By Daniel
Imagine yourself seated in a washing machine. First of all
you will be flooded with foamy water, then everything starts rotating and
eventually the tumble dry mode shakes your bones like they were gaming cubes.
You get out of the washing machine and ask yourself how you could have survived
that.
It is hard to describe the RN 5. From its name you’ll think
it is an important road, well trodden and easily accessible. Then you realize
that at its best it is a pot-holed dirt track and at its worst it is not
recognizable at all and only the fiercest and most daring 4x4 cowboys are able
to navigate it. And we only took the supposedly easier stretch from Mananara to
Maroantsetra.
Talking in the analogy, you’ll literally be flooded. There
are innumerable river crossings, one crazier than the other. A fully
functioning ferry (a flat steel pontoon with a motor and a watchtower) is the
exception. In one case our driver’s assistant had to take the battery of our
Nissan Terrano, take out two litres of diesel by sucking it from the car’s
tank, and then cross the river in a dugout canoe to get the ferry on the other
side of the river. And that was maybe the least spectacular crossing. In
another instance the ferry didn’t have an engine but by pulling an algae
covered rope all of us male passengers managed to get the steel pontoon across.
The wildest thing (calling it a ferry seems too far-fetched) was a rabble of
bamboo sticks wildly tied together. Even the driver seemed scared when he saw
it. When the jeep climbed it, it ached loudly and you could hear something
break, then it partly sank but somehow held the car and the passengers and,
standing almost knee deep in the chestnut colored water, four old fishermen
navigated it across the river pushing “the thing” with long bamboo sticks.
Talking rotation, there are stretches of road that you will
have to walk because the jeep with its 18 passengers and their luggage is simply
too heavy. This is mostly when you drive right on a beautiful pristine white
sand beach. Eventually the wheels start rotating and the jeep gets stuck in the
fine sand. You push and pull it out, the jeep drives ahead and the passengers
trod behind, one time for more than half an hour.
The tumble dry mode is the most frequent one. With an
average speed of 15 km/h you crawl from pot hole to pot hole one deeper than
the other. Every now and then the driver’s assistant (a muscle-packed lad who
clings to the side of the jeep for the
whole ride) runs ahead to find the most or only suitable path for the jeep. And
then it is like in that Sean Paul song: Shake that thing... Having said that, the
shaking is not that bad since you are tightly crammed into your seat and the soft
pressure of your neighbour’s obese body prevents you from bouncing up and down.
The most dangerous thing, however, are the abysmal bridges.
The passengers are required to get out first and cross the bridge in order to
check whether they are safe and stable enough. These bridges are wild
constructions of withered wood with only some planks to hold the wheels. A tiny
slip of the driver’s hand, a second of standstill in the middle of an old
plank, a strong gust of wind at the wrong time – and it’s farewell to the car
and its luggage.
Having mentioned all of the above, the RN 5 isn’t your
average travel. It is more of an adventure in itself. The road takes you
through dense jungle, pastoral scenery complete with sweating peasants toiling
knee deep in flooded rice paddies, sleepy fishing villages lined with endless
rows of laden coconut palms, along unspoiled and empty beaches rivalling any
postcard-perfect tourist destination, and over crocodile-infested rivers where
the zebus cross swimming and the herdsmen follow in dugout canoes. If you don’t
rent your own 4x4 but take a taxi-brousse your fellow passengers share the same
toils, the same food, the same jokes, the same feeling of tiredness and
strangely become some kind of family to you.
Only if you are very lucky you will be able to do this
stretch in one day. Your journey is subject to circumstance – the weather, the
condition of the road and your car, the ability of your driver, the tides, the
availability of ferries and so on. We
got stuck at the last river crossing – it was simply to late at night –
but setting up our hammocks between the jeep and a coconut tree had a good
sleep until we were woken up at 4 in the morning and continued until we reached
Maroantsetra at nine.
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