Our original plan for a month in Madagascar had been squashed a little by
all the good times we were having in East Africa, and because we had to be in
Iran on the 14th October for an International Climbing festival. So
we had only two weeks to enjoy paradise. Madasgcar has everything. Jungles,
deserts, beaches, pirates, amazingly good rockclimbing, tasty food (mix of
french, african and southeast asian, with some vanilla thrown in) tasty THB and
Libertalia beer, great accomodation and the coolest retro taxi’s in the world.
We spent week in the north of the Island, sleeping in a treehouse and
climbing the amazing limestone cliffs in the surrounding jungle. The climbing
was short, but the tufas and pockets made for steep and exciting lines. Most
nights on the way back to camp shy troops of cute lemurs would gaze wide-eyed
at us from the treetops. They scattered when I got too close though, I think I
must look like a Foosa.
It was nice to get back into some solid climbing. The Jungle crags excel in
the 6a-7a (19-24) grades which is perfect for us. I climbed my hardest clean
onsight ever, an amazing 6b+ that followed a tufa before breaking out onto an
overhanging pocketed red wall. Also climbed a couple of 6C’s, including one
which had a huge roof up high with a nice flake though it, a bit like a certain
well known route at arapiles back home.
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| Julie (in pink up high) on an excellent 6b+ route |
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| I ate a bat. |
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| LEMURS! |
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| Chamelions |
We befriended a nice taxi driver with one of the more reliable of the
aforementioned Renault 4L retro-taxi’s and travelled around the north of the
Island. They say that to travel around on the terrible roads of Madagascar you
need a huge 4x4…… or a tiny retro Renault 4L.
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| Our go anywhere wheels |
We hiked some surreal landscape,
passing caves, baobab trees, bugs that look like flowers, chameleons with
camoflage powers that need to be seen to be believed, weird spiky limestone
towers… We also spent a couple of days in Antananarivo, which I liked except
that we finally experienced out first theft when a gold chain was torn from
Julie’s neck. After getting though mainland Africa without any trouble we’d
just gotten too complacent. Unlikely to happen again though, as theft is
basically non-existent in our next destination- the Middle East…
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