23,931 miles

Or 68 hours and 40 minutes travel time. Now matter how you look at it they are both big numbers representing my round trip journey between Toamasina, Madagascar and Edmonton. Pretty crazy now that I've added it up and I'm not even counting the fact that I lose a day waiting to catch the charter between the capital of Madagascar (Antananarivo) and my Madagascar home of Toamasina on the coast.

This the route from Antananarivo to Edmonton

And this is the route home

 My route starts in Toamasina where we board a sweet DeHavilland Twin Otter. This is seriously my favorite part of the trip - I absolutely love prop driven planes and the twin otter is as utilitarian as awesome gets. It is also comically ugly or as Lisa likes to call it "endearing".

I got the chance to snap some pictures on my flight today - and I've included the least crappy ones below.

River to the south of Toamasina flowing East into the Ocean.

Same river looking West.

Outskirts of Antananarivo peeking through the clouds.

Community on the outskirts.

Housing / farming / etc still outskirts.

Tana proper. Farms turn into housing turns into lake turns into city. 

Once you get to Antananarivo it is but a short bus ride to the Relais Des Plateaux (that's French for moderately crappy hotel). Upon arrival you are greeted with a beautiful courtyard and totally neat trees.

That's not where I parked my cart!

My building - 2nd floor, far right, top be my window.

If this was Star Wars this killer bush thing would eat people.

Tree with pretty flowers.

Nothing says luxury like a wooden novelty keychain.

Nicer than my room at camp! Wait.. what the hell is that painting on the wall?

.... ohhh k. i suppose it's... what the hell? why would you put this in a hotel room?

Rest of the room. Complete with sweet death trap light fixtures.

This might look pretty but rest assured behind this piece of conductive metal are  bare wires carrying 220V of exhilarating electrocution.

My office for the day - not bad. :)

The best part of Madagascar - Fanta Orange in a glass bottle made with real sugar. SO GOOD.

So I can't really remember where I was and scrolling up past all of those pictures sounds hard so I'll start by saying I checked in at this place. Killed a huge cockroach in my room, went and grabbed lunch which was thankfully cockroach free, took my laptop and sat by the pool in the sun and worked most of the day.

It was mid afternoon when about 100 Malagasi's showed up to have their annual Christmas party by the pool. They were very considerate... of what I am not sure. Out came the gigantic novelty speakers and the horrible Malagasi Pop playlist that consists of 10 songs they repeat over and over. Back to my room I ran where I plugged my ears with the blissful sounds of lame christmas music and continued working. Thing is, the thump of the same 10 songs haunted me into the early evening. I'll tell you I've never been so happy to have thunder showers and rolling black outs. It got rid of the music. Thank you mother nature.

Tomorrow I head to the airport at noon and my flight leaves for Johannesburg at 3PM. From Joburg I have a couple hour layover and then it's on to London on South African Airways. I arrive in London and have just under 2 hours to deplane, transfer terminals, and haul ass to catch my flight to Toronto. Why Toronto you ask? Because Edmonton was full. :( Once I get to Toronto I have a couple hours before I catch my final connector to Edmonton. Good times!

I leave Friday morning 5AM MST from Antananarivo and arrive in Edmonton Saturday evening at 5PM.

The weather better improve.

Ops camp or the village from Lost

So it's been four more days and I'm not keeping to my schedule. This is the longest I've stuck with any blog ever though so I take solace in that. I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful weather in Edmonton, let me start off with a picture of where I had dinner the other night.

The cool breeze off the beach really threw me off - i had the chills, honestly who'd of thought +27 was so cold?

And another photo for good measure so you know I was actually there...

This is my "gee I wish it was snowing" face... :P

This beach is a fair way from the camp. It is North of the port whereas the camp is South. If you look straight out facing east you can see the island I sailed out to the last time I was here.

To the right of the ship is the island.

You'll notice a distinct lack of swimmers. That is for two reasons. The first is because the beach is a bit deceiving from the photos. It actually drops very steeply down where the sand ends and the waves you see were an easy 4' tall. The second is because if you swim in that you either get sucked under and slammed repeatedly into the beach OR sucked out by a crazy rip tide and eaten by sharks. Six of one half a dozen of the other I suppose. So it's not all bad but it beats the hell out of 6' of snow. :)

Anyway, now that I'm done gloating lets have a quick tour of the camp. First, let's start out with the handy MSPaint Infographic I put together a couple of weeks ago. Yes it is horrible but it provides a good reference as to where I'm shooting from.

Let there be poorly labelled MAPS! 

So lets start at the beginning. The place labelled "Live here" is 5B4 and for reference we will reuse the beautiful exterior picture from last time.

BAM! Double photo reuse!

So that's all for today... I kid, I kid. So if you were standing in the above photo facing 5b4 and turn to the left and/or face SOUTH (that's down for those looking at the map). You would see:

LOOK! A ROAD!

And a complete 180 and you'd see.

MORE ROADS! WHERE ARE THEY ALL COMING FROM?!??!

Just to the left of this photo is the sign for my "Villa" as they call it. I suggested changing them to "concrete coffin" but they didn't seem to like that idea very much. Weird.

Croffin 5? Cell block 5? No?

Continuing on our journey of sarcasm and intrigue we're going to head north and then take our first right (that'd be SouthWest or in Mom language - "over there past the sign post in front of the tree things").

Are you impressed yet? MORE gravel and green things. Pay close attention to the sign on the left side you can just see, we're going there next.

BAM! We made a left - were you paying attention? 

The above is the pathway to the mess hall, tiki bar, pool, courts, etc.. essentially everything that matters (food) is this way. That is the path you can see in my handy MSPaintInfographic(TM) waaay up top that leads East / SouthEast from the road that runs SouthWest.

This is bush facing in some direction. There are 1.5 million spiders in this photo waiting to eat you.

More path, again heading towards the mess hall.

What's this? A wild Tiki bar has appeared! I didn't snap any other photos because there were people there and it would be ultra creepy. I will take some later.

This is the mess hall (the large building you can see south of the pool in the map up top). To the left is the pool house and then to the left of that is the pool. Again - no real pics as people were sun bathing and nobody wants to see creepy old dudes in speedos... Except maybe you Jake.

This is the basketball court they recently refinished. In the aerial shot you will see it to the East of the mess hall looking like a tennis court. Everyone decided that tennis is for sissies so they turned it into a basketball court that nobody uses. We play street hockey on it as the lord intended.

Our journey now leaves the map above and takes us further east on the path to the management village. It is very exciting - more of the same bush and path. Wooooo. If you are still reading this you are truly dedicated I feel as if I should include something to reward you for your patience... hmm....

Woooo path!

As a reward here is a picture of a giant woodfire oven Pizza that I ate. It was AMAZING. It cost a whopping ~18,000 MGA or $9.

And along with that Pizza is the greatest beer ever - THB. This is basically three regular bottles of beer in one. 2000 MGA or $1. NOMNOMNOM.

Anyway - CONGRATULATIONS INTREPID BLOG ADVENTURER! More path walking takes you to the gates to the village. Pictured below.

It's pretty amazing. A fence and everything!

If you looked on the google map at the camp this gate is just west of the river that runs North/South between the Ops Camp and the village.

OH GOD WHAT DID YOU DO? WHERE ARE WE? WERE GOING TO GET EATEN!!!

If you teleport about 15 minutes back down the path and walk North for a while you come to the  east side of the camp heading towards the pitch and putt. Don't panic.

Landscaping between the "villas". 7.8 billion spiders in this photo.

This one is for Tomsen. Malagasi Ford Rice. Hot.

We're still heading North.

The road to the future is rusty... and lame.

Pitch & Putt - the grass was last cut sometime in October. You can see it gets a lot of use (no).

Fairway #1. If I played this course someone in camp would die when I accidentally hit them with a ball. Best I stick to photography.

Coming back out of the totally awesome Pitch & Putt and heading West down the road to get back to my room you can see the beautiful plant in all it's splendor.

This is probably illegal and in violation of 1.4 million policies but you can see it on Google for god's sake.

These things make up the majority of the fleet here. Hyundai Tucson CRDI - they are peppy little diesels actually. I have no idea why they don't bring tiny diesel powered things to North America. Probably something to do with tree hugging hippy Californian environmental regulations. Blah.

That pretty much completes our tour of the camp. Pretty exciting I know. If you've come this far I will reward you with a couple of more pictures.

Geck-what? Geck-who? GECK-OOOOO!

What's French, has four doors, and is a giant ugly piece of crap? You guessed it - a Citroen! The lady in the back ground totally gave me a horrible look, I tried to explain I was taking a picture of the car but I don't think she believed me.

And just in case you missed it - this is me, at the beach, on December 9th. Mwuahahahahhahaha.

MTV's Cribs (the M stands for Malagasi)

So nobody over the age of 30 got the reference in the title but that's OK. It's been too long since I last made an entry. I wish I had some elaborate, awesome excuse but the truth is working this much is pretty damn tiring. If I'm not at work, playing street hockey (totally the next obese Wayne Gretzky right here), or at the gym chances are I'm talking to Lisa just before going to bed. The good news is working that much also makes the time pass quickly the bad news is I neglect to post up pictures that I took two weeks ago. Sorry!

Anyway - next in my series of moderately grammatically correct blog posts is a tour of the living situation here. A couple of Sunday's ago I went for a long walk and took a number of pictures that highlight the 8 plexes us rotational folk live in, the camp in general, and some of the walking paths. Without further ado I present - unit 5B!

Pretty glamorous - I know!

Now don't get too excited - this tin roofed concrete beauty isn't all mine! Oh no - you can cram 4 people into this side and another 4 into 5A which is the set of shutters on the far right. Inside these palatial manses you find:

The largest waste of space EVER!

I'd really like to talk to the fellow that thought this layout was a good idea. Each of the white doors is a hotel room containing a room less than half the size of the totally useless main area that nobody ever uses. There are couches in here, a table and chairs, a fridge (but no stove or anything to cook no) and a sink with non-potable water. I have in all my trips here before this never seen or heard of anyone using this area for anything... but it's there!

Another view of Wall Street - get it? It's big and useless? I am so witty.

So in the last picture on the left is my magical white door, the portal to the magical splendor that is 5B4.

Don't lie - you're totally impressed. The lack of weather stripping on the bottom of all the doors mean the cockroaches, frogs, and other bugs can get under! HOORAY FOR FRIENDS!

Entering through the door you are immediately faced with the business end of the room - the pooper / shower combo. Conveniently with no window or fan...... ... Yea.

Yea... I go through a lot of Febreeze. There is also a strict no pooping rule if the air conditioner is broken. I bet you wanted to know that didn't you. I won't get into the story of why that rule was created.

Turning to your right you are faced with the shortest hallway ever and the bedroom/office/tv/closet area AKA the remainder of the concrete motel 6.

Just look at that carpet. No expense spared at the finest Chinese carpet  vendor.

Two steps in and a turn to the left shows you the desk / bed.

Yes it is messy, no I don't have to clean it, the maid does. I hear they know the laundry fairy. :)

And last but not least inside this totally not prison-like concrete wonderment, the highlight of the room, the view out my window or as I like to call it, the road.

Honey - I'm getting you some of these beautiful curtains. 

This concludes our tour of the room. I was going to post more about the camp and do a quick tour but if I do that now I'll have to get creative on the weekend and find something else to write about. So instead I will leave you with this picture of a frog/toad/amphibious creature that greeted me after hockey on Wednesday.

WHATUP - IM A FROG! I was no doubt later eaten by some French person.