Saturday 8th October 2022. Bekopaka to Morondava

With a long day ahead we wanted to be at the front of the escorted convoy which we had been told would leave at 7am.  We got up at 5.45am, packed the car, picked up Francois at 6.30am and arrived at the ferry port by 6.45am.  We were not first in the queue but there were only a couple of cars ahead of us so parked up to wait for the ferry just in time to watch a lorry on the other side of the river drive onto the ferry and sink it.  It looked like the weight had all been in the front and when it had driven onto the ferry it had overloaded one of the pontoons.  It was clearly going to be an interesting journey!  We crossed the river on the smaller local ferry which was only able to carry 3 cars and parked up on the other side to wait for the convoy to set off.  

The sunk ferry meant a significant delay but we met another self-driving couple and had a long chat.  They had no idea about the military convoy and had driven up blissfully unaware.  We arranged to drive with them back to Belo in line with the advice we had received not to drive alone even after the end of the convoy section.  Francois played with the local children and their poor chameleon.

 

The convoy eventually departed at 8.30am, 1.5 hours later than we had anticipated. The drive was horrendously dusty, much worse than the journey up but it worked well driving with the Dutch couple as we were able to take turns leading.  It was fascinating having Francois with us as at one point we came through a village and he told us that was where his Grandfather still lived - he described it as "real country".  He had been brought up in Belo and his Mum and Dad still lived there so he showed us his school and where he went to collage to learn English, and described walking for hours to his Grandfather's village. We made it to Belo within 3 hours so decided to have  lunch at Mad-Zebu - the Dutch couple just to grabbed a sandwich from the market and kept going which with the benefit of hindsight was a wise decision.  We just had a main course to ensure we didn't spend too long at the restaurant as we were feeling reasonably OK about the time.  We both had zebu steak and it was fantastic but still surreal to be eating such amazing food especially after the basic food we had been eating for the last few days.

We regrouped with Francois and wandered back to the car only to discover that the back driver's side tyre was very low.  Luckily as Belo is Francois' home town he was able to direct us straight to a puncture repair shop and have all the discussions in Malagasy which meant we only lost 15 minutes.

We reached the ferry port just after 12.30 to find ourselves fourth in the queue.  A 2 car ferry arrived which left us second in the queue so we were quite optimistic that we wouldn't have too bad a delay - how wrong we were.  The river was so low that the returning ferries got stuck on sandbanks so all anyone could do was sit and wait for the tide to turn.  A 2 hour wait then ensued.  Francois passed the time chatting happily to the locals and we were entertained by the children who loved seeing themselves in photographs.

We were mightily relieved when we were eventually able to board the ferry.  We were amused to watch a group of quad bikers coming across the river the other way, the concept of driving one of those up the road really did not appeal having just driven down it.  The ferry journey seemed to take forever but it was once we docked that the real fun started.  They linked three 3-car ferries together in order for the cars at the sides to be able to manoeuvre to get in line with the ramps.  The guys on the shore were trying to hold the ferry in place with ropes wrapped around a tree stump but the tide meant that the ferry was moving too much and the tree stump gave way.  None of this was giving us much confidence but they eventually managed to start unloading.  The car next to us had to back onto the ferry behind us but in doing so it crashed into the back wheel hub of our car.  The damage was much worse to their car but it left us with a concern about whether we would have to foot the bill for our car.  We ended up being almost the last car to disembark causing us further delay.

 

We had intended to drop off the empty beer bottles at the garage but we were now so delayed that our only thought was could we even make it as far as Kirindy before sunset.  We were both silently contingency planning with the idea that we could always camp if we could get the Kirindy but we had the added complication of Francois.  When I expressed the view that we couldn't make it all the way to Morondava he seemed completely surprised but he hadn't realised that we are not supposed to drive at night.  Ian drove as fast as he possibly could whilst staying safe on the crazily bumpy track and we reached Kirindy by about 5pm so we made the decision to keep going.  Having had lots of discussions about how it would be amazing to see the Avenue des Baobabs at sunset but ruling it out as we didn't want to drive at night it was quite amusing that we arrived just in time to see the sun setting.  

The place was packed so we felt more confident about being able to drive the rest of the way as we could almost certainly follow someone else. However the reality was much worse than we had imagined as there were people everywhere going in all directions on foot, bikes, zebu carts, tuk-tuks, cycle taxis, taxi bousse as well as lorries and cars most of which had no lights.  Ian described it as being in a mad computer game with things coming at him from all directions and having to dodge to stay alive.  Our other concern was that tomorrow would be Sunday and we needed to find a bank to get some cash.  In the end Francois came with us all the way to Morondava to show us a cash point - he was happy to grab a cycle taxi back to his accommodation.  We were relieved to finally make it to Chez Maggie at about 7.15pm.  We dropped our bags and headed straight to dinner (crab soup followed by fish and chips plus beer / rice wine).  The only downside was the huge number of mosquitoes and the really high humidity so sleep was going to be tough.