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| The Village next to our Hotel |
We didn’t meet until 8 AM for breakfast, and then slowly organized our gear and left our hotel for the drive back to Morondava.
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| Fano and David |
We stopped briefly to enjoy the beautiful Baobabs and then drove into the coastal town and were deposited at a beach front hotel for a couple of hours
to relax before flying back to Tana. We got to the airport - every Malagasy airport has it’s own routine - here our baggage was thoroughly inspected, but we didn't have to pass through a metal detector!
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| Lunch at the Airport |
The flight was only one hour and when we arrived, we were informed that our old friend, the Au Bois Vert Hotel, was over-booked and we would be taken to another hotel for a dinner and a day room.
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| View from San Cristobal Hotel |
The San Cristobal turned out to be a snappy business hotel, perfect for a cleanup and final packing. We had a last dinner with David who is flying home to Sydney tomorrow via Addis Abba, London, Singapore, and then Australia.
Tuvo, our nice driver, picked us up at nine PM and took us to the airport. We checked in, went through Security into the waiting area where there are many shops, which will only take US$ or Euros...no Madagascar Ariary!! (of which we have a fistful). And the vanilla beans, which I was planning on buying as presents, were only sold as ten beans to a glass tube for 50 Euros! A lifetime supply - ridiculous!
We took off on Air France at 1 AM for our ten-hour flight. Bob and I fell asleep, thus avoiding the full dinner that was served! We awoke over Italy and got great views of Rome and coastline, then the Alps, and finally France and the Arc de Triomphe.
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| Italian Coast |
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| Mont Blanc |
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| Arc de Triomphe |
We had four hours in Charles de Gaulle Airport- a very well-organized, well-designed airport with a nice mini anthropology museum, and more expensive shops than can be seen on Rodeo Drive! We boarded our very comfortable (premium economy) Delta 777 at 3 PM and settled in for eleven hours of movies and meals, landing at LAX at 6:30 PM.
We got through Immigration and Customs easily enough, but then, upon exiting the Tom Bradley terminal, entered quite a bit of confusion as LAX has changed their usual pickup spots for hotel, rental car, and long-distance buses. There is no signage as to what is where. Dashing across traffic, towing large bags, is difficult enough when you know where you are going! Finally a policeman told us where to stand and the Santa Barbara Airbus did finally come along. There was quite a mob scene with everyone trying to maneuver their bags on the narrow walkway and get onto the bus. Fortunately we had reservations as the bus was full and took over an hour to make the LAX circuit, but we finally took off and slept most of the way to Santa Barbara, where Hilary was there to kindly pick us up and haul us home!
Miss Maddie seemed unenthusiastic about our arrival and showed that she definitely preferred Hil’s lap to ours! Oh, well! We’re home and had a great trip. We saw 150 species of birds, of which 107 were new to Bob for his life list. Also, we saw about 25 lemur species, 2 tortoises, several Nile crocodiles, 2 mongooses, a tenrec, a fosa, and numerous geckos, skinks, frogs, and chameleons! Madagascar is amazing!
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