Bush Taxi's in Madagascar

Here's a photo-update along with a pasted version of the post I made in Facebook a while back.

Hey everybody, so I just found an internet café for the first time in a week, and I thought I'd update errrbody.

Right now Christina (danish girl I'm travelling with) and I are in Diego Suarez, which is a large-for-madagascar city in the very northern tip of the country. It's really rainy here because of the cyclone season, and actually just 2 days ago Cyclone Hubert hit the east coast a few 100km south killing 14 people, and injuring 38,000.

The "taxi-brousse" (bush taxi, kind of like a minibus) ride here was absolutely horrendous. We got to the station in Antsohihy (450km south of Diego) at about 11am where the bus driver said the bus left in an hour, would get into Ambanja at 4pm or 5pm and then reach Diego Suarez "at the veeeeerrry latest 9pm".... So we didnt leave the station till 2:30pm, didnt get into ambanja until 7pm, and then the bus driver decided he needed to eat, so we waited in ambanja until 9pm before we even left. Anyways, it turns out the road had recently been hit with a cyclone and was completely destroyed, forcing us to drive at approx. 10km/hr.

Then at 2:30am(!!) still about 100km from Diego, our driver pulled the car over to the side of the road, and started to fucking sleep! Hahaha, me and christina and the other people in the bus couldnt believe it. Unprepared and unwilling to sleep in a minibus, and because he wouldnt talk to us, we decided to just talk loudly and annoy the bus driver so he couldn't sleep. Anyhow, about a half hour later of us talking loudly, and him occaisionally looking up at us with hatred, he said some angry words in malagasy and started up the car. We got to a hotel at 5am, a full 8 hours late.

Now, we're just kind of resting, and waiting for the Cyclone warning to pass so we can head on.

I've tagged some people I thought might be interested, and I'm thinking that once I get to a city with a decent internet connection I'll start a blog or something. anyways hope everybodys doing great,

take it easy.Aidan (+261 330 722 319 my madagascar cell)