Friday 14th October 2022. Miandrivazo to Antsirabe
The overnight rain had already pretty much evaporated from the ground by 7am when we emerged for breakfast but it was very humid and claggy. Had another chat with the other self drivers to pass on a couple of useful points from our own experience such as how helpful maps.me had been on the sandy tracks and the normal practice of checking over the car first thing every morning - we had noticed they had a slow puncture. We drove into Miandrivazo which was quite a large town and were pleased to see lots of petrol stations so were able to fill up ahead of the long drive (estimated as 5 hours but sure to be longer with photo stops and potholes). We were amused to watch a taxi bousse pass by with a motorcycle on its roof - it is bad enough lifting a road bike onto a roof-rack. We immediately started climbing into the mountains with views back to the town.
The road took up high into the mountains passing village after village and spectacular views around every corner. The road just seemed to go uphill for hours but the difference in village life in the mountains compared to further west and terracing of paddy fields was fascinating. We started to see more brick built houses and allied brick building industry as well as gold mining higher into the mountains.
The paddy field terraces became more frequent with some spectacular terracing in place. We eventually started to descend on the the high plains with beautiful views of the peaks around us but much more intensive farming and brick making industries evident as we got closer to Antsirabe.
The warning lights started to come on again with about 100km to go - it looked as though at speed the fan belt was not charging to battery effectively so the "fix" in Morondava had not resolved the problem. This meant that we didn't feel that we could take any chances and just needed to get to the hotel without doing any deviations to see some lakes in the guide book. We arrived at Souimanga Hotel at about 3pm to find the gate shut and no-one around. There was a pedestrian gate so I went through and opened the main gate myself which alerted the staff to our arrival. They clearly hadn't been expecting us and looked pretty perplexed. Luckily they did have a room but they then explained that the chef wasn't working tonight. I clearly showed my frustration - a combination of tiredness and stress from the long drive - but the receptionist was amazing and said they would get someone to cook us a meal. We spent the afternoon having a refreshing beer before being presented with an amazing meal for our dinner. We both felt very guilty as we could just have had the pasta and tomato sauce which we had bought the first day when we had been expecting to camp. It turned out one of the young lads who worked there had done the cooking - presumably he cooked for the staff normally. He created samosas to start followed by rabbit stew for me and zebu with black beans and rice for Ian, and a chocolate mousse for pudding. It was definitely much better than our pasta would have been!
