake. Presently he began picking the branches and eyeing the plant, selecting the best leaves and popping them into his mouth. Chewing on the leaf for a moment, he stuffed the rind in his cheek before consuming another eventually causing him to take on the appearance of a fat faced hamster. “It keeps me awake!” he reported. Sure it does. Khat, as it is commonly called, is amphetamine-like stimulant classified as a ‘drug of abuse’ by the World Health Organization. Illegal in most countries, it prevents drowsiness, induces euphoria, suppresses appetite, and is addictive. Continued use has been shown to decrease self control and cause a whole host of maladies, but withdrawal symptoms can include manic behavior and hallucinations so I was glad to see the driver happily munching on his little leaves for the remainder of our time with him.
After an hour or so our mildly impaired driver turned off the road for a scheduled detour to the “Red Tsingy.” More significantly, my parents got a real experience of what an unpaved road in Madagascar really means. The car spent a good deal of time in four-wheel drive tearing up slippery muddy hills and sliding around unmarked cliffs. The driver welcomed a family of Malagasy featuring young infant to sit in the bed of the truck only to get himself stuck with two wheels off the ground a few kilometers later. We had to push. Mother about died. We arrived safely.
As it turns out, Red ‘Tsingy’ isn’t tsingy at all, rather it is a monument to the problems of environmental degradation besetting Madagascar that happens to look pretty when viewed out of context. The area surrounding ‘Red Tsingy’ was deforested and burned ages ago; inaugurating intense erosion that quickly washed any usable top soil out into the Indian Ocean. However, the erosion didn’t stop there, it eventually cut massive canyons into the red earth that grow larger and more menacing with each rainfall. In some of the canyons, the erosion cut all the way down to a layer of laterite that erodes in a strange way causing odd formations that appear similar to proper Tsingy. The Malagasy, turning lemons into lemonade, trumpet the formations as “a completely unique work of nature” to draw in tourists. Right. When we were there it was raining and we got to see erosion in action as sediments flowed though the canyon, burying the guardrails in mud and turning the formations into a sandy mush that fell apart in our hands.
Moving onto the more pleasing destination of Ankarana National Park, we passed the night in an hut made of local materials that earns mention as the most rustic of our accommodations thus to date, though it was roomier and better constructed than some volunteer’s houses I have visited. Although mildly scandalized by the lack of running water, squat toilet and flimsy exterior, Mother was highly amused, and I am not being facetious, by the bellowing of zebu that woke her up at 3AM, apparently causing her to forgive the establishment’s aforementioned shortfall in creature comforts.
The park itself was packed with lemurs, snakes, birds, and flora unique to the area and I finally figured out the proper camera setting for taking quality photos of wildlife on Mother’s newfangled Nikon. The park’s highlight is formations or REAL limestone Tsingy that stretch out endlessly across the landscape. Larger in area, but less dramatic as the Tsingy formations I had visited near Morondava in November, they are a fascinating example of Madagascar’s unique geography. Our final non-GFA was an afternoon decent into a colossal bat cave that opened into the earth near one of the Tsingys. Armed with little more that the flashlight on my cellphone, we ventured deep into the cavern surrounded by chirping bats that flew so close to our faces we could feel the wind off their wings as they passed and the slipperiness of their poo as we walked.
Emerging from the cave, I came to the conclusion that I had sufficiently exhausted my parent’s appetite for adventure, so we returned to Diego and spent that evening, and the following day (my birthday) lounging about town, eating and drinking at fine dining institutions and watching a strangely fascinating cargo ship unload containers into the port. We flew Air Madagascar back to Tana the next day. The airline, which had earlier met with my approval by serving a small breakfast on our way to Diego, served a disappointing lunch composed exclusively of hard candy. The next day the European Aviation Commission banned Air Mada’s planes from the skies over Europe sighting safety concerns. Thankfully, the parents had booked their flight out on Air France.
