Week 2 Tana/Joburg - Diego Suarez

Unlike Dave, I read relevant parts of the Lonely Planet Travel guide. So, after arriving at Ivato airport and doing some currency conversion I knew how to avoid pricey taxis at the airport. Just outside the airport, a taxi-brousse can be caught to Tana for about R1 as opposed to R25. Anyway, I did not wish to go to Tana in the first place since I had an early flight the next morning to Diego Suarez, so I walked to Manor Rouge Hotel instead (10minutes) fighting off pestering taxi-drivers.

I managed to get a reasonably nice room for R40 and tried to explain that I wanted a wake up call at 5am the next morning. The lady appeared to understand (I don’t speak French) and wrote down the time in some kind of log-book. It came as no surprise that I had to rely on myself to wake up early.

To kill time that afternoon, I walked round Ivato village and discovered a supermarket that is full of imported foods and toys which are similarly priced to South Africa. There appear to be more staff than customers and there were 3 security guards on duty. The cool thing though is that you don’t get bullshit prices like R4.95 instead R5. All the locals buy food from fly-infested roadside stalls called ‘hotelys’, instead.

In fear of getting worms or other diseases from local food, I already stocked up with chocolate and other energy foods at Johannesburg airport. Needless to say, I had quite an unhealthy dinner and breakfast.

At around 11pm a group of drunken people started singing (at the top of their lungs) opposite the street of my window and only stopped at about 4am. My earplugs came in very handy.

The next morning I walked to the airport in near pitch darkness – no street lights. I met some missionary type people from US in the waiting area and we flew together to Diego. This one woman said she was a climber a couple of years ago and the preacher is doing a doctorate in the monitoring of development of juveniles in sports. They were quite anxious when the plane experienced prolonged turbulence (30 minutes) while I was imagining how cool it would be if we had an emergency crash landing.

I shared a taxi with an American Indian and some other chick to get to Diego from the airport. Some time was spent walking around and looking for the optimal hotel to stay in. The town is very reminiscent of main-street Woodstock, except maybe more dilapidated and dirtier. The nearby coastline has a brownish tint (we wonder why) which makes swimming unappealing.

In order to meet with Dave, I left notes at a restaurant and the Post Office, specifying where I was staying.

At around 11pm I was woken up by loud music. It turns out that the place where I stayed at is less respectable than I thought, and they had a disco from 11pm-2am. So I got dressed and went to check out the nightlife of Diego. The disco next to my room was basically a dance floor packed with slowly dancing hookers and a bar. Then I went by taxi to Tropical night club, which were more like a normal night club by South African standards. They even played a Britney Spears music video.

On the next day, I went by taxi to Baie des Sakalava which is a very nice, clean beach with an overlooking restaurant. There are also shark nets and some small islands near the mouth of the bay. The water is very shallow for about 500m after which it suddenly becomes possible to swim in mild currents and waves. There is also some exciting bouldering amongst crabs on mushroom-shaped overhangs past the mangrove plants on the South side of the beach.

The restaurant served fish and rice for lunch. Some lemurs came on to the pavilion looking for food. Apparently they like Fanta and bananas. There were several foreigners eating at that restaurant and I was taught a game called ‘tat’ (I think).

To my relief, Dave showed up that night. I was eating a coconut in my tent on my bed paranoid of mosquitoes. Dave was not feeling well and blamed his worms. The next day I moved my stuff to Dave’s hotel which was less central but has a restaurant which made large egg-sandwiches for only R6. Also, some Spanish climbers (Peie, Meite, Marcello, Christina) which Dave met earlier were staying there. Late morning we all squeezed into a taxi heading for Montagne des Francais.

Police roadblocks stopped us and insisted on viewing our passports. I did not have mine on me, and just said I left mine at my hotel. They did not appear to be too productive in their activities. So I decided to do one-arm pull-ups on a nearby tree until they let us go. We continued on to King’s Lodge where the walk-in path starts.

We only realized too late that walking up the direct way to the Grotto climbing area was not a good idea. Very thick vegetation, steep slopes and deceptive distances resulted in a very strenuous 3-hour walk-in. Later we found that it only takes about 45minutes on the correct path. Dave lost a boot and I lost a sandal (strapped to our packs) in the forest. We were also carrying overnight gear, trad gear, a tent and 6l water.

On the way through the forest we walked past this suspicious looking old guy cutting wood with a panga. At a later stage we found a cave with some utensils we believed he stayed in.

We arrived at the crag quite exhausted. But since we are hardcore, we started climbing anyway. Dave climbed a 6a and nearly died when I lowered him off the 35m route using a 50m rope. Special thanks to my superfast reflex. (2cm of rope left through grigri). I decided not to climb face-routes because the rock was quite abrasive and hence bad for my Anasazis. So I did a 6c, 7a and some 7b’s in the grotto. The routes there are covered in loads of Bat shit, but would be awesome if they were cleaned.

The Spanish people left before dark, since they wanted to catch a taxi back to the hotel. We only left the crag later and made our way down to King’s Lodge through the forest by headlamp. The noctural sounds of lemurs and some birds were quite loud, but we could not see any animals besides some lizard on a tree.

The owner of King’s lodge kindly allowed us to camp on his lawn. We bought water and Fresh (lemonade flavored beer) at about 2 times the standard price.

We went back up to the crag the next morning so that I could finish off the remaining 7b’s and a 7c (fell off once though). Having depleted our water supply by noon, we left before the Spanish people arrived back and hitched a ride on a truck.

By that time, I was convinced that I needed to eat more energy loaded food for breakfast so I went shopping for muesli ingredients while Dave slept the afternoon away. It was quite a mission to get any ingredients, especially nuts, which I discovered are called ‘noix’ in French. The closest to oats I could find was white flour. I managed to explain what flour is to the shopkeeper by pointing to some ingredient on a cookie packet. Also, I was pleased to discover that the nuts I bought were actually peanuts and not some funny type of bean.

Later that afternoon we went to meet Gilles at “le Glace Gourmand” which is an ice-cream parlor with (super unreliable and slow) internet access. We discussed our plans to go on a trip to an island nearby for climbing the next few days.

Dave bought rum, so we made banana flambé in the hotel room on my msr stove. I learned that the rum should only be pored in after frying the banana, else it cannot catch alight.

The next day went by without much excitement. In the morning we had breakfast with the Spanish and waited for Gilles to show up. Dave and I did some bouldering on the building next door to our hotel. We only left in the lizard truck after lunch time for a 3hour drive to the east. It was quite cool climbing out of the truck through the window onto its roof in transit. We arrived at the fishing village too late to go to the island – we could only leave by boat the next morning. Hand-stands on the beach, balancing on shoulders and somersaults into the sea kept us busy the rest of the time. We had a fish-based dinner in a general store on stilts made out of poles and woven leaves.