There is chaos, there are merchants everywhere. The streets are open-air markets, offering anything from clothes, shoes, hats and bags, furniture, fruits, vegetables, and meat, sacks of grains and sacks of charcoal for cooking. Who is buying all this stuff? Everyone is selling something.
Antananarivo, or in short, Tana, the capital of Madagascar – to say the least – is a unique and fascinating city. It’s so different than anything we’ve seen before! It was our first stop on our itinerary discovering this island country in the Indian Ocean.
“What is a man in nature? Nothing in relation to the infinite, all in relation to nothing, a mean between nothing and everything.” – Blaise Pascal
Written by my husband, Steve: The island country of Madagascar is, along with the Galapagos Islands, a powerful magnet for those of us drawn to concentrations of rare, isolated, and endemic (occur nowhere else on earth) species. For example, there are more than 11,000 endemic plant species. At least 80% of the wildlife is endemic.
Madagascar, often referred to as the “eighth continent” because of its unique ecology, is a fascinating, eye-opening, and hidden paradise, the world’s fourth largest island in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. It’s not easy to get there but my husband and I were already close, finishing our safari in Tanzania, so it wasn’t too complicated to travel there.
It’s Halloween again! Have you decorated your house, your front porch, or your garden to add to the autumn mood?
I wasn’t sure I had it in me. I wasn’t sure I would have the time to do it. But my blog turned 5 years old this year! I published my first real post (Hungarian sponge cake with fruit) on October 14, 2013.
The second crop of our arugula from our garden produced very well this year. A few days ago, I harvested it and went on a search for a recipe – I wanted something different than my caramelized pear and arugula salad.
Written by my husband, Steve: I knew I was in trouble when my friend at work loaned me her copy of the Birds of East Africa Princeton Field Guide in advance of our trip to Kenya and Tanzania – for it consisted of 590 pages and descriptions of 1388 species of birds! How was I ever going to contend with such overwhelming information while still trying to enjoy the moment of new discoveries? (And that’s not even counting the 300 species found on Madagascar, which was where the last 10 days of our trip would take us!)
A beautiful scenery awaited us here. We could have not dreamt about a better stay for our last two days in Tanzania!
It felt like we arrived into another world. A giant baobab tree greeted us by the entrance into the national park, and the promise of elephants, many species of birds, and many more iconic baobabs made us quite excited for our two-day visit ahead.
Written by my husband, Steve: Ever since I was a little boy, I have been entranced by the word “Ngorongoro.” It represented the exotic, the romantic, and the exciting unknown. I may have first encountered it in the old Time Life book series on countries or regions of the world.