Saturday, January 19, 2008

I Madigaskara

Made Antanarivo last night at 2 am or similar. I have to say the change in atmosphere between the world's fourth biggest island and Ile-de-France is a bit staggering. From Edinburgh, I stopped through in Paris to enjoy dinner with Mme Tarnay, alias LvCandler. There was rain in Europe, and even though this is the alleged cyclone season in the Austral parts, all I can detect is an immensely pleasant air of passing showers and unstoppable giant twittering moths with a background of heady dripping and chirping from plant leaves and benign arthropods.

The Visa-getting process in this place is about as efficient as the following:











Even so, this bit of tropical urban subAfrica feels about right after several months of quiet creeping winter. Soon I'll be on the way to Centre ValBio to begin the whole process of establishing a long term base camp deep in the forest where they keep all the weird primates you could ever want somewhere among the chameleons and frogs with rugged team captain HM Andrea Baden.

Have a picture of Tana. I insist.