Day 2 on the RN7

It is 4.30 am, and I can’t remember if I woke up early or I haven’t been able to sleep at all. We’re on our way from Antananarivo to Tulear. Yesterday we moved from Antsirabe (where Birger spent some years of his childhood) to Fianarantsoa. The RN7, the road we’re traveling on, offers quite nice scenery, views and villages, as well as people (a woman even invited us inside her house). But driving on it requires a lot of energy, as the level of alert needs to always be at his best. Huge trucks are suddenly coming occupying most of the narrow road, taxi brousse (or taxi-be) are going as fast as they can, and people are walking dangerously on the sides of the roads, popping out behind turns. If that wasn’t enough, the road can surprise you with some painful holes in the ground, or scare you with all its narrow bridges where one car a time can pass and no side protection is offered! Anyway, with our Samurai we can’t go very fast, and we’re managing well all the other challenges. Nevertheless, what our skills could do nothing with is the weather. We started our trip in the sun, but after a couple of hours we began to see a dark cloud over a mountain, with some bright lightening. Of course we hoped the road would not bring us in the middle of it, and of course we were wrong. Honestly, I can’t say how long it passed between the first drop of rain, and the branch of three that broke our front window, when brought down by the heavy storm. We had to have an emergency stop because the rain was so heavy that we couldn’t see over 10cm in front of our faces (beside the broken window, that likely kept all the pieces together), and be testimony of the rain attacking the Samurai so hard, that we got a bit wet thanks to the licking (none told us we should test if the car was rainproof). In about 20minutes time we were again on the road driving, looking forward to arrive at destination, for a shower-dinner-sleep. The sun came back laughing at our injured Samurai, but helped us to arrive before night. The hotel we stopped at was below our hope, and the shower wasn’t what we dreamed (it wasn’t even warm); dinner wasn’t that cool either, as I found a rat-excrement in my plate. The girls working in the restaurant where visibly surprised and embarrassed, so I guess it wasn’t ok for them either, however, eating was not fun any longer. And when it comes to the sleep…we’ll here I am, writing to you. I’m looking forward to start day 3 on the road, enjoy a safe trip and arrive to the beautiful park of Isalo, near Ranohira, in 297Km (hopefully in less than 7-8 hours).