Hello from Madagascar!

That island with an arrow saying "Madagascar".

   Three flights, about twenty hours of air time, and one extremely long van ride from the airport, and I have finally reached Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar! Most people shorten it to "Tana". For those of you who don't know, Madagascar is an island nation off of the Southeast coast of Africa.  It's only about the size of California, but it is home to about 22 million people and exists as an impressive hotspot for biodiversity, in spite of widespread deforestation.

Me at the Embassy

     Clearing customs was more interesting than usual. The languages of Madagascar are French and Malagasy. The airport seemed pretty disorganized to me, but I also couldn't read most of the signs, so you never know. Luckily, I already had my Visa from a trip to the Embassy of Madagascar in DC last month. Usually, you have to buy a Visa upon entering Madagascar.
           Rob, the other IRES fellow in Madagascar, and I exchanged all of our money for the trip. Ten thousand ariary notes are worth roughly $5 USD, so we walked out of the airport with quite a large stack of money. The porters grabbed our bags as soon as we walked out, and enthusiastically pulled them to the waiting van sent by MICET (the Malagasy office of the Institute for Conservation of Tropical Environments). The porters scrambled for tips, and I think we ended up giving them kind of a lot of money! We didn't know the exchange rate yet. Apparently they just keep saying "more" until the "vazaha", or foreigner, has shelled out hundreds of thousands of ariary, or around $50 USD. Our driver shewed them away before it went too far.
    After battling traffic that makes DC and Atlanta's roads look efficient, we reached the Saint Laurent.  Cheap by American standards, a room at this hotel goes for an exorbitant sum totaling about $20 per night. Here we met up with Cassidy, another member of the team, before eating dinner and sleeping for the first time in about 48 hours.
   

I messed up the panorama, but here is a sunset view of Tana.