10:15 – just passed over Springs on the way out to Madagascar. Wish I could be jumping out via parachute and landing in the back yard to shout “surprise!” The plane I am on is a BA146. The wing is above the fuselage and it has four small jet engines (which sit right next to me and block out most of the view from the window). I have the whole row to myself because the guy who was sharing the row got up before takeoff and went to sit at the back of the plane. This means I can type here without any worries and can “stretch out”. All of my things are spread over a couple of chairs now instead of the one I was put in originally. A good start to the trip.
Don’t know why but really not looking forward to this trip, usually I have some varying degree of excitation but nothing for this week’s trip. Just don’t want to be leaving Ruby and the boys behind... I suppose it is getting soft in my old age.
Lunch served on the plane is a choice of beef or vegetarian. I choose beef which consists of a small plastic container which holds a few spoonfuls of a pasta salad with cayenne pepper in the dressing with four small meatballs next to it. There is also a Melrose cheese block, a packet containing three savoury biscuits and a serving of cheesecake. The cheesecake is very good. Time for a small sleep.
Been flying for two hours now and still a while to go. I look out of the window and it is just sea everywhere, if the plane goes down now I am going to be fish food. Pretty colours in the water though – not just the steely grey/black look but patches of lighter blue also. Really pretty when the little patches of sand are just under the surface or make it above and there are little islands in the middle of nowhere. Looks like a little tropical paradise from up here. If I were down there instead of up here I suppose I would be saying the plane was a little bit of paradise and the bare sun bleached little patch of sand was hell (unless there was a couple of sharks swimming close by then it would probably still be paradise).
Land Ho! I see the shoreline of Madagascar which means the trip is almost over (just 45 minutes or so to go). Weather in Antananarivo, the pilot tells us, is pleasant and fair. I seem to remember reading sometime that this is the rainy season? Just worrying about the amount of clothes I brought with me I suppose.
Just looking at the beach along the Western edge of the Island and realised that it is huge. The beach must be at least 100 to 200 meters long / wide from sea to vegetation in some places.
The place looks very dry from up here, river beds are just sandy paths snaking through the landscape with a narrow, darker ribbon of water imprisoned between the banks. It reminds me of the movies I used to watch when I was in primary school which were made in the Kalahari – the look of the rivers I mean, not the land itself.
1pm South Africa time – 2pm Madagascar. I am on the road to ‘Tana with Georges Harrison and Marcellin Andriamassy from the airport. Will take a little while to get used to the smells of the people and stalls along the road again. All the sights and smells of city living in Madagascar...
It is good to get here again and have a reminder of how little a person actually needs to get by.
In the hotel now and trying to get set up in my room and now realise how little I brought along in the way of clothes. The hotel is right next to a Toyota dealership and my first thought was that they shared a reception and what have the office gotten me into? The place is nowhere I would have expected to find a hotel and the look from outside did nothing to ally my first impression. The inside is a different story though – the whole judging a book by its cover I suppose. My room is quite small but neat and has a view of the pool below my balcony – way different from the expectation seeing the place from the outside.
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