The morning started with another phone call to Roadtrip Africa to confirm that they were alright with us driving the rest of the way with the warning lights on - we had decided that it was probably a loose connection rather than an issue with the alternator otherwise we would never have made it this far. Our breakfast had been quite substantial and accompanied by the sound of a guitar lesson which had been delightful. We took the opportunity to walk around the hotel grounds which were like an oasis compared to the scorched earth outside the perimeter. They were growing all kinds of fruit and vegetables as well as keeping their own bees,
The start of the journey was hair raising as we were driving through the city of Antsirabe at rush hour and there were people, cycle and cars in all directions. We had also expected the road to improve as this is the major highway but it was just as terrible as the last one and in places worse as the potholes were huge due to the number of lorries. The drive was slow but interesting as we passed by huge terraced fields and through town after town. The entire route was urbanised and we started to see lots of road side stalls selling everything from wooden trucks, religious statues through to baskets, plants and even bunnies - each village seemed to have its own speciality. Despite the huge increase in urbanisation we still saw lots of zebu carts and families doing their washing in the rivers.
The farming was definitely more intensive the closer we got to Antananrivo with huge amounts of terracing having been created with intricate water channels to keep crops watered.
It was difficult to know that we had actually arrived into Antananarivo as we had been going through solid urbanisation for miles with each town essentially joined to the next one. The traffic was crazy though and we were having to rely on the maps.me app to follow the road as it twisted and turned, crossed bridges, went round roundabouts and crossed junctions. We were about 10km from the airport and the end of our road trip when we made one wrong turn and ended up having the worst driving experience of the entire trip. We were supposed to turn left but we were in the wrong lane and ended up going round a big lake in the centre of Antananarivo. We thought we had managed to get back to where we had started and turned onto what we thought was the main road but turned out to be the road in to the absolute centre of Antananarivo market. This was definitely not somewhere a car was supposed to go as the streets were really narrow and everyone had their stalls set out in the street. There were thousands of people in all directions and it was impossible to see how we could drive through especially as no-one seemed willing to move. Ian was shouting "which way" and the map.me app was helpfully saying "turn right and then next right" on a continual loop. We ignored the app and just tried to go in a very slow but straight line with the aim to firstly avoid running anyone over but secondly just to get out of the market as quickly as possible. We eventually escaped only to find ourselves stuck down another narrow back street with cars and vans coming towards us and them signalling that we had to go backwards. After much hand waving and eye-rolling from the locals we managed to manoeuvre backwards to give the cars coming the other way enough room to come past us. It had been a tough end to our drive and the picture does not give any sense of how bad it was because at the worst point there was no way we were able to stop to take a photo!
Thankfully we did eventually find our way back onto a main road and headed towards the Relais des Plateaux Hotel near the airport past more paddy fields on the outskirts of the airport which looked serenely calm after the experience we had just had.
We arrived at the hotel at about 4pm and found ourselves a seat in the bar area as we had hours to hang about. Roadtrip Africa were coming to collect the car at 6pm and we had booked dinner at 7.30pm. We managed to arrange to join the airport transfer bus which was leaving at 10pm for our flight at 1.15am Sunday morning we would not arrive home until 6pm Sunday afternoon so a long day ahead.
It had been a fascinating trip in which we had only really scratched the surface of Madagascar. Lasting memories will definitely be the Tsingy rocks as well as the lemurs but we will also remember how helpful everyone had been throughout the trip whether that was when we had a puncture, we needed directions, we had got stuck in the sandy riverbed or even when we took our car where no car should ever travel into the middle of Tana market. The driving was certainly a challenge at times but we are definitely glad that we chose to self-drive - it was always supposed to be an adventure holiday afterall!
