June 16, 2017
Our hotel was apparently built by a former French paratrooper. Legend says he parachuted into this area by accident and decided it’d be a great place to build a resort.
Arriving last night after much delay and miscommunication, I was less than enthused and grouchy and scrunched from a long bus ride. I’m in a better mood this morning.
Somehow through two steps back and one step forward I was finally able to wrangle payment to runDisney Francais and registered for the Disneyland Paris Half Marathon.
Breakfast was the banquet hall stuff of colonial French plantations.
And now I sit enveloped in a misting of bug spray ready for a three hour hike (or is it five hours? Mora mora…). Fingers crossed I encounter a lemur.
Later this afternoon I’ll do a group shake out run with some of the other MarathonTourers.
***
I’m still feeling the motion of the bus. I find it difficult to walk in a straight line. Is there such a thing as bus legs? If so, I have those and need to get my land legs back.
There were two options for the morning hike excursion: Option A took folks down into a canyon. Option B took folks to a waterfall. I and many others opted for the falls.
It was another longer than they said bus ride out to the national park trail head. It was easily 3/4 of an hour and maybe a full 60 minutes. Doing the math, we arrived at 10 am so to be back for the scheduled lunch at 1 pm, we should have had a maximum 2 hour hike round trip in order to leave at noon. That’s if you do the math. Mora, mora, though, right?
Rolland was our local guide and had eagle eyes, as is typical of nature guides. He’d spot something in the bush and point it out to us with great regularity… to the point one has to wonder if there isn’t a prep guide a few minutes ahead of him “staging” the encounters.
These reed formations and trees are a sure sign that we are near water, a natural signpost to H2O. Amongst the flora, we spotted a walking stick bug… ya know, like David Hyde Pierce’s character in A Bug’s Life (1998).
Next we encountered the larvae of flat leaf bugs clustered around various limbs and stems.
A snout bug was cleverly camouflaged in the tree bark but Rolland spotted him.
Here’s a photo of an owl up in a tree WHO caught our attention. WHO caught our attention. WHO… is this thing on? Tough crowd.
Trekking along the rock cut stairs and amongst the Madagascan wild, we came upon the Waterfall of the Frogs or in French Cascade des grenouilles.
Some souls… I’m not sure I’d call them brave… stripped to their skivvies and jumped in. I just took a few photos and was content to enjoy the view. The water was crystal clear, a marked difference from the polluted waters around Tana.
I quickly exited the small cul-de-sac dead end of the trail so others could take in the view. Checking my watch I knew we needed to get going and the guides asked us to head back. They told us to stop at the campfire grounds to try and catch the lemurs.
And leapin’ lemurs we saw quite a few. I don’t know what the term is for a group of lemurs. Mom thought she read somewhere that it was a conspiracy of lemurs but the guides just said it was a group. I hope that’s a language barrier issue because, man, conspiracy of lemurs is as good as, if not better than, a murder of crows. (Google Search Results: It is! It is a conspiracy of lemurs!)
As with most of my nature shots , the photos don’t remotely do justice to the reality. But I tried and, well, here ya go. Rolland and Parson and Lalah told us we now had our meeting with the king, King Julien. So DreamWorks has really done something with that cartoon franchise.
By 12:30, we still hadn’t left and the guides hustled us along. They said they’d get in trouble if we were late… which was guaranteed as if you’ll recall the math said at best it was a 45 minute drive back. I was on the first group back in the bus and we got back to the hotel at 1:15 pm.
I met up with Mom, who given her knee issues opted to skip the hike… and given these images I showed her of the trail, she felt she made the right choice.
As we had lunch, folks were still streaming back in at 2 pm… the shakeout run was pushed to 4 pm.
After lunch I’m not feeling particularly good about clocking some miles but a shakeout is necessary. Even now I’m still not feeling my landlegs. And though I’m worried about tripping and injuring myself in my far klutzier than normal klutz state, I think it’s necessary to clear out some cobwebs in the ol’ running mechanism… and to just get away from people for a bit. So here I sit awaiting the clock to strike 4.
***
Group think sets the mileage. Originally it was a 4 miler. Then groups wanted shorter or that… so it became a 3 miler and a 5 miler. I guess that’s a good compromise.
It was a needed run to be sure amidst the plains of Madagascar. The route took us in reverse of the closing few miles of the marathon course. There’s a bit of a sand trap for a mile or so which was a new curve, as was a few water crossings … I guess there are water hazards… but this is certainly no country club. It’s so much better than that curated faux-landscaped vibe. Real, natural, pure. We will run past villages like this one…
… and at one point a local woman with a giant pot on her head ran with us. She crushed us and the pot remained completely level on her head. She was amazing.
At the turnaround I grabbed a photo with the guys I tried to keep pace with. There will be no win, place, or show for me in this marathon but when you’re running with such great folks like this it’s easy to be gracious in defeat!
Returning to the hotel, I bumped into Cathy, who I remembered running in Rio with back in 2013. She said the beer was only sold in 40 oz bottles and she couldn’t finish hers, offering me a glass. When a pretty woman offers you a beer in Madagascar post shake out run, you say “me-sow-oocha!”
***
Dinner was a fine affair…here’s Mom with two running legends – Sue and Brent.
But here’s the thing about the dinners, and the lunches, and the breakfasts — my belt no longer fits. This is troubling to say the least.
Too much wine? Too much zebu? Too much… everything?
Regardless, the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Madagascar…
