“This one sounds good” joked Elaine as she looked through my Lonely Planet Madagascar for hotels in Antananarivo, Madagascar (aka Tana).
‘Hotel Le Glacier in a noisy location…may be worth a look if everything else is full (though it is not suitable for women alone). Dingy rooms with private bathroom… but the ones in the annex are unsafe.’
I thought I’d choose something a little more upscale, so I settled on Hotel Mellis and booked ahead.
(10 Aug 2004: Another version of this appears on BootsnAll.)
(Note: This is a post from my 2003 travel blog IMoL: Travels and Travails.)
The flights from Geneva – Paris – Antananarivo were uneventful – no blackout problem this time. I watched some French movie about money and relationships, followed by The Matrix Reloaded. The French movie was better.
When I arrived in Tana (18°C) I got in the ‘No Visa’ line. When it was my turn, the passport control lady told me I had to get in another line first to pay and to get stamps (like postage stamps) in my passport first. So I waited and waited in the other line, paid my dinero, and went back to the passport control lady.
“Where’s your return ticket?” she asked.
“Well, it’s right there – Johannesburg to Paris to Geneva.”
“You need to have a ticket out of Madagascar.”
I passed her the correspondence I had with the Madagascar Embassy in Ottawa. “The embassy told me I could do it this way and buy my ticket while I’m here.”
“Ah, but they are there, not here. That’s not how it works here. Maybe they need to come here sometime.”
Shit. I’m going to be on the next plane back to Paris.
“Hold on.” she said and went off to confer with her colleagues. After a couple of minutes, she came back with a solution – buy a ticket to Johannesburg right now. Sounds fine with me. So one of the police guys escorted me to the Air France desk.
“I’m sorry, but we can’t sell you a ticket to Johannesburg – we don’t fly there.”
My escort tells me that if I can’t get a ticket, I’ll be deported. I can see people lining up and checking in for the next flight to Paris.
I ask the Air France lady where they do fly, apart from Paris.
“How about Réunion?”
Brief pause. “I’ll take one return ticket to Réunion please – and please make it refundable.”
My escort nods. That’ll work.
After waiting around for an hour or so – they don’t have computers at the airport – I paid for my ticket to Réunion and got my passport stamped. I made it.
First things first, I headed to the money changing place which was, thankfully, still open. That done, I stepped outside to find that there were no taxis left to go into the city – it was already midnight. There were, however, a couple of ‘security’ guys and a group of others hanging around.
“Taxi?”
I nodded – I didn’t really have any choice. We negotiated as we walked towards the car – an aging blue Citroen.
“How much?” I asked “40,000?”
The head guy laughed at me with a “No, no”. “80,000” he said.
“Huh. My friends told me that it should only be about 60.”
Pause. “Alright. 70.”
Done. I hopped in the ‘car’ and, to my surprise the guy I just negotiated with didn’t get in, though two others did. After a couple of failed attempts, the car started and we got going – my new friends in the front and me in the back. They explained to me that they must pay off those other guys because they aren’t officially a taxi. Great. Headlines read White Boy Dragged into Dark Alley, Mugged, and Left for Dead.
As we drove along the dark streets, the co-driver insisted several times “Quatre billets” – meaning four 25,000MFr notes. “No”, I repeated, “we agreed on 70,000.” Eventually, I let him convince me to keep the extra 5,000MFr to split with the driver.
After a nice bit of night driving, we arrived at the Hotel Mellis, which was closed up – without a night porter in sight. Fantastic. My new friends offered to drive me around to find another hotel. Unless I really wanted to wander the streets of Tana at night looking for a hotel, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. We drove around to various hotels which were all full. Finally, we found one up the street from the Hotel Mellis with vacancies for 130,000MFr. I was really tired at this point, so I wasn’t too picky. I gave my new friends 25,000MFr bonus for going above and beyond the call of duty. Quatre billets.
I went up the stairs and registered, then headed to my room which was next to the desk. “A little dingy” I thought as I started to settle in. There was a knock at my door. The night desk guy forgot to have me pay so I went with him back to the front desk;
“That’ll be 140,000 please monsieur.”
“But I was told 130,000 by the security guy downstairs.”
“Ah, but you’re in the annex monsieur” he said as he presented me with the price list.
Bells… ringing… in… head. Dingy. Annex. I looked up and sure enough I’m staying in the annex at Hotel Le Glacier.