Tag Archives: Antananarivo

Day 17 – New Year’s in Tana

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Today is New Year’s Day, and it is a beautiful sunny day here in Tana.  Below is a view from our breakfast table on the terrace.

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After breakfast, Nadine’s family picked us up at the hotel and we went back to their place to relax for the day.  We played some games, had a nice lunch, and the kids packed for our trip tomorrow.  Nadine’s family will be joining us tomorrow for our trip to Ile Sainte Marie for 4 days, and the kids are very excited about it.

In the evening, we headed back to the hotel to pack for the trip tomorrow.  Our flight out will be very early, so we need to get packed and rested.  Before going to bed, we take a moment to take the laptop down to the bar (where the internet connection is) to briefly check e-mail and weather reports.  It seems that we have another tropical cyclone to look out for.  Tropical Cyclone Clovis is heading for the eastern coast of Madagascar, which is where we plan to go tomorrow.

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In the map above showing the path of Cyclone Clovis, I’ve added a big red dot showing where we plan to go tomorrow and stay for 4 days.  It looks like the heart of the cyclone will miss us, but it may cause some pretty bad weather while we’re there.

Day 16 – Nosy-Be to Tana

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This afternoon, we would leave the resort in Nosy-Be and fly back to Antananarivo for New Year’s.  I’m still not feeling much better, so I’m convinced this is not from the car ride.  Therefore, I’m taking the advice of Dr. Fitzsimons of the Traveler’s Medical Clinic back in Canada, and I’m taking some real medication.  He prescribed some powerful 3-day antibiotics to take if we felt we picked up a bug of some sort and needed to kill it.  Of course, nausea is listed as a side effect of the pills, but who cares since I already have it?  Basically, I’m putting more faith in the advice of a Canadian physician who I saw for only 20 minutes and over 8 months ago than the advice of a local doctor who examined me for an hour while I was actually sick (she said I didn’t need to take the antibiotics).

Briefly fast forward a day, and I’m feeling significantly better, and 2 days later almost normal again.  It could be a coincidence, but I’m betting the drugs cleared everything up.

When it was time to leave later that afternoon, the electric golf car picked us up at our room and drove us back to the reception area where we checked out and met the boat.  This time we would take a boat for part of the ride back to the airport.  What an improvement over the bush trails!

Back at Nosy-Be airport, we arrived a little early for our flight (actually 90 minutes ahead), but better early than late.  Eventually, we flew back to Tana on another nice 72-seat plane.  The flight took about 80 minutes.

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Nadine’s family picked us up at the airport.  Since I still wasn’t feeling totally great, we opted out of plans to go out for New Year’s Eve celebrations, and instead headed back to the Palissandre Hotel to rest.  Other than being awakened at midnight by very loud fireworks, it was a restful night.

Day 10 – Christmas in Tana

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Tratrin’ny Krismasy

Joyeux Noël

Merry Christmas

It is now Christmas, and as expected, we have no snow!  Actually, I don’t think Madagascar as ever seen snow.  Today we are going to Tsiry’s uncle’s house for a family gathering of about 60 people for lunch and partying.  I will get to see how the Malagasy celebrate Christmas.

Before heading over, we decided to check for an update on the cyclone, which is now hitting the north of Madagascar.  I found the map below tracking the path of Tropical Cyclone Bondo.  I added a green dot to the map at the city of Antsiranana in the extreme north of Madagascar, where we were due to go tomorrow.  The cyclone has already passed through, and is moving southwest.  If it continues this path, it should be well into the south by the time we are there, and we will hopefully have fair weather up there.  However, they have sometimes been known to reverse direction, so we’ll keep watching.

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Here is a radar image of Bondo’s current position.

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Anyway, enough about tomorrow.

I was wondering how they were going to get 60 people in a house, but Tsiry’s uncle has a very large house.  His living room, which was cleared out to make a dance floor, was about 1,000 square feet.  Below are some photos of the party.

There were lots of kids…

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Here’s the food!

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Theses people just love to dance and party!

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Later in the afternoon, we drove around a bit to see the east side of Tana before heading back to the hotel for the evening.  Back at the hotel, we packed and went to bed early, as our flight to Antsiranana was at 9 AM the next morning and we would have to get up early to get to the airport.