Road to Madagascar
When Joyce Appel and Paul Henry take a vacation, they are sure to pack breathable rainwear and a portable system for filtering water.
That's because the couple plans to endure remote locations for an upfront view of the natural world.
"Our goals are pretty much the same," said Appel, a retired schoolteacher from Sugarcreek Township, Armstrong County.
"If we use a tour company we make sure it's an off-the-beaten-path tour. We never use lodges or expensive motels. If any of them do include it, it always ends up to be 80 percent camping."
Henry works full-time, but 30 years with the city of Hermitage affords him some time to travel.
Taking annual trips together since the early 1990s, Appel and Henry have visited countless foreign countries, but none so foreign as Madagascar, the topic of a two-part talk they recently began for the Butler Outdoor Club. A Feb. 4 presentation on the monthlong adventure in 2007 will continue at the group's April meeting.
Known as the world's fourth-largest island, Madagascar is about the size of France — "or the size of Texas, if you're talking to an American," Henry said of the country, which lies in the Indian Ocean off the southeast coast of Africa.Although difficult to travel due to the lack of spoken English, the former French colony contains 5 percent of the world's plant and animal species, 80 percent of them unique to the island.The species include various lemurs, baobab trees, bird families and the fossa, a carnivorous mammal related to the mongoose.Appel and Henry saw many of the indigenous species during their adventure, made up of driving tours, hikes and a weeklong trip down the Tsiribihina River, where they navigated in traditional dugout canoes.The unique sites also included native burial caves and geologic formations known as tsingy, which the couple describes as expansive beds of limestone spikes.Coordinating their tour through Madagascar Travel, Appel and Henry arranged the trip with friends Erin O'Connel of Allegheny County and Linda Xenophontos of Armstrong County, whom they know through various activities hosted by the Butler Outdoor Club and the American Youth Hostels out of Pittsburgh, for which Appel and Henry have led many canoe trips.The travel company already offered rustic tours of many locations the group hoped to visit, so the travelers requested a custom package that encompassed several outings.Using the tour company was especially helpful because it provided an English-speaking driver. The developing country's primary language is Malagasy, related to those of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. As a holdover from Madagascar's time as a colony, limited French also is spoken.
Appel and Henry began their trip by spending a week visiting friends in South Africa, then flew into Antananarivo. Also known as Tana, the capital city is centrally located in the high plateau, one of various climatic regions.Along with the high plateau, the regions also include types of dry forests, rain forest, mountains and coastal areas.The group loaded gear into a minivan under the care of their driver, Hangu, whom they would come to know well by the end of their stay. They set off on a multiday drive to a village on the Belo river, which Henry describes as "one street with some grass huts."From there, the group boarded four dugout canoes: one for the leader, two to accommodate the travelers and one for provisions that included fruit, rice and chickens to be butchered along the way.Traveling for about a week along the river, the group occasionally was greeted by small clusters of natives along the banks, though settlements were never visible."The canoe trip was very special to me because of seeing the local people along the way," said Appel, who described happy children and welcoming adults whose exclamations translated to "Here come the foreigners!"Although temperatures reached 100 degrees while the group paddled, the waterway offered no relief."You couldn't swim in the river," Henry said, alluding to mud and potential predators. Instead, the guide directed them to occasional secluded oases on land that featured lush waterfalls and pools.
The trip ended in the small village of Belo-sur-Tsiribihina, where the minivan headed toward a hiking adventure.Driving north toward the city of Morondava, the group experienced the island's western dry forest, which boasts majestic baobab trees and tsingy, or limestone pinnacles, at the Tsingy of Bemaraha nature reserve.The pinnacles were seen only after a difficult hike, with steep elevation changes maneuvered at the end with ropes and harnesses."You're climbing and hiking just as you would if you're hiking up a mountain," Appel said. "You get up at the top and it's like looking at a field of rock needles, compressed rock needles for miles and miles."From Morondava, they boarded a plane back to Tana, where they began driving toward the southern dry forest. Along the way, the travelers saw cattle drives with zebu, or humped cattle adapted to tropical climates. Although owning zebu is a sign of wealth among local people, Henry describes the meat as "stringy tough beef that you don't want to eat." But it contains no fat, he added.The travelers also saw many lemurs, a type of primate mostly unique to the island."Some had stripes. Some were brown. Some were white," Appel said. "Some moved sideways and some scampered forward."After doing multiple hikes in Isalo National Park, distinguished by desertlike canyons, the travelers worked their way into the thorn forests that span the arid south and west.
"They call it the spiny forest for a reason: Everything has spines," Henry said. "It was the most other-worldly patch of forest I ever walked through. It was different than anywhere else in the world."From the southwest coast of Madagascar, the group flew back to their base in Tana, then set out on another road trip south toward Finarantsoa or "Finar," a city of 144,225 people.There, they took an all-day trip on what seemed to be the island's only passenger train, a poorly maintained relic from the 1920s. Traveling to the island's east coast, the train went up and over the lush, green mountains that flank Madagascar's eastern side."To me, the best part was seeing the people at each stop," Appel said, reaffirming her affinity for the curious, friendly communities largely of African and Indonesian ancestry.The train ride concluded at the coastal town of Manakara, once a home to multiple resorts eventually defeated by cyclones. From there, the group made its way north through rain forest abundant with flora and fauna including many types of chameleons along with fruit bats and terrestrial leeches."I don't think I had more than 50 on me at one time," Henry said of the half-inch creatures.The island's many lemurs also prevailed here, Henry noted, asking "How often have you used the phrase 'Oh my. There's a lemur on your head?'"
With their trip nearly at an end, the travelers made their final destination Île Sainte-Marie, an island 60 kilometers long and less than 10 kilometers wide off Madagascar's northeastern coast.Adventures there included visiting a pirate cemetery from the 17th and 18th centuries and traveling off road in a German military vehicle whose levers and knobs allowed maneuverability in areas off limits to an ordinary 4-wheel drive.Despite high winds on their one available day, the duo found a brave seaman to take them for a sail in a local cargo boat — among the world's last to use wind for power.Although that adventure and the trip as a whole concluded safely, the country has since experienced political unrest. According to spokespersons recently at the Embassy of Madagascar in Washington, current opposition to local government has rendered the country unsafe to visit. Travel warnings have been posted on the Internet.Despite the instability, the nation's travel statistics say about 250,000 tourists visited Madagascar in 2007, and about 300,000 more last year.Appel and Henry said in addition to researching routes and accommodations for their trips, they always watch the political climate in potentially unstable areas.Although Madagascar was calm and welcoming during their trip and likely will return to that status, Henry has seen the reports."Don't go there now," he said.For information about the couple's April presentation, contact the outdoor club at president@butleroutdoorclub.org.
Joyce Appel is a former elementary school teacher from Sugarcreek Township. She taught for 35 years in the Armstrong School District until her retirement four years ago.Paul Henry, of Hermitage, is assistant superintendent of the City of Hermitage Water Pollution Control Department, where he has worked for 30 years.Between their annual adventures, which they have shared since 1991, Appel and Henry participate in many outings hosted by the Butler Outdoor Club, for which Appel serves as the canoe chairwoman and Henry serves as the ski chairman. The couple also are active members of the North Country Trail Association. Their next trip will be to the association's annual conference, to begin July 30 in Valley City, N.D.
