It was a straight-forward flight from Johannesburg(aka Joberg) to Antananarivo(aka Tana) and we got a kick out of seeing the double-decker, large jet plane right next to our small plane. We spent the night in Tana and the next morning we flew from Tana to another airport- they kinda change the names or rather places have multiple names so when we were in the airport we were looking for Tolanaro but the signs were for Tolagnaro. Luckily there was only one flight for the time we were supposed to leave but I did start looking for the flight number instead of for the place name. By the way this airport is the airport for the town of Fort-Dauphin.
We did have a bit of a surprise when we got the check-in- the internal flights only allow one SMALL carry on (and you know how much we like our multiple big carry ons) and, not unexpectedly, our luggage was overweight. After a bit of a scramble, I managed to move stuff around until I had one carry on and the agent allowed Tibor to have two carry ons so we were cleared. They waived the weight limit- the checked bag has a weight limit and the carry on has a weight limit and we were overweight on both.
Once we landed at Tolagnaro, we collected our luggage, guide and driver and headed into town to find webbing and buckles to connect one of Tibor’s carry on bags to his big checked bag so he’d have one checked bag next time. It’s so interesting in the towns to see a tire repair place next to a bakery which is next to a veggie stand which is next to a sundry shop….It’s also fun to see all the transportation options- foot, bicycle, tuktuk, trike, van, bus, truck…
It was about an hour and a half drive to the lodge and we saw the famous Zebu cows along the way. And we say many, many bags of charcoal being hauled to the big city of Fort-Dauphin.
