We left Anjozorobe early in the morning. Tosoa had been talking about taking a "secret" road for some time, and he finally convinced us all it would be a good idea. By secret, I mean a road that's not on standard maps, used only by locals and rice trucks. And by trucks I basically mean an army type of off road goods delivery vehicle, where each wheel can point in a different direction and the vehicle still goes forward. Tosoa assured us that since he had the Defender, this "road" would be no problem. We got a range of time estimates and advice from the locals and our inn keeper at Saha, but ultimately decided to go for it.
The first picture shows that we did, indeed, find a road that goggle does not yet know about. As you can see from the other pictures, the road was always tough. Sometimes it had giant craters, sometimes it took us over scary bridges (which I walked across just in case it collapsed under the weight of the car, citing picture-taking and not fear as my motivation), sometimes the car had to cross rivers, sometimes the road was literally on fire. We made it to Ambatondrazaka well after dark, tired, hungry, and glad to be alive. It was actually a really fun trip, especially since it all worked out well in the end.
Ambatondrazaka* is a cute town near Lake Alaotra, the largest lake in Madagascar. We spent the next day exploring the town (complete with handmade flashlights) and spent the evening getting to know some rice farmers by the lakeside. They were taking young rice to replant on fields further away from the shore - fields only accessible by canoe. Everyone was really friendly and happy about having visitors. They even let us pretend to ride the motor-powered zebu cart!
*Names in Madagascar are ridiculously long. Currently, Madagascar's president has the longest name of any head of state in the world. Caryl described it pretty well I think - most words in Malagash are really short - one or two syllables at most. But for names, they just put a bunch of words together, usually describing the person or town. Like "mountain side where people are friendly and rice is cheap," or "river that takes your soul if you swim here" (the latter is a real river name translation, if I remember what Tosoa said correctly).
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