Portraits of the Planet: Madagascar: Morondava and the Allée de Baobabs

Since the last post was so word heavy and shy on the images, this one will be the opposite. We got to Morondava without too much incident. Our taxi brousse made it over a very questionable bridge. All the passengers but us got off the bus knowing that it was sketchy. We were uninformed of the goings on and thus, stayed on the bus. The bridge had a couple sizable holes and the spot we drove over was barely wider than our tires. It was a good adventure. When we got to town, we grabbed our packs off the top of the bus and made our way through the sand filled streets of Morondava to our hotel, the Italian owned Trecicogne. After a nice breakfast and a quick nap, we meandered through the main part of Morondava. We made a stop in the market, but after passing through the fly filled, spoiled meat smelling animal section, we decided that it wasn't the place for us. We procured a taxi for the afternoon to take us to the Allée de Baobabs for sunset. Our taxi driver was extremely friendly, and our taxi, Sami another Renault, was one of the few vehicles we rode in for two weeks that we didn't have to push. The downside to Sami? It didn't have a gas tank. A tube fed into bottles squished between the driver and passenger seats supplied the vehicle with fuel. We stopped at a gas station, filled up a couple of coke bottles for the ride, and we were off! The Allée at sunset was amazing. The baobabs were huge and the entire area was breathtaking. We encountered some boys who had a chameleon on a stick. They let us pet and hold their chameleon and immediately after asked for a gift. We had nothing really to give them save some throat lozenges I had in my camera bag, so I dispersed those. Within seconds I was surrounded by little dark hands all requesting a lozenge. I ended up handing out the entire packet to the inhabitants of the tiny village on the Allée.