We made it off Madagascar Saturday morning -- barely.
(Lemur at Anja)
We got to the airport at 5 for the 8 am flight. We had a coffee upstairs while the sun came up and we noticed all the Air Madagascar planes lined up and pointed nose first at the runway -- that arrangement made it easier to push start them, we joked.
(Tripoli airport)
It took over an hour to convince the airline to honor our etickets, and I was sure for a while we would be stranded.
(Anja lemur, with haute plateau in the background)
We had a short hop to Mauritius, where we now know our way around. We rode a public bus (nothing irks taxi drivers more than tourists on a bus at the airport) to Mahebourg, got croissants and paninis, and then took a second bus to the beautiful public beach at Blue Bay.
(Taking in scene at l'Isola)
We spent the day there, made use of the public showers, and rode back to the airport. The hours in the airport were enlivened by the fact that an Air India flight was leaving for Delhi. Let me just say: Indians getting on a plane = hours of endless entertainment (and abhorent body odor). Emirates lifted off at 11 pm and we crossed Seychelles and the equator before I drifted into a short nap.
(Canyon mouth at l'Isola)
(Dubai from the air with Burj Dubai, the world's tallest building, on the right)
We arrived in Dubai just as the sun was rising and got hazy views of the city, its buildings and the constellations of artificial islands. We did not care to go outside and sample the brisk 87 degree 6am air.
(Chameleon eye watching me at l'Isola)
(Typical street scene in Antananarivo -- burning piles of trash with kids playing nearby)
From Dubai Emirates took us across Bahrain and the red sands of Saudi Arabia. We saw the Suez, southern Jordan and Israel, and the smog of Cairo.
(Laura with kids at Ilakaka, who look sullen because they are slowly coming to the realization that they will not be getting bonbons.)
We touched down in Tripoli just after noon to take on a soccer team headed to Tunis. Unfortunately they would not let us off the airplane but we did get a good sample from the window: endless drifts of windblown trash, olive trees and an unsettling number of junked airliners bulldozed into piles.
(bugs at l'Isola -- they become butterflies)
From Tripoli we flew over the Med and had a lovely twilight view of Tunis.
(Chameleon)
Tunis is very nice and atmospheric. We have just two weeks here before heading to Malta.
(Box canyon in l'Isola)
No comments:
Post a Comment