Vatomandry
Trip Start
Nov 18, 2002
1
110
157
Trip End
Ongoing
Vatomandry,
Madagascar
Monday, May 12, 2008
We checked out of our little bungalow at Hotel Feon'ny Ala and started off back on the road again. This time to Vatomandary some 150km on the coast south east of Andasibe. The journey took 3 hours stopping on the way to buy goodies and bananas from a roadside stall.
We learnt from Lova our driver that Vatomandry was not frequented very often by tourists but mainly Malagasy people from Antananarivo who come to the coast to picnic. As this was 'holiday' weekend the beach was very busy with crowds of people enjoying the water. The waves crashed on the shore but this did not deter the young and older children having fun. It was definitely not a swimming beach well, not that day anyway.
We checked into a small guesthouse right by where the Canal des Pangalanes joins the sea
Canal des Pangalanes
. We went for a walk with Lova up the street where there were loads of different stalls selling anything and everything. Always when we are walking about we at least get a few people reacting to our presence. Many people start commenting on Martins height. We have got to know quite a few words having been here for 3 and a half weeks now and can recognise some of what is being said. Having said that, this time while we were walking we were getting no reaction from the locals. Why was this? Vatomandry is not visited by tourists very much and in our experience we normally get more of a reaction from places where there are loads of tourists. And then it occurred to us, it was because we had Lova walking with us! They would not comment as he would understand what they were saying. This was really weird. We love the interaction between us and the locals even if we don't fully understand what they are saying. What harm can it do us? To rectify this we gave Lova the day off the next day. We weren't needing him to drive us anywhere as the next town was a couple of hours away and we wanted to get to know the real people in this town first.
So our next day was started very leisurely, nothing unusual there we might add! Then we had a walk into the local market and there the laughs and jokes began. Martin was bent up double walking through the alleyways ducking under make shift roofing made out of plastic sheets and tarpaulin which was attached by a variety of ropes and string tied at all angles just waiting for the tall tourists to hang themselves
Local produce
!Our last afternoon in Vatomandary was spent walking to the beach with our bright pink 'friz-bee.' Well, we attempted to get to the beach and got all of about 40 yards from our hotel when we heard some little children walking behind us saying in French 'what is it?' 'what is it?'
As we were in a wide sandy street with no motor cars etc it was just too good an opportunity to resist, so we turned round and threw it at them. They took off screaming! Their reaction was just soooo funny. Then as they realised that we were laughing they obviously worked out that this strange object would not hurt them so one brave boy threw it back. Well that was it, the group of 5 children soon multiplied to 20. Adults walking by also had a go as we gestured to them that we would throw it their way. Each time the 'friz-bee' went off course and into someone's garden, that was it, all 20 children would take off into the bushes (regardless of who's garden it was) to retrieve it. Not like home where one child has to muster up the courage to knock on the door and ask for it back! It was about 2 hours later when the sun had finally gone down that the happy game ended. It was a perfect way to spend our last day interacting with the locals in Vatomandry.
