And the Rain it Raineth Every Day

So it's the rainy season here. In effect what this means is that it rains a lot, at least a few hours every day lightly and then a deluge overnight. The big storms sweep in from the East (I'm on the West coast right now), and you can sit and watch them roll in and count the shortening seconds between the lightning and thunder. The lightning is larger than any I've seen, if that even makes sense. The other thing that the rainy season signifies is a massive closure of roads, but I'll send pictures of that as I take them. Meanwhile, here are some shots of sunnier times in Sambava.

Sambava
A lot people talk a lot of things about Sambava, but I’ve got to say I enjoyed my time here. Maybe it was the empty and wave-filled beach, maybe it was the delicious ice cream from Coco Vanilla, or maybe it was having to crap sitting perpendicular to the toilet seat at my cockroach-infested (when they’re 4-inches long, 2 is an infestation) and alleyway-sequestered hotel (though probably not), but I happened to really like this town. Here’s to being “Good for Little!”








Some notes: The Ny Havana building was the headquarters for ATTR, an airline set up by the president, that went defunct around the time of my arrival. It should be noted, for those of you wondering what the president is doing with an airline, that the leader of Madagascar rose to prominence on a yogurt empire. He has since branched out to sodas, ice cream, water, and just about everything else. Vanilla Mad was a truly crazy place, with dozens of women sitting around sniffing vanilla (until their cheeks were black from being imbedded in bean-pods) for quality control. No pictures allowed within the complex. As for the rooms at Hotel Florida, I was soon to find out that one of the reasons why little attention was paid to their quality was because they’re typically only rented for two hours at a time. My biggest problem was probably the two alleyways that lead to the rooms, thereby preventing any wind from circulating into them. Still, it’s hard to complain about a place that’s only $3 a night. But the most surprising thing in town was probably the sudden Sputnik building, in Cyrillic no less, which remains a mystery to me.