June 15, 2017
The ugliest hotel artwork I’ve ever seen? Certainly bottom four. Hotel Colbert, Madagascar, June 15, 2017
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So much noise. A gaggle of people is always loud; as mom pointed out at dinner last night, the volume tends to get louder as the alcohol flows. But it’s only 11 am here at the airport while we wait to board our 12:20 Air Madagascar flight to Toliara (also called Tulear). This is the capital of the Atsimo-Andrefena region. Once we land, it’s a 3-4 hour scenic drive to Isalo, where we’ll be running our marathon on Sunday.
There’s a nervous energy to the crowd, excitement over the next stage of the adventure. And I’m excited too. But I’m sorta talked out, especially about running. The conversations reverberating round the tiny gate waiting area is a cacophonous headache inducer.
I like these people, so it’s not like I’m angry or unhappy with chatting with them. But as an avowed introvert, sometimes I need a bit more quiet in my life. As I’ve repeatedly disclosed, I can’t localize sound and so have to really concentrate to hear even snippets of a conversation in larger groups… which can make these tours a bit of a challenge. But I want to be clear – everyone here has a story and it’s a worthy one. They’ve committed to a challenge, to an adventure, and that means different things at different times. Some are here to finish their seventh continent. Some are here to run a half for the first time ever. Some are here for the fun of it. And some are here to push themselves to a new plateau. Me? I think aiming for a PR on Sunday is asking for heartache… but I have my moonshot in July so more power to them.
Still, I feel like Huey Lewis as the teacher at Hill Valley High telling Marty McFly and his Pinheads band that they’re just too darn loud. Truth be told, it’s an astute criticism from him as Marty is showing off and could use less as more to help the band. I think in some ways he learns that lesson in 1955 as he rocks out on Johnny B. Good.
So to sum up… Air Madagascar travelers – you’re just too darn loud.
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Because I can’t live in the now and am always keeping at least one eye on what’s next… or what’s next after next… or next after next after next… I’ve spent a bit of last evening and this morning trying to get a bib to the Disneyland Paris Half Marathon.
Unfortunately, the French runDisney race organization is the most disorganized entity going. Imagine PigPen organizing a race… or perhaps Dory. After months of saying the bibs would go on sale in spring 2017, a few weeks ago they announced the registration date of June 14th at 4pm Paris time. It took them two hours after that time to “tweet” a notice that due to technical difficulties the registration was postponed but would reopen soon. Some tweets said maybe later in the day but more likely tomorrow. The official website has no updates and continues to promote the 4pm June 14th date.
I’ve clicked through every conceivable search for Disneyland Paris Half Marathon Bib booking/registration over and over again… first last night and again in the morning at the hotel and now here once more at the airport.
I’ll try later. I’m sick of refreshing the page. If it’s meant to be, I’ll get a bib… if not, I’ll cancel my hotel I prebooked as “insurance” to ensure I had a place to stay that weekend.
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Meanwhile, back at the airport…
Oh, good… the bar in the lounge has restocked the beer. So now the alcohol is flowing and the volume is rising… misquote the raven… evermore.
This morning a number of folks at breakfast talked about the short runs they tried to get in around the crowded town. I’m both jealous as I am feeling overstuffed and sluggish and also a bit incredulous. Part of me wants to Anderson Cooper eye roll at the discussion because I feel like there’s time to be running here in the near future.
I wonder if I’m not taking the race seriously enough. There’s all this talk amongst a few circles of travelers about the altitude and wanting more details on the course itself. My understanding was the course hadn’t really been finalized yet (albeit Thom and Jeff and a few other Marathon Tours staffers went early yesterday to get things setup). In top of that, this is an inaugural adventure race. This is supposed to be a fun thing and while I am always up for a run and look forward to running on Sunday, I don’t see any need to stress about the event. It will be what it will be. Given the French colonial influences on this place, I know not what to say regarding the race proper. What else to say other than “que sera, sera?”
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We’ve boarded without incident or delay. I think maybe we’ve been oversold on the Air Maybe moniker. Hell, they’re already leaps and bounds ahead of Virgin Australia. Is that story on this site yet? The Outback Marathon flight fiasco? I don’t think so. I’ll have to add that in some day on a Throwback Thursday.
As we wing our way southwest, here are some photos from this morning’s bus ride. We left the hotel with ample time to deal with traffic on the roads and snafus at the airport. It was a good thing too as both proved examples of controlled chaos.
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Behind those curtains, King Julien is enjoying videos of old timey plane crashes.
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We’ve landed. The baggage carousel is a single conveyor belt that just… ends. It’s a fairly easy system to get our bags.
Outside the terminal, Marathon Tours subcontracted porters to load our luggage atop our caravan of minibuses. These portrs complained about their payment and our local guides were exasperated as they said they just tipped them a week’s worth of wages. It was an awkward moment that made me hope my bag wasn’t thrown overboard in protest.
A short drive later we grabbed lunch at a local hotel … wherein our guide Parson told us we’d have a five hour drive to our hotel for the race. That’s a bit longer than the 3-4 hours we were told beforehand.
Mora, mora, right?
We traveled along road number 7, a famous Madagascan road tre runs from the capital to the coastline, something akin to our Route 66 or I-95. It is not exactly a multi lane highway, albeit with carts drawn by zebu dotting the shoulders, it’s perhaps a four lane blacktop in some parallel universe.
Here is a rum factory that takes sugarcane and ferments it to make local proof. During celebrations and festival, rum is served and it’s only a good one if the rum runs out. If a lot of rum is leftover, it wasn’t a success, partly because the rum was no good.
I didn’t get a good shot of the tombs which are so important to the Malagasy people. As ancestor worship and respect was and still is very big here, tombs are an expression of wealth, success, and family. The more wealth, often held in zebu, the bigger the tomb. And unlike the temporary houses of wood and brick in this lifetime, the tombs that house the eternal afterlife are made of more permanent concrete. Often the deceased’s greatest hope or dream is expressed in the design – say somebody always wanted to sail the seven seas… his or her tomb might be done in the shape of a boat.
On top of this, there is a tradition that after burial, at a time of astrological significance and benefits to the community, a family will perform the rite of turning the bones. This involves exhuming the body, cleaning it, wrapping it in a new burial shroud, and re-interring the bones in the tomb. It’s a sacred, celebratory service in which much zebu is shared and consumed and is a key stage in the bones transmogrifying into a proper “ancestor.”
Throughout the trip I found it weird to take photos of certain things. Clicking a snapshot of people on the streets of villages and towns were ok so long as I didn’t feel like I was contributing to some odd poverty pornography… yet even despite that guideline I took a few photos that just made me think, “should I have taken that picture or should I be trying to do something to help? Is that insulting?” I don’t know how to express it other than to say I had moments of great moral conflict and guilt throughout my witnessing the conditions of people here.
I also felt particularly odd taking photos of their sacred tombs as it felt like, well, a potential desecration. I meant no offense but maybe that’s as bad if not worse.
We made a stop at this example of a baobab tree. Of the nine species in the world, seven of them are endemic to Madagascar.
As the sun set, we carried on into the enveloping night. It would be a close to but not quite five hour drive.
We passed through what I think was called Shakara City but that might have been my travel addled brain conflating the name with the stones Indiana Jones pursues in the Temple of Doom — I think those are shankara stones. The town is definitely a mining town, a place of precious gems and minerals. Here the locals would steal zebu as a rite of passage to prove their manhood. It was a game and part of the culture… until it became big business and rustling became organized. I think if I heard correctly that bin Laden’s son-in-law was killed here during a raid as he was accused of zebu rustling. That’s something to google later.
Arriving at the hotel at 7:30 pm, it turned into a colossal, confused goat-fluster. Twenty-four of us were at another hotel a third of a mile away; none of us knew that. We could have figured this out during the hours at the airport … or on the flight… or at the arrival airport… or at lunch… or during the almost five hour drive. As it is, we are looking at a half hour info meeting and dinner may be at nine.
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An Idiot’s Guide to Malagasy – that idiot being me
Our guide tried to teach us a few handy Malagasy phrases. I tapped out the Kevin phonetic spellings as best I could but let’s be honest – my Malagasy accent is atrocious and my skills as a translator far from universal.
Hello – Sal-llama.
Note: the super polite, formal hello was something like Sal-llama tok cord or Sal-llama Tox Uthat — although the latter I think is the MacGuffin Jean-Luc Picard searches for on his “Captain’s Holiday” in Star Trek The Next Generation.
Goodbye – Vel-loom-a
Thank you – Me–sow-oocha