Easy road, easy going. Rolling the tropics. 80 kilometers a day was the goal. After around 40 km, Klara's knee startet to hurt. It got worse within that day and we had several stops and arguments about the necessary distance between our bikes until we finally made it to Fenenerive because we had to. We stayed in an efficiently run road movie motel ("Hotel Croix"), had food in a dirty shabby chinese joke of a restaurant, where we met a strange dark skin chinese-like looking man.
The next day became the hardest day yet. Twenty kilometers through sand and wetlands. We could only push or pull the bike, constantly, for hours. A stop at high noon for cooking some noodles and a short siesta on banana leaves gave us the strength for the final phase. Klara's knee was crushed, her ankles were bleeding and the wound she got from the mussels days ago started to burn and glow red. Yet we had to continue before dusk.
The next day startet in hope and ended up in uncommon darkness. The main road became sand beach. The nation's main road: Just sand. What the… The sunset approached us while we ran out of water. Deciding to camp on a hidden place seemed to be the only option. Just when we started to set up the tent a 19 year old boy appeared out of nowhere. He warned us about bandits around and lead us through the bumpy area. It turned out that he just came from school where he learned some french and english. There, in the darkness, the most wonderful magic moment happened. Thousands and more fire flies rushed through the bushes like bright road signs. I've never seen something like that before and probably never will. After setting over a river with the last ferry of the day made possible by that boy, we made it to some shabby bungalows, thanked the boy as good as we could and fell asleep.
In the blink of an eye, while I write these lines, she sleeps in the nice, clean and secure bungalow of wonderful hotel La Crique. Luck and unfortune are twin sisters. At least we are not in that stinky - by spiders and centipedes encountered - chicken coop of Ranomafana where I had my sunstroke ten days ago. The great and caring manager of "La Crique" organizes some penicillin. Both last endless dodgy two days must have weakened Klaras immune system too much. I hope she'll recover…
read the full entry on Karsten's Madagascar logbook.
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