The Road from Mahajanga to Diego Doesn’t Pass Through Hellville, but it Sure Feels Like it (aka The Beautiful Bus Ride Through Heck)

The Road from Mahajanga to Diego doesn’t pass through Hellville, but it sure feels like it (aka The Beautiful  Bus Ride Through Heck)

So I got to the bus station Sunday night at 5:30pm.  After sitting around for 45 minutes, I was like Hey can I got back to the beach at take pictures? So they said sure, and I did.  Sadly the sun had already set so I didn’t get any good pictures. So finally around 6:30 the bus takes off (by now I’ve decided than an hour late is typical bus departure time).  And I actually had the front seat all to myself (other than the driver) so I thought to myself ‘yeah, this is gonna be good!’.
Wrong.

We’d barely been on the road a few minutes before the bus driver flips on his music.  Malagasy music is not like jazz or classical music or anything else pleasing to the ears.  There is plenty of good Malagasy pop that’s fun to sing along to or dance to, but the whole “late evening about to go to sleep on a road trip” kind of music is just not their style.  And there are varying degrees of Malagasy music.  If there is most annoying type of Malagasy music, I believe it is called Salegy (I’m not sure that’s the type he had on, but bear with me).  So Salegy (or whichever type this is) is a really fast driving 12/8 beat and basically its main purpose is that when girls dance to it their hips are bouncing around like kids without Ridalin.  I have a video from inside the bus with the music playing, so if I ever get enough bandwidth to upload, I will for sure.   Not to mention that it’s not big on lyrics or melodies it’s just like a bunch of guys screaming and whistling and whooping and a bunch of girls shaking like seizures.  Let’s just say, this driver liked 1 type of music, and he listened to it All. Night. Long.  Seriously I imagine it must have been like someone swallowing ten 5-hour energy pills and bouncing on a trampoline while you’re trying to nap on it.  I thought maybe this was just one song or one CD or something.  I was wrong. Dead wrong.  That music went on forevvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvver.

So about 10 minutes into the bus ride, I’m already pretty annoyed by this music. 

Then he decides he needs a smoke.  Boooo.  Cigarette smoke gives me a headache and makes me sick.  So I was about to ask him to put it out, when I realized this super-duper annoying music and his cigarette were probably the only thing to get him through the night and I (quite literally) thought: I guess him smoking a cigarette is better than him driving off the road in the middle of the night and all of us dying in a giant firery explosion.  So I kept my mouth shut. 

At some point several hours later (probably between 10 and midnight) I somehow managed to enter a dozing state.  And whilst in said state, I realized we had stopped.  Why? Why indeed. Like the driver was no longer sitting next to me and everything.  So I got out and walked around and realized we had a flat tire. AWESOME. But on the bright side – the world’s most annoying music and cigarette smoke were gone for at least the next 5 minutes.  Also, we were literally in the middle of nowhere.  Not a sound other than bugs and not a light other than stars.  The stars were pretty bright and everything else was just pitch black.  The contrast with the music-smoke-carlight situation was amazing.  So they finally fixed their tire situation and we all piled back in the bus and torture continued. Yay!

Somehow I managed to doze on and off for the next 5 hours.  At 5 I was in a not-dozing state when I cracked open my eyes just long enough to realize it was getting light outside and then I couldn’t really even try to sleep any more.  So I gave up.  The scenery was really nice though so I pulled out my camera and did my best.

At about 6, we crawled (and I mean crawl, like 10km/h tops) up this hill.  At the top we coast for a little bit and then the bus just dies.  Whaa? Why have we stopped you wonder? We’re lany l’essence.  Out of gas. Booooo.  How are we out of gas?! Like it’s not like no one’s ever been to Diego before. This company has a bus that leaves every morning and night like (Malagasy) clockwork.  You should know exactly when to get gas and exactly how much you have left and all that.  Surprises were done a long time ago.  The driver tells us all the sitch and the lady behind him just goes off on him (in relatively kind-hearted Malagasy way). “I told you down there that there was gas you should have got some there.  Why didn’t you know we were almost out of gas! Why don’t you have extra?!” You know its bad when other Malagasies are telling you you’re retarded.  So we all pile out of the car and sit on the side of the road.  The driver goes and knocks on this person’s shack and the person in the shack takes his money and 2 water bottles and pedals his bike down the hill to find some gas.  [in Madagascar, gas stations are pretty far apart so many villages will store gas in water bottles and sell it to passersby should they need it].  We watched the sun rise over the mountains while we waited.

Almost an hour later, we were back on the road.  At 9am we pull into Ambanja, the turn off to Nosy Be (who’s largest town is Hellville and the source of this post’s title) [Nosy Be means Big Island in Malagasy and is purportedly the nicest and most tourist filled place in Madagascar – it’s the biggest of several small islands the lie off the coast of Mada].   I’m kind of in this drugged state from the whole music/smoke/lack-of-sleep situation. We stop and all these people get out of the bus to switch to a bus going to Nosy Be.  And then the driver comes to me and is like “get out”.  Apparently I’m switching buses?! So they throw my bag on a different bus and (only b/c I demanded it) they gave me my shotgun seat which I had paid for.  I’m still not sure why I switched buses because I’m pretty sure I paid for a direct ticket to Diego. Needless to say, I’m a little confused and a little more ticked.  So this new bus I’m in has much less leg-room and then to top things off drives around Ambanja for an HOUR looking for passengers.  Every time I thought we were leaving it was like nope! Look! - another kid wants a ride to Diego.  Boooo.

At 10 we are on our way to Diego.  So I ask the guy next to me “So we’ll be to Diego in a couple hours right?!” Nope, its 5 – at least.  What?! Yeah we’ll probably get there around 3pm.  So much for “noon at the latest.” Needless to say, I was ticked, again.

This driver didn’t smoke, and his music was … well I don’t remember it so it must have been quiet or not-annoying.  But he was a chump.  Every ten minutes we’d stop for the little kid selling bananas on the road, or the lady selling cloth, or …to buy milk that was being pasteurized in pots on wood fires lol. 

Some lady was surprised when she burned her tongue on her fresh bought milk – did she not see them pore it out of the boiling pot?! Duh-face.  One time, we stopped for a good 15 minutes and I just kind sat in the front while most of the people piled out and chatted with all the locals.  There was this stand in front of us with a bunch of piles of little leafy branches on it.  Malagasies are always doing stuff with leaves – making tea, using it for medicine, etc – so I didn’t think anything of it.  The driver got back in the car with a big bunch of leaves.  I thought maybe it was cinnamon branches or some kind of spice.  So I scratched the bark and smelled a leaf – nothing.  What were these mysterious leaves for?  So the driver tears off a bunch of leaves and hands them to me.  I was like “what do I do with these?” Chew them, was his answer.  I waited until I saw other people doing this to make sure I wasn’t getting duped into chewing some sleeping leaves and falling into a coma wall they stole all my electronics and extracted my kidneys.  Once I decided it was safe, I put a couple in my mouth and started chewing. Yuck! Have you ever chewed on leaves before? Yeah these leaves were probably not much different, except that they were super duper bitter.  Everyone kind of chuckled at my face.  So what is this for? Apparently chewing these leaves keeps you awake (and it doesn’t annoy everyone around you!).  So finally I’m like what is this? And they said khat (sp?).  And then I was like hmmmm I think I remember seeing something on PBS or some other semi-educational channel that said they grow khat in northern Africa and then smuggle it into Europe because its like a semi-narcotic.  So I spit out my bitter leaves – I actually could’ve cared less whether it was a narcotic, they were just gross.  Our driver, on the other hand, thought they were awesome and continued chomping away until he had a John McCain sized lump on the side of his mouth. 

To further delay our trip, this lady (pictured below) needed to get off somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

I took a picture of her because the kids where cute and because her headdress was awesome (see above).  The reason I was able to take her picture was because she actually didn’t have any money on her to pay her ticket, and so we all sat around while her relatives scrounged up the 10,000Ar ($5) to pay for her ticket.  This time the driver was ticked.

Luckily the scenery was quite spectacular most of the time.



There were some really cool "savana" sections on the way that I thoroughly enjoyed.  The north of Madagascar (from what I saw) is rather diverse which was really nice. 



This car pulled out in front of us after getting the "khat" - I'm not sure of their final destination, but I thank my (very very) lucky stars that I never had to ride in something like this for any period of time, let alone probably several hours.

Maybe an hour or so before we get to Diego, my phone rang.  Something I wasn’t really expecting – who could be calling?!  So I picked up – it was Busteed!!! Never in my whole life was I so happy to talk to a white person lol.  He apparently had landed at midnight the night before but didn’t know where Sr. Fanja lived so he just walked around Ivato for a little bit, found a good spot and pitched his tent.  We chatted for a minute and then realized our credit (in Madagascar you pay for minutes at little kiosks everywhere and its actually quite expensive to call people) was dwindling fast. 

FINALLY around 3 or 4 pm, we showed up in Diego (roughly TWENTY-ONE HOURS after leaving Mahajanga).  All I noticed at first was that it was dry and dusty.  I was so tired and annoyed and bent out of shape that the first taxi guy who approached me I told to go away.  Then he came back and I realized I actually did need a taxi to take me to where I was going b/c I had no idea where it was.  I actually didn’t even have hotel reservations, but Mahajanga was empty enough that I figured Diego would be similarly vacant on the hotel side and I wouldn’t need to worry.  I told the taxi guy to take me to this hotel I had read about in Lonely Planet.  We got there and they told me a room with a share bathroom was 20,000Ar ($10).  How about a private bathroom? 30,000Ar ($15).  Hmmm, do you have any rooms with a view of the ocean? Oh yeah – Chamber #1 – it has a big bed, private bathroom, view of the ocean, oh yeah and it has air conditioning all for 50,000Ar ($25).  Dang.  So I took it.  Oh and the place had wireless internet which I could get in my room – probably the most 1^st world-ish room I’ve ever slept in in Madagascar. 

I took a shower – hallelujah! – and napped and by the time I was up and at em, it was dark.

So I strolled down the street to a restaurant Lonely Planet had recommended called La Rosticciera.  Its run by an old Italian guy and they make all their pasta from scratch in house.  I got tagliatelle with shrimp and cream sauce.  It. Was. Delicious. By far best pasta I’ve ever had in Madagascar.

 And then I got dessert:

Altogether (my English writing skills have gone the tube in the last 3 weeks – I thought all together was two words, luckily Word told me otherwise) it was around 20,000Ar ($10) which is a good price for a really good meal.

After a very long and very annoying bus ride, I was pretty happy to be in Diego, which I instantly crowned most awesome place in Madagascar.  

Joffre statue – some dude who did something important in Diego – which I stopped by on my way home from my delicious dinner)