Traveling in tourist hot spots on the budget of a volunteer often makes the fun parts of a vacation--the excursions, restaurants, and being pampered in hotel rooms--significantly more frustrating and potentially bankrupting. After more than a day's ride on a taxi-brousse, the prospect of a natural reserve filled with exotic plants, animals, and insects becomes almost petrifying when it means spending another few hours on the road. Hotel prices impossibly cheap to tourists, and therefore reasonable to the proprietors, are impossibly expensive even split three ways. And souvenir shops filled with crafts made from wood, stone, straw, and bone get a quick glance surveying the wares but you generally leave with a fifty-cent postcard.
From similar experiences in Tamatave, Ile Saint Marie, Morondava, and even Antananarivo, we had learned both how to prioritize and, more importantly, haggle. Talking down prices is not only a convenient money saver here, we are actually trained to do it upon arrival in Madagascar. With just a little bit of finesse, posturing, and the willingness to walk away if one's price isn't met. While certain things aren't negotiable, like hotel rooms or restaurants, the cost of almost anything else is subject to debate up until the final coins. This little bit of boldness we all picked up here, we saw over the course of the week, saved us 30,000 Ariary on a boat trip; 24,000 each on a park entrance fee; 20,000 on a single trip's taxi fare; and many other times as well. Moreover, showing the merchant that you speak Malagasy and can juggle their rather complicated number system, opens them up considerably to giving you the "prix namana"--the friend price (what they would sell it for to a Malagasy person).
Though we were thus limited in what opportunities we could take advantage of in Diego, we still managed to get around and mix a little bit of adventure with our ultimate aim of separating the ideas of Madagascar as a general place of work and the Madagascar of pristine beaches, forests, and dancing lemurs. More than a couple of days were passed either swimming around a large pool at the Grand Hotel (serving drinks at a swim-up bar), walking through the streets of uniformly two-story buildings, or whiling away time between meals at better and better restaurants. With one full week between our arrival and non-negotiable plane ride home, we had plenty of time to kill, and we were more than happy to kill it eating pizza, steak, carpaccio, cheeseburgers, and drinking Coke after delicious Coke. We were originally hoping to sample as many restaurants as possible in the relatively swanky downtown Diego, but soon found our niche at Pizzeria Naelle, which without question serves the best pizza in the country.
Excursion #1 was a boat trip to a small island floating somewhere in the bay called Emerald Island. Originally planned for the 24th, our big day was met with non-stop rain and thundering night and day and night. We barely made it out of the hotel rooms before we called the boatmen and rescheduled for Christmas morning. Incidentally, exactly one year earlier on Christmas day, I was waking up early to board a board to go to a small island off the coast of where I was vacationing). Take 2 offered clear, sunny skies and off we trotted to the pier area, 15 of us or so boarding a small watercraft to spend two hours cruising along the bay, alternatively the most sparking blue and most crystal clear water I have ever seen. Having developed a phobia of the ocean from last year's vacation, I mostly rocked back in forth in the middle of the boat and stared at the floor, but now and again I peered overboard and saw endless coral, fish(es), seaweed, and my own potential demise below the near-indistinguishable surface of the water.
On the way to the island, our crew was sitting along the back of the boat using the traditional method of spearguns to reel in our lunch for the day. While we lounged on the beach, snorkeled (during which I saw hundreds of fish, including a clown fish [think Nemo {the fish, not the captain}]), and drank, they made us a meal of coconut rice, cucumber salad, and giant scary fish. Neither Erin nor I had ever eaten fish, despite the fact that I come from "the Ocean state", though I gave it a shot and actually enjoyed it! After another few hours in the water, getting increasingly murkier and deeper because of the incoming high tide, we called it a day and returned to Diego.
Excursion #2 was later in the week to Amber Mountain National Park, set about 90 minutes outside of town. I was excited to hike around for a while and see funny animals, but quickly learned that "rainforest" isn't a name--it's a warning. From the second we stepped onto the trail to the second we left, clouds dumped roughly an Indian Ocean amount of rain onto us, myself with a borrowed, child-sized umbrella and Erin with a beach hat. Others seemed to have known this beforehand, and that's why rich tourists can rent 4x4s to just drive up and down the perpetually muddy paths sunken into deep tire-shaped ditches. Unfortunately, this means that all the animals wisely choose to live elsewhere in the park and we all just walk in circles staring at the ground, trying not to fall into the mud. I did. Twice. We did spot a few things here and there, including a family of crowned lemurs high up in the trees, a millipede with bright red legs, the world's tiniest frog, and waterfall hundreds of feet high. For the most part, though, our guide would hear a chirp or a ribbit and tell us what animal we were hearing and would be seeing if they weren't all hiding from the cars. I grimaced some more, and thought about hot chocolate at the Grand Hotel. After about half the trek, starting on our way back Erin and I decided to part with the group going on a side trail to see another waterfall (I had seen enough water fall that day, thank you very much). We instead trudged back to the entrance lodge, took a nap for a couple of hours, and waited for the group with a massive headache.
Ramena Beach, 19 kilometers down the road from town, was our final destination before leaving the next day, looking for a quiet afternoon. Most of our friends had already left, taking the 24-hour death tour back down to Antananarivo and needing the extra day. Instead, we sat beneath a large shady tree and watched the locals bring in fish nets, sail up and down the bay, and kids trap jellyfish in plastic bags and hang them from branches. The water wasn't nearly as clear as on Emerald Island and there were essentially no fish left to ogle underwater, but the place did have the advantage of electricity, made use of by dozens of little snack huts with cold drinks and warm fish. I opted for a coconut shaving/sugar concoction sold to me by a woman walking up and down the beach with a tin bowl full of them. A drowsy taxi ride home, dinner at a tapas bar, and a hot chocolate for breakfast was the last I saw of the place, aside from being mugged again by a taxi driver en route to the airport. Even this setback, though, couldn't overcome the smile of knowing that our friends left in the afternoon the day before and were still puttering along National Highway 6, and would still be when I was back in Tana, well-rested and thinking about the significance of the next time I step foot in that very airport, 6 months from now and on my way home.
