Tsingy Park
From the "Welcome" village we found out exactly why 4x4's (remember your bon pronunciation "quatre-par-quatre") are so essential to Madagascar land travel. The "roads" are mostly nothing more than dusty pathways through the sand and make a journey of about 80kms take all day even in the most rugged 4x4. As a result we had an entire day in a 4x4 which was fine by me as I needed a day out of the sun from which there was no hiding in the pirogue. It also gave me a chance to finish my book* as I have no trouble reading in a vehicle, even in the very back seat of a 4x4 on bumpy Malagasy roads and even though I dropped the book in the river and it was all muddy and had swollen to about twice it's original size it was still legible.
The Tsingy Park itself is really cool. There are ridiculously tall jagged limestone pinacles that appear sort of out of nowhere. You enter the park as though a typical walk through a normal forrest and then suddenly there are these huge black limestone spikes reaching towards the sky.
It occurred to me while hiking through that the caves were not all that dissimilar to the limestone caves in Rattlesnake point that I haven't visited since I was a kid although I think the key thing with the Tsingy is the sheer scale of the thing and the fact that it has been classified a UNESCO world heritage site further underlines that the Niagara Escarpment pales by comparisson.
Group Travel
The remoteness of the Tsingy park makes it even more remarkable that so many people visit. It takes a solid day in a 4x4 to get there and another to get back. It's a fairly rough ride but we kept seeing other groups everytime we'd stop for lunch in a little village or at the campground of the Tsingy park or at the various river crossings (judging by Malagasy infrastructure bridges haven't yet been considered in favour of the 3 car at a time ferry barge system which while effective is a hell of a lot slower).
It's kind of weird because generally while travelling solo I like to try to meet as many people as possible but once you're already in your randomly assigned group the tendancy was to hang out within the group and not intermingle too much with the others.
That said, long rides in a 4x4 (I bet you're already back to pronouncing it "four-by-four" aren't you - for shame!) over dusty and bumpy roads wears people out. Lots of irritiability and complaining by group members about every little thing that isn't exactly as advertised in the "brouchure" really reinforced my general disdain for group travel and though in general the group got on well and we enjoyed the experience, no tears were shed when we parted company in the coastal city of Morondava.
*Catharine! I finally finished it! The Dolphin's Tooth! You know the book that you gave me last Christmas! What an interesting coincidence that it's about a guy who quits his boring desk job to seek out adventure. Really interesting that I didn't find that out until I started reading it once I had quit my job and gone on holiday to Madagascar.
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