March 30th to April 5th 2024
Hi everyone! I am a little bit behind on my updates for my blog, but here is a recap of everything I did the past week. Starting with a trip I took in Madagascar once I got back from Senegal. There were still some difficult travel experiences with this one but overall, it was a very successful and fun trip.
I had planned this trip with Charlie and Chelsea, two Peace Corps volunteers who live in the Majunga area, weeks in advance. When I arrived back in Madagascar from Senegal, I would meet them in Tana because they were already there for Peace Corps Training. Our plan was to spend Easter together and then fly to the north of Madagascar to Diego-Suarez. Well, I was late getting to Tana because of my delayed flight and spent pretty much all of Easter on a plane or in the airport. I finally arrived in Tana Sunday night and our flight to Diego was Monday morning. I met up with Charlie and Chelsea that night and everything was good and then things started to change.
One of Sophie’s relatives was visiting Madagascar this month and I had planned to meet up with him in Diego. However, Sunday night, hours before our flight to Diego, he texted saying that they changed their plans to go to Diego because they found out the city got hit by a cyclone and bridges were knocked out and parts of the city were flooded. This was not good news to receive and Charlie, Chelsea and I debated what we should do. We eventually decided that we shouldn’t go because our plan was to take a bus back and that might not be possible without the bridges. We decided that we should still go to the airport to change our flights and try to get refunded.
Our flight was at 5 in the morning, so we stayed up until 3 am and then went to the airport in hopes of getting a refund for our flight. It was easy to do, and the people working there were helpful, and we switched our flight to the end of June to visit Diego. We then talked with our driver who took us to the airport about what we should do instead. He suggested we go visit Antsirabe which is a 6-hour bus ride south of Tana. We booked our bus tickets for the next day and despite all the changes were excited to visit a new city in Madagascar.
We had a great time in Antsirabe. We got there on Tuesday and were able to walk around a lot of the city. It is similar in size to Majunga, but it is more of a biking town. The taxi system there involves someone on a tricycle, who will bike you places while you sit in the back. There was also a carnival there so that night we went on a man-powered Ferris wheel and did some bumper cars which was fun. On Wednesday, we booked mountain bikes and went on a long mountain bike journey to a lake that had formed in the remains of a volcano called Lac Tritriva. The ride there was hard because it was about 11 miles uphill on dirt roads, but the view and peacefulness of the lake made it worth it.
On Thursday, we were able to take a tour of the STAR Factory. STAR produces pretty much all the beverages in Madagascar, from beer to soda and water. The factory we looked at produced all the beer for the company. They said that they ship out over two million bottles every day. The tour of the factory was amazing! It was cool to see the bottling facility where all the bottles were sanitized, filled with beer, capped, added a new sticker and then stacked to prepare to ship out. I have never been on a tour like it, and our tour guide was great. Later on Thursday, we walked around the city a bit more and bought some rocks because apparently that is what the city is known for. And then in the evening, to continue with our STAR tour, we did beer testing for all the different beers that they produced.
Friday was our last day in Antsirabe. We were able to have breakfast in the morning before we had to jump on a Cotisse bus to head back to Tana. We got into Tana around 3pm and then had to wait 3 hours for our next bus back to Majunga. Our night bus back to Majunga took 17 hours in total, so we were on a bus for 23 hours in one day which is crazy to think about. But we made it back to Majunga, and overall, it was a very good trip.