In which ruth eats a birthday lunch of rice and beans and takes public transport

In most countries, a fully operational website, along with up-to-date calendar and booking system is usually a sign that a company is operating fully. Not so in Madagascar. We turned up to the 'bus stop' of the Madabus company on Monday 1st September to find that it was no longer in existance and had not been for the past few months at least. But that was okay. We've been in Madagascar long enough to know that wherever there is a plan A, there must also be a plan B, plan C and plan D.

We put plan B in operation. This consisted of turning up at the 'taxi brousse' station in Tana and being mobbed by people trying get us to use their bus. Confused by the melee, we paid way over the odds for a seat on a bus going to Tamatave which would drop us off right by our hotel in Andasibe. Apparently. We were assigned seats and then waited on the street for the bus to fill up with passengers. This taxi brousse station was less like a bus station and more like a bunch of minibuses parked on either side of the road while the ordinary traffic continued on its way on the main road. Vendors wandered around each selling just a few - apparently random - items, offering out a bunch of sunglasses or a hair straightener towards us hopefully. When added all together in list form it began to look like some sort of conveyor belt of prizes on "The Generation Game" (the seventies version with Bruce Forsyth).

There were (not in order of being offered them); Oranges, baseball caps, hair clippers, sunglasses, torches, watches, sausages, screwdrivers, dvds, wallets, pens, batteries, hair conditioner, nail polish, garlic, hair straighteners, tool set, photo album (with photo of half naked blond white girl on the front), 6-gang plug, cd cleaning kit, knife, football on a strong, pliers, weighing scales, plastic clothes pegs, lanyards, mobile phone covers, bed covers/sheets, mirrors, biscuits, cakes, pants (underwear), socks, belts, combs, breadsticks (baguettes), brooms, moisturiser, tape measure, protractor set, deoderant, malagasy newspapers, flexible fabric bandages, an electric toothbrush (singular), calculators, small mp3 players and of course, just like the generation game, the obligatory "cuddly toy". In this case, pink and blue hideous monstrosities.

The journey itself was fairly painless. We set off about two hours after arriving at the station and continued more or less at a steady pace on the first fully tarmac'd road we've seen in... Well, our whole time in Madagascar actually. We made a pee stop after about 2 hours - all the men on the right hand side of the bus, all the women crossed the road and peed on the left. I did not need to go. During this time, Justin checked with the driver that he could drop us off at the hotel. He looked bemused at the very idea, shook his head and agreed instead to drop us off at the turnoff to the village of Andasibe.

Luckily, the hotel we'd booked into was less than five minutes away from this turnoff and we were happily resident in our wooden bungalow overlooking the forest and river by lunchtime.

Andasibe is three hours from Tana and is next to the Perinet national park, probably the most visited national park in the country. It was a huge contrast to our experience of travelling in the west. All the hotel staff spoke English, the place was full of tourists and there were even a few veggie options on the restaurant menu.

We did a circuit in the Perinet national park the following morning. The main attraction of this national park is the Indri Indri - the largest lemur in Madagascar. It looks, says Hilary Bradt (guide book guru) like a cross between a panda .... It is known for its singing - a sound we'd earlier had heard from our hotel. The Indri does not chatter like some lemurs. Instead it sings. Though that's a generous word for what sounds like a cross between a police siren, whale song and a hyperactive child who's just discovered how to use the theramin (weird musican instrument popular in the 60s and used by the Beach Boys).

During our 3 hour circuit, we came across two sets of Indri families and heard (and saw) one sing its heart out. We shared each Indri sighting with more tourists than we'd seen for our whole time in the west of the island. We also saw a family of diademed sifakas, some 'common' brown lemurs (not sure how they feel about being called common) and three woolly lemur asleep in the trees. It was exciting to see them all, though it did feel like being in a lemur theme park rather than any kind of wilderness.

Our night walk that evening was a lot more satisfying. We did not share this experience with any other tourists and our guide not only spoke better english than the guide we'd used in the morning, but also understood and laughed at one of Justin's jokes. He had the most amazing eyesight - and a very good torch - and found us two mouse lemurs (oh so cute), a tree rat (also quite cute) and three different kinds chameleons, including one that was the size of my forefinger. We were most excited by all of these sightings as we've not seen that many reptiles. We were especially excited by the 'leaf-tailed gecko' which was kind of cool as well and had an excellent latin name as well - the "europlatus phantasticus".

We did another circuit the following day with the same guide. This was in Mantadia national park which was not only a bigger national park than Perinet, but contained fewer tourists and primary rainforest. We saw less wildlife, but it didn't matter as I was endlessly fascinated by the mosses, ferns, lichen and huge trees that we saw there. We did come across a family of diademed sifakas though, so there was some primate action.

National parked out, we ended up leaving Andasibe a day earlier than planned on my 38th birthday. We might have stayed longer but the food in our hotel was particularly bad, the desserts limited and the wine Malagasy (ie awful) and so we decided to move onto Tamatave in the hope of better food, extensive desserts and decent wine.

I therefore spent the majority of my 38th birthday at the back of a very cramped taxi brousse. We had to get one taxi to the town of Moramanga. This was a very old school bus type of affair with the muscliest driver ever. At Moromanga, we only had to wait about 2 hours before leaving in a minibus which would take us all the way to Tamatave. We were not overcharged this time. We had the back seats and the journey was fairly uneventful if a little stinky. I stuck my head as close to the open window as I could, choking only slightly on the exhaust fumes.

We made two pee stops and one lunch stop at a town with many fruit and vegetable stalls and a 'tex mex' restaurant called Fantasia. We ate at a Malagasy hotely and I celebrated with a birthday lunch of... Rice and beans of course. A bargain at only 50p.

We finally arrived in Tamatave at about 4.30 and made our way to the one of the poshest hotels there. They had room for us for only one night but by this point, I didn't really care. I just wanted a wash, a decent bed and a glass of white wine. which is happily, exactly what I got. The food at the restaurant was excellent, the dessert -ice-cream - delicious and the wine, South African. Afterwards, Justin finally gave me my presents (three Malagasy themed items) and I fell into bed.

We'll be a few days here in Tamatave. Plan A was to head south down the canal system of Pangalanes and stay at a lake there. However, nothing is as easy as it appears from reading the guide book and also all hotels are booked up or their phone numbers no longer work. Instead I think we're going to fall back on plan B (again) which is to head to Isle St Marie earlier than planned and spending the rest of our Malagasy adventure sipping rum coco and snorkelling with the fishes.

Written on 5th September