UNAD
TRANSLATION TECHNIQUES
COLLABORATIVE ACTIVITY 2
MADAGASCAR,
THE BIG INDIC´S ISLAND
The route through this
paradise with huge trees, unique animals, and coralline beaches
I went to Madagascar to admire the baobabs of Morondava, but I found with an island of 1.600 kilometers
long that I fell in love for its landscape:
paddies, lush vegetation, curious animals as lemurs and magnificent
beaches from south to north.
Almost the activities start in the capital of Madagascar, Antananarivo
(Tana in a friendly way), it is a noisy city that is spread through 18 hills,
with flea markets, a lake and a palace. I got use to the local currency in
Tana, the ariary. Also I learnt that the rice is the main meal. I rented, with
my friend Patrick, a French tour guide
who has been on the island for many years, a four wheel vehicle to go to
Morondava.
Everything changes when we go out from Tana. The urban chaos is
diminished and appears the Tierras Altas, a green landscape with soft hills,
reddish land and paddies. Patrick told me “The mix of Africa and Asia
landscapes is due to the Indonesian were the first citizens who inhabited the
island”. We saw many taxi- brouse and
crowd minibuses which drivers risk their lives to get some minutes more.
In Antsirabé, 160 kilometers to the south of Tana, the
“pousse-pousses” (cars pulled by a man) confirm the island´s Asian style. From
here the road changes its way to Morondava through a landscape in where there
is a combination to the zebus going through the meadow, the sugar cane
plantation and forest fleeced that draw the deforestation on the island. Delicious samosas
(kind of Asian salty pie) are offered for lunch in the roadside restaurants.
Before arriving to Morondava appear the first baobabs,
reigning over the rice fields. They are Adansonia gradidieri, and they reach 30
meters high. The baobabs grow up in
Africa and the west coast of Australia, but in Madagascar grows seven different
species. This is why the island is known as “the baobabs ‘mother island”.
Although the British writer Geral Durell (1925 – 1995) preferred its wildlife,
to which protection is dedicated to the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.
At the entrance of Morondava there is a poster
announces the Le Petit Prince school
with a Saint Exupery Pricinpito´s
draw. After this there are some dusty
streets and a mistreated beach due to cyclones. All of these show Morondava as
a bleak population.
We approached to Baobabs Avenue, near to the city in
the evening. The slanting light of evening shadows lengthens and
beautifies the red trunks, while the road is going through the path. One
Japanese confessed with so emotive and crying felling that “I came from Tokyo just to see it”
Near to this place, a pair of baobabs twists their
trunks: it is the tree of love.
There is the Bemaraha Tsingy park from 200 kilometers
of the north of Morondava . It is like an enchanted stone forest, with sharp limestone
pinnacles that also are in Ankarana Ecological reserve, in the north. Here is
required to watch out with the fady,
this word means taboo and this fade indicates, for instant, that you never
point a tomb.
While you are seeing new places you are learning more
about Madagascar island. In my journey to the south, herds of zebu and Malagasy shepherds, wrapped in colorful
blankets, foreshadow the arrival to Ambositra.
In this city the posusse-pousses clog are repeated, and also there is a
special noisy because is the Savika celebration. We follow the parade until the
stadium where young people try to ride zebus with
menacing horns.
Some kilometers over there are the surrounding of
Fianarantsoa. They are ideal fields to practice trekking in the paddies and
small villages. But in the narrow of the Isalo park, with the lakes and
waterfalls, where rings lemurs give us the opportunity to think back to the
dreamy Madagascar. Improvised settlements seekers sapphires, gold fever
Madagascan precede later the return of baobabs, Tulear region, a settlement
that has sand beaches and restaurants in where offer zebu steak flavored with
spices of the island, especially vanilla.
Days after, we traveled by airplane to the north, to the Nosy Be Island,
where the beaches are covered by the tropical vegetation and have many fish,
lobster and black coral. In the eastern
coast of Madagascar there is another similar paradise Sainte-Marie Island, with sandbanks
surrounded with palms and crystalline water
Coming back to the mainland, we go from the north coast
to Diego Suarez by taxi-brousse, that
one is a city that the French settlement left its history. Here was the place where
the pirates founded, in XVII centuries, the Libertalia utopian republic.
Patrick told me that “They divided in same parts the loot” “but they didn´t
take account the local settlement. One day they ransacked everything and
everyone from the Madagascan mountains”. It was long time ago that the pirate
ephemera republic disappeared, but on the main street of Diego Suarez there is
a paint that reminds the utopia that reigned in the north of this dreamy
island.
MORE INFORMATION:
Documents: passport and
the visa papers at the Madagascar Consulate in Barcelona
Languages: Madagascan and French
Currency: ariary (Ar)
CMT: 4+
Health care information:
it is recommended the prophylaxis against malaria and tetanus and hepatitis
vaccine, among others.
Drink bottle of water
How to arrive and transport: There are direct flights to Antananarivo from
Milan and Paris, one option is by Nairobi (Kenia) or Mauricio Island. The most
comfortable transportation service is renting a car with a driver. The taxi-brousses are vans that offer short
distance services.
Madagascar Tourism
Madagascar National Parks
Madagascar Nature
Translated by: Paula González
Reference:
National Geographic, 2014. Madagascar la Gran isla del Indico. Retrieved:
Before arriving to Morondava appear the first baobabs,
reigning over the rice fields. They are Adansonia gradidieri, and they reach 30
meters high. The baobabs grow up in
Africa and the west coast of Australia, but in Madagascar grows seven different
species. This is why the island is known as “the baobabs ‘mother island”.
Although the British writer Geral Durell (1925 – 1995) preferred its wildlife,
to which protection is dedicated to the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.
Translated by: Paula González
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