I had just survived the four hour, 170km trip from Tana to Antsirabe - my first by taxi-brousse. Upon arrival, I was swamped by locals trying to sell me food, watches, TV antennae, spark plugs, and a host of other useful-looking devices. It took the driver quite a while to get my backpack out of the tangle of the roof baggage, and during this time I chose a pousse-pousse guy to take me downtown. A pousse-pousse is essentially a very colourful rickshaw and I had about a half-dozen to choose from. They all looked about the same to me, so I chose the guy who asked me first. This was a mistake.

I've finished putting up pictures from my trip to Madagascar.

When you log in, a box will appear on the left hand side of the page with a link to the photo gallery. Again, if you have log in problems, please email me and I'll sort it out.

Why do I make you sign up and log in? This is how I can control who has access to the pictures because I have limited bandwidth. The whole website is hosted by me on a personal machine and I am the only one with access to the user database. Your email address will not be folded, spindled, mutilated, or sold to the highest bidder. I promise. [Here's my Privacy Policy.]

My next projects are to get the pictures from South Africa up and then to write some more stories about my trip to Madagascar.

I hope everyone has had a great start to the new year [aside from the cold for those of you in the deep freeze].

Talk at you later.

Here's a few photos from Madagascar I managed to upload from here in Cape Town...

[Dec 2004: Another version of this appears on BootsnAll]

I'm on my way to Antsirabe, about 170km south of Tana. My transport of choice - because as you can imagine the choices are quite limited - is the taxi-brousse [bush taxi].

[These are some thoughts I wrote in my journal on October 9, just after I arrived in Madagascar.]

I hope I'll get some time to write again soon, but for now, here's what I've been up to.

I don't have much time to write here, so here's a quick update.

[10 Aug 2004: Another version of this appears on BootsnAll]

"This one sounds good" joked Elaine as she looked through my Lonely Planet Madagascar for hotels in Antananarivo [aka Tana].

'Hotel Le Glacier in a noisy location...may be worth a look if everything else is full (though it is not suitable for women alone). Dingy rooms with private bathroom... but the ones in the annex are unsafe.'

I thought I'd choose something a little more upscale, so I settled on Hotel Mellis and booked ahead.