Hanging Around Tana

 The  Belvedere Hotel.

 Views of the city from the hotel.

Great scaffolding.

 Gotta find out who he is.

There were several of these spiders hanging form the trees and each was about four inches long.

Friday, November 3^rd.

Today was a do nothing type day. There is precious little to do in Tana other than to go out and walk about and get accosted by the beggars and peddlars. I decided to say in read, listen to music, type and sort. I had dinner in the hotel and retired pretty early.

Saturday, November 4^th.

I got up around seven and had breakfast by eight and watched the locals try to sell us maps, trinkets, wooden toy cars, clocks, wall hangings, anything really, through the hotel front window. It is really sad. I've seen the same guys each morning and never seen them sell anything. When anyone goes out the people come over expectantly and woman moms with dirty young kids beg too. There is nothing we can do for them and we are encouraged by Intrepid not to give anything as it just furthers the culture of begging.

I would have loved to stay in Morondava for the three days between trips, or at least part of it, because this a big, congested, polluted, over populated city, with too much poverty, but it didn't work out because of flights. There are only two flights per week from there to Tana. Oh well.

Then I cleaned up, had a shower, packed and organized. I checked out of the Chalet des Roses by noon and took a taxi to the Belvedere Hotel where my next Madagascar trip starts from. I met my new room mate. His name is Florien, he is 29 and from Basel in Switzerland. We also met up with Margaret and the three of us had lunch today. This is a much nicer hotel with three levels of outdoor verandas overlooking the city. From our table we saw several very large spiders and a beautiful bird.

Florien and I hung around on for the afternoon getting to know each other and enjoying the warm weather outside.

At six we had a briefing meeting with our new guide, Patrick Randriamboavonjy. He told us the do's and don't's and told us what to expect. One thing is precious little wi-fi. So I might be out of touch for a couple of weeks, we'll see.

After the meeting we had a group dinner at the hotel restaurant after which most people retired in preparation of a 7:30 start.