Wednesday
Nov292006
Guest entry from John Ross
Wednesday, November 29, 2006 at 05:36PM
Here's a guest entry by John Ross, noob adventurer extraodinaire. He sent this out on his email (spam) list but, just in case all my loyal readers (hi mom) aren't on his list, i've reproduced it here.
shawn mentioned (http://www.pbd.squarespace.com/) the cave as being the highlight of the trip...indeed it was pretty sweet. the added dimension of the guide not actually being a guide once we'd been underground for an hour was ... pretty typical of the commercial transactions over there…always a catch. i must take exception to pbd's assertion that this was the highlight of the trip though. he has been in madagascar for some time now and things that seem to him routine were quite wondrous and delightful to me. other things were neither.
my initial reaction was that the meaning of the term "adventure" has become somewhat skewed here in America. an adventure means enduring fatigue, boredom, traveler's d and all manner of unpleasant surprises in good humor while pursuing the pursuit at hand and then coming out of it more or less ok and perhaps having learned a few things. these "things" of which i write are not cutesy, "look i've learned a life lesson!" type-things but rather things of a more practical nature....like always have toilet paper on your person always.
about four days in at shawn's village...which is about 100 yards from the indian ocean...i realized i was having a real adventure as i was crouched over the rusty oil barrel dug into the sand that serves as shawn's powder room enjoying the latest round of violence done to my intestines by the bugs in the local cuisine. i can't remember if i was in the midst of thinking, "man, i paid a lot to do this" or whether i was pondering over the great length of time i felt would be necessary to expunge that which needed expunging when i heard a buzzing sound and realized a couple of hornets were flying over my head. i wouldn't say i'm abnormally frightened of bugs that sting painfully and repeatedly...i'm just saying that normal people are afraid of them and i'm normal. this, dear shawn's readers, was pretty miserable.
i got into antananarivo, the capital city, on a sunday night...and we had a few beers at the only place open in town. if anyone was wondering what two friends who haven't seen each other in a year and a half talk about i'm afraid you will be disappointed b/c i don't remember. i think it had to do with the local women and malagasy beer. turns out there is only one kind of beer outside of the capital city (there's only one transportation company so if they don't want to ship your brews you're out of luck). fortunately, three horses beer (thb) is quite good and sometimes cold.
next morning we got up bright and early and went to the taxi brusse station... these taxi brusse's are really just minivans with four banks of seats in the back...we spent a cramped and miserable 11 hours traveling at breakneck speed ... passing around blind turns ... narrowly avoiding pedestrians, trucks, cars, livestock and anything that one could imagine would be on a road. it was not fun ... and there was nothing to be done about it except think about how great adventures are.
look for madagascar 2...coming to an inbox near you...soon!
shawn mentioned (http://www.pbd.squarespace.com/) the cave as being the highlight of the trip...indeed it was pretty sweet. the added dimension of the guide not actually being a guide once we'd been underground for an hour was ... pretty typical of the commercial transactions over there…always a catch. i must take exception to pbd's assertion that this was the highlight of the trip though. he has been in madagascar for some time now and things that seem to him routine were quite wondrous and delightful to me. other things were neither.
my initial reaction was that the meaning of the term "adventure" has become somewhat skewed here in America. an adventure means enduring fatigue, boredom, traveler's d and all manner of unpleasant surprises in good humor while pursuing the pursuit at hand and then coming out of it more or less ok and perhaps having learned a few things. these "things" of which i write are not cutesy, "look i've learned a life lesson!" type-things but rather things of a more practical nature....like always have toilet paper on your person always.
about four days in at shawn's village...which is about 100 yards from the indian ocean...i realized i was having a real adventure as i was crouched over the rusty oil barrel dug into the sand that serves as shawn's powder room enjoying the latest round of violence done to my intestines by the bugs in the local cuisine. i can't remember if i was in the midst of thinking, "man, i paid a lot to do this" or whether i was pondering over the great length of time i felt would be necessary to expunge that which needed expunging when i heard a buzzing sound and realized a couple of hornets were flying over my head. i wouldn't say i'm abnormally frightened of bugs that sting painfully and repeatedly...i'm just saying that normal people are afraid of them and i'm normal. this, dear shawn's readers, was pretty miserable.
i got into antananarivo, the capital city, on a sunday night...and we had a few beers at the only place open in town. if anyone was wondering what two friends who haven't seen each other in a year and a half talk about i'm afraid you will be disappointed b/c i don't remember. i think it had to do with the local women and malagasy beer. turns out there is only one kind of beer outside of the capital city (there's only one transportation company so if they don't want to ship your brews you're out of luck). fortunately, three horses beer (thb) is quite good and sometimes cold.
next morning we got up bright and early and went to the taxi brusse station... these taxi brusse's are really just minivans with four banks of seats in the back...we spent a cramped and miserable 11 hours traveling at breakneck speed ... passing around blind turns ... narrowly avoiding pedestrians, trucks, cars, livestock and anything that one could imagine would be on a road. it was not fun ... and there was nothing to be done about it except think about how great adventures are.
look for madagascar 2...coming to an inbox near you...soon!
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