Maps of Madagascar are one of the many reasons why I have trust issues. Firstly there is a 98.7% chance that the roads on these maps will take much more time than you would normally expect. Secondly, the dirt tenches studded with potholes and quagmires are labelled neatly on these maps as ‘National Roads’. So buckle up (if your lucky enough to be in a car that has seatbelts fitted) and prepare for the worst.

“But Kat, what was the worst really like?”, you ask. Well the short 200km stretch from Ambilobe to Sambava in northern Madagascar could only be accurately described as traumatising.

We had arrived in Ambibe exhausted after a full 4×4 day from Diego, stopping to hike Parc Montagne D’Ambre and admire The Red Tsingy along the way. We finally managed to seek out a local hotel that had room for two tired tourists. And by local I mean basic. Extremely basic.

We were lead down a dingy corridor and shown the communal toilets that were half flooded and taken to our room. A central, windowless sweatbox that didn’t quite look fit for human habitation but I was a very tired, grumpy girl and the sight of a bed (even if the mattress was as thin as my patience) was enough of a selling point for me.

But I wasn’t allowed to put my head on that disgusting looking pillow yet, scared of being stranded in this place for more than one essential night, Joost managed to motivate me on my feet for a nighttime dinner hunt and bus organising stroll.

Like all good (and awful) Madagascan local establishments, there is always a group of locals loitering around the entrance. We asked the group of loiterers whether they knew any information about the taxi-brousse situation to Sambava. Of course, everyone knew about them… But no one was that helpful. Until one man, from Ethiopia, offered to go and look into the taxi-brousses for us… This was a service I had never experienced in Madagascar and was completely shocked by such a kind offer. Exhausted and hungry we were able to go food hunting while a nice man went travel-planning for us. I was starting to like this place… Well as much as you can like a place where you are forced to sleep in a sweaty windowless box…

We set off for food, and soon discovered that Ambilobe was no tourist destination… In fact it seemed as though we were the only tourists in the entire city. We wandered through the main street and couldn’t resist snacking on some freshly roasted bananas from the banana roasting guy on the street (which is a surprisingly satisfying treat when travelling in Madagascar). We wandered past a crowd of locals staring into a shop window where a tiny TV straight out of the 90’s was playing some silent footage. I assumed it must have been some kind of sports match that generally attracts attention and crowds but I couldn’t have been more wrong… It was a video of a snake… Yep, a snake. Everyone was completely captivated…

As we walked on we soon realised that dinner would have to be something very local (AKA digestively dangerous). We had two options… The mini BBQ food on sticks outside the karaoke bar or a pile of anonymous fried things at a street stand. We went for anonymity.

We sat down at a shadowy plastic table (Ambilobe had a bit of a lighting issue) and tried to work out what the piles of food in front of us were. It was extremely dark and I am not over exaggerating when I say that we couldn’t even see what the food was, an extremely scary situation for a vegan with a sensitive tummy…

We did have a good view of the snake show though, and as we piled our plates with cold manioc and questionable mango salad we enjoyed the slithering silence that was uniting the local community. The show abruptly came to an end and the crowd disappeared – apparently not interested in whatever was on next. I mean that snake would be a hard act to follow…

We eventually followed suit and headed home, eager to find out what our bus-organising guy had discovered about the transportation situation – stopping to visit our banana guy for dessert on the way.

Our bus-organising guy had apparently been investigating the situation for us during dinner and had discovered a much better option than the taxi-brousse. There was an official from the bank heading to Sambava the following day in a private car and for a mere $10 more than the taxi-brousse we could hitch a ride.

It sounded too good to be true…

But we couldn’t say no to such a good offer – we made sure we only paid half of the price that night though assuring the driver we would pay the outstanding amount once we arrived safely in Sambava.

Our bus-organising guy also asked for some money for his time and effort which we happily handed over – he had saved us a whole lot of hassle. We were told to wait outside at 0600 the following morning and we headed back to our sweat box, desperately tried to cool our body temperatures with a cold shower, and headed to the thin ‘mattress’ to desperately try and get some sleep… The room had a fan but from experience we knew that this standard of establishment would turn off the electricity during the night and it would only give us a mere hour more of air movement. We decided that it was time to make the most of the wonderful medical aid of sleeping pills.

I slept like a baby. A sweaty, sweaty baby.

At 0500 there was a knock at our door. Unsticking ourselves from the mattress we answered the door to find our bus-organising guy awake and adamant that we should already be ready and waiting to go… An ungodly full hour before we were told…

We convinced him that we would be ready in 10 and in our incredible dark room now completely lacking in electricity we managed to stumble ourselves ready.

We threw our possessions in our bags, splashed some cold water over ourselves and staggered outside… Where there was no car. Apparently our bus-organising guy didn’t actually trust us to be ready at 0600 so decided to wake us up an hour early for his own peace of mind… He wouldn’t even allow us to go buy breakfast from the market around the corner. So we waited.

Some time around 0630 the car appeared and the driver hopped out and sat down. More waiting.

Eventually the important bank official appeared, and people began to pack things into the car… (Including a mattress in the trunk). We said goodbye to our bus-organising guy who asked for a second payment… This time we declined, we had already paid him for his help last night and I thought it was slightly too cheeky to ask for payment for the 0500 wake up call we never ordered…

Eventually the seemingly endless waiting was over and we were on our way.

On our way out of Ambilobe we drove through the market where we stopped for food, I ran off in search of vegetables and when as I returned, happy with my manioc find there was a small family in the back of the car and a funny look on Joost’s face…

“Kat I have to tell you something…”

“…What?”

“The car is not going to Sambava…”

Somehow this hardly surprised me and probably due to the fact that I now had my manioc (my favourite Malagasy street food) I just laughed. After all, we had only agreed to pay for the rest of the trip once we arrived in Sambava…

With a full car (including the family in the back) we embarked on what would be the worst day on the road in Madagascar I was to experience, yep even worse than that Morondava journey…

It started with bad roads. And I mean really, really bad roads. In fact I don’t actually know how the country gets away with labelling these dirt trenches as roads… It was shocking. My manioc was definitely not sitting well…

Driving at 5-10km through these trenches made it very clear that it was going to be a very, very long day… A very, very long day that apparently wasn’t even going to leave us in Sambava.

There were three main stops throughout the day…

1. The stop near a river where everyone washed themselves.
2. The lunch stop where I ate my body weight in mango salad
3. The afternoon wee stop where all that mango salad came back up…

The rest of the day was just me holding back the tears as we bumped across Madagascar and my stomach sought revenge on my salady-overindulgence.

Eventually we reached our ‘destination’ ,Vohemar, 2-hours short of where we intended to be, and I was not in the mood to not be where we intended to be…

“This isn’t Sambava…”

“No, we are not going to Sambava.”

“But last night we were told we were going to be taken to Sambava.”

“No…”

Joost and I knew how to play good cop, bad cop and I was very very good at the role of bad cop after a day of tummy trauma. As Joost calmly explained to the driver that they had broken our initial agreement I went all ‘crazy white girl’ and angrily told them we would not pay the other half unless we made it to Sambava.

Obviously not wanting to deal with me any more the driver gave up and left.

Sitting on the side of the road in the dark we watched the last bus tear past us down the road. I didn’t like our chances of making it to Sambava that night.

But I wasn’t quite ready to give up. We found a taxi driver who was obviously very high on ‘kat kat’ (a legal Malagasy high) and convinced him to make the long journey. He wasn’t keen but for the price we were offering he couldn’t decline.

The two hour drive featured one extremely high taxi driver driving at an average speed of 20km/h, many of the taxi drivers friends jumping in and out of the vehicle and Kat making the most of Joost’s lap being able to double as a pillow.

I woke up in Sambava. Unfortunately our taxi driver, and his current friend in the front, hadn’t heard of any of the hotels that we recited from Lonely Planet… We drove around the city searching and finally stumbled across some familiar names. After standing outside Lonely Planet’s number 1 hotel recommendation yelling for a staff member for 20 minutes we headed to a Lonely Planets number 2 hotel recommendation next door –  Ochidea Beach II (The original hotel, Ochidea Beach I had been destroyed in a fire a decade or so ago).

One of the two beachside bungalows was available for us. I could have jumped for joy (if I hadn’t been completely exhausted).

We jumped out of the cab, said farewell to our drugged driver (and his anonymous friend) and entered our bungalow… Completely unaware that one of us was about to get to experience the notorious typhoid fever and become sick and stranded in Sambava…