A Hell-Ish Journey from Antananarivo to Morondava*

*title decided upon 1 hour into leaving Antananarivo.

After establishing that I was actually leaving this morning, rather than last night as I had presumed, I went to bed early and woke up at about 4:30am. By 5:15am my taxi driver had arrived to take me to the station. We got there at about 5:30am and there were a lot less people crowding around me unlike the day before. The guy who sold me my ticket (and tried charging me 250,000ariary) the day before, quickly came up to me and took me to his stand again where he asked me to pay the rest of the money I owed him -150,000 ariary. I was not having any of this and was quite mad at him. I refused to pay and he left. 

I continued waiting in this room at the bus depot for 15 minutes or so, when another guy (in an orange t-shirt) came up to me telling me he was the driver of the bus (or so I presumed from the steering wheel motions he was making). He told me I had to pay 20,000ariary for my bag because it was big and would go on top. I kept refusing and pretending I didn't quite get what he meant, but he was getting frustrated with me and didn't let up so I presumed it to be true and paid it.

After the orange-tshirt guy left the building again, the first guy came up to me and motioned to follow him with my bags. I assumed he was taking me to my taxi-brousse. He instead took me to another ticket office where he continued to ask me to pay the rest (the 150,000 ariary). I flat out refused, I had already paid way to much for the ticket and was not giving this guy any more of my money. I would rather have just hired a private car to take me to Morondava. At one point his friend took my ticket, ripped it up, then threw it out the window (rather dramatically). But after realising that I was not paying him any more money, he wrote me a new ticket and took me to a different bus where my backpack was finally loaded on top of a taxi-brousse. 

However, this appeared to be a different bus operator that the guy had pawned me off to (presumably after realising I wasn't paying him anymore money), and now they were asking for another 20,000 ariary to pay for my luggage. I was very fed up with people asking me for more money at this point and kept refusing. I told them I had already paid to the orange shirt guy but they kept shaking their heads. In the end I paid it, I was fighting over $8 after all and it did seem legitimate that I need to pay for my luggage. It was just my fault that I had paid the 20,000 ariary before actually seeing my bag loaded onto a bus I guess. I had to awkwardly fish out some notes from bra though as I hadn't been keeping that much cash in my actual purse.

But I was on bus! Although after the two days I had essentially paid for 2 tickets by being ripped-off and not being wary enough about who I was paying and how much things had cost. But I was happy to be sat in the backseat, despite the minimal leg room, and ready to leave Antananarivo. We left the bus depot at around 6:40am (good timing I thought!) and after sitting at a petrol station for a while, left Tana a bit after 7:30am. Things could have been worse, and the guy who wanted me to pay 150,00 ariary could have just left me at the station and I wouldn't have known what to do because I don't speak either French or Malagasy, but I got on a bus and that was all that mattered. 

I generally find bus trips through the different African countries quite enjoyable as I like watching the scenery go by. This taxi-brousse trip was hands down the worst bus experience I have ever had in my life. The bus was in good condition, were were making good time, but the roads in Madagascar are mountainous and curvy - two things that do not bode well with my motion sickness. Added to that was the driver who would speed up and break up to swerve around pot holes in the ground.

I hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon, and by 45 minutes into the trip it had all reappeared again. Most of it went out the window, but I was glad I had wet-wipes and hand sanitiser to clean up any mess. After that for the next 11 or so hours I would duck my head out the window to have a quick spew. I was thankful I was in the back right hand side of the bus, there was no one behind me to watch and the driver wouldn't see out my side of the window. The only person who did notice me spewing repeatedly was the guy seated next to me, who I felt quite bad for. But after the first vomit it was all just liquid really. 

one of the many rivers we crossed today ... all the bridges could only accomodate one vehicle at a time for some reason though.

I didn't really improve much during the day. We stopped for toilet breaks and food stops where I got off the bus, but once the bus got moving around the mountains again, I just got sick again. It was a bit of a repeat process of spew, fall asleep, feel somewhat okay, feel not okay, spew, sleep throughout the day. It started thundering down rain at one point which somewhat helped because it made our driver go slower, but my window couldn't close properly so I kind of just got wet (speaking of which, my backpack did get a bit wet, but only partially and only about 1/3 of my clothes are bit damp, which is either because it wasn't under the tarp on the bus properly, or my backpack isn't actually water resistant like it was advertised).

If I hadn't of been feeling so sick throughout the day I'm sure I would have enjoyed the drive. The scenery was lush and green, and the villages were interesting to drive through. Most of the road seemed as though it could barely fit 2 vehicles, and there were constantly cows, people, cyclists, chickens on the roads as well. With taxi-brouss' driving so quickly I would be terrified to ride a bike through Madagascar (I'm scared to ride one around Melbourne). Our driver also had the tendency to honk his horn really loud whenever there were people/vehicles/animals in his way so that they would move, which made me wonder what would happen if they suddenly didn't.

At 5pm when it began to thunder down rain I managed to fall asleep (after vomiting a heap of water I had just drunk) until about 6:30pm when people started getting off. We had suddenly entered a new landscape while I was asleep where the road was flat and straight! In the distance I could see palm trees and baobabs, and by about 7:30pm we had reached the city center of Morondava. I hadn't quite realised it was the city center until I glanced at  Google Maps and I realised I was very close to my accomodation (Google Maps thankfully doesn't require any data, just uses your location to track where you are). I got a taxi to take me to my accomodation for the night where an enthusiastic tour guide wanted to organise what I was doing for the next day. He mentioned something about a "black culture" in Morondava which I was very confused about, until he explained that there are often black outs and there is only electricity at certain times of the day!

Baobab tree!

At the moment I am at Hotel Trecicogne where I get a private room to myself (double bed and a fan) and a shared bathroom for about $10 a night. The staff here are very friendly, and as soon as I had showered (very much needed after a day of feeling sick) I was able to connect to wifi and order a plate of "tomato spaghetti" (spaghetti with no meat), which was my first meal for the day. It was very much needed after what I can say was the worst motion sickness I have ever had in my life. 

My legs are tired from being cramped all day, my stomach still feels a little bit off and the mosquitos are definitely out, but I am very excited to go to bed and get my plans sorted for the next few days!