A very long travelling day

We said goodbye to the rain forest early in the morning and travelled back along the road we had travelled two days before. We visited the same potholes, took more photos and returned to the same supermarket where we stocked up on all things healthy - chippies, biscuits, crackers and a couple of oranges and water.  It's here two more joined our group - technical difficulties had meant their flights were delayed. Guess where they flew from? Wellington- can you get closer to home - yes Ngaio - about 4 km from our place. Along more roads and past lots of familiar scenes. Kids playing fooze ball and soccer, markets full of veges (wish we could take home mini aubergines), sacks of rice and charcoal, toy cars made from recycled tin, clothes and more stalls of dead meat baking in the sun.

We drove up through the highlands (average 21 kilometers an hour Harry calculated) and it appeared to the untrained eye (that's me) that the higher you lived the better your socioeconomic status.  Houses became slightly bigger, had a fence and a splash of colour and even a clothes line (no pegs).

 

A number of stops for photos and loos (the bush ones) and we were at an aluminum recycling place. Lots of car engines dismantled and added to a burning furnace. Young men breathing charcoal mix all day working in bare feet and no gloves. The turning out of large pots (about half the size of a witches cauldron) by two working together was admirable but not for the faint hearted or Worksafe NZ.  50 pots and they could go home so they ignored us onlookers and just kept on working.  On our way back to the bus we passed a picture theater which looked as though you could fit 10 "lighthouse style" but I was told it would take well over 100.

And now it comes to accommodation. A few days on Harry and I are struggling to record our accommodation that night.  It might have been after such a long drive but the only note I have in my book is "no soap". In South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana every hotel had soap, shampoo, body lotion and shower cap. You know all those nifty little tubes you take when you have room in your luggage. When we arrived in Johannesburg we decided we could do without the "Dove" soap, shampoo and conditioner cos we were short of space. I packed it in our bag we left in Johannesburg. Mistake!! In Madagascar you are lucky to get soap and if you do there may have been a number of others using it before you.