![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/IMG_2822.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nHere one of our Cortez USA guides gave us a brief overview of this island nation, colonized heavily by the French and still baring the marks of that Franco-influence.\u00a0 A lot of this information I tried to jot down as he talked, the bus rolling through the streets from the airport to our hotel, with a few detours that I’ll get to in a moment.\u00a0 Some of this may read like a Wikipedia entry but, yeah, well, so be it.<\/p>\n
The fourth largest island in the world, Madagascar is also bigger than France and is comprised of approximately 18 distinct tribes.\u00a0 The population is anywhere from 22 to 25 million, with an exact number difficult to ascertain given that the countryside is oftentimes isolated and inaccessible… and political turmoil in the past has limited the number of official censuses taken.<\/p>\n
Tana is the capital, which I think is an abbreviation of the formal name of Antananarivo<\/span>.\u00a0 It’s also formerly known as Analamanga,\u00a0<\/em>which in the central highlands Malagasy language <\/span>means “blue forest.”\u00a0 Why it’s called the blue forest when none of the trees appear blue to me is a mystery… and a quick wikipedia search turned up bubkis.<\/p>\n Throughout the lands of Madagascar, there are oodles and oodles of rice paddies.\u00a0 One might say there’s a plethora of paddies.\u00a0 For the Madagascans, rice is like bread to the French or pasta to the Italian — it’s a staple and a way of life.\u00a0 Rice is eaten four times a day as one person told me, often with mix-ins of meat or vegetables.<\/p>\n As we crossed a rice paddy field toward the main stretch of road that leads into the center of town… and to our hotel… a police roadblock pulled our bus over to fine the driver for an overloaded vehicle on the roadway.\u00a0 Ironic since massive trucks (which in the UK\/French parlance we might call “lorries”) zoomed by us with far more girth, heft, and issues.\u00a0 We however were tourists and an easy mark.\u00a0 I have no idea what the bribe… er, “fine”… was to get us past the road block but we didn’t have to take up a collection so I assume it wasn’t too onerous.<\/p>\n The Zebu, an imported ox-or cow-like creature from India, is eaten.\u00a0 As for beer, our guide says he prefers Three Horses and it’s the most popular, albeit Gold beer is stronger at about 8%.\u00a0 This all pales in comparison to the island rum, which can surge from a “relatively” pleasant 42% to a burning 54% to a moonshine equivalent of paint thinner at 90%.<\/p>\n As a side note, Madagascar commemorates its Independence Day on June 26, having obtained freedom from French colonial rule on that date in 1960.\u00a0 We won’t be here for that but the market places are awash with Malagasy flags in anticipation of the festivities.<\/p>\n This market shows a typical daily crowd however:<\/p>\n A proper city tour is scheduled for tomorrow, but in the meantime, we’re checked into the Hotel Colbert for the night.\u00a0 Our wing has running water; apparently the posh, deluxe wing is currently without.<\/p>\n A group dinner over at the nearby French restaurant La Varangue capped the evening.\u00a0 It’s a great, gregarious group of runners tackling this adventure.\u00a0 The folks we sat included a guy who was setting the record for most countries to have run a marathon in and a woman who survived an avalanche on Mount Rainier in 1999.<\/p>\n Although\u00a0I felt like such a slacker, I was comforted by the various flair the place had hung on the walls. \u00a0Old timey phones, gramophones, candlestick sconces were intermingled with an eccentric inventor’s time experiments wherein each clock was set to a different time. \u00a0As the clock\u00a0over me consistently chimed the quarter hour ten minutes late, I felt oddly comforted that history was gonna change…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Having successfully navigated the Kafka bureaucracy of immigration and visas (despite having obtained our visas prior to arrival, the “avec visa” line was cordoned off and we all got funneled through the sans visa line), we walked out into the Madagascarian sunshine and boarded the chartered Marathon Tours bus. Here one of our Cortez USA […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n