I am writing this as we are on the road to Lac Alaotra, the famous Chrysoberyl locality where we have an appointment tomorrow to see the mines. The last 24 hours have been full of a batch of new impressions but to sum it up best - exhaustion. We arrived here yesterday. At 2 pm we had made our way past all the paperwork, health declaration, visa and so on, at the airport... Our good friend and contact Gael was just there to pick us up and after giving some money to the people that couldn't be held back rolling our suitcases 30 meters to the car we would finally get to our hotel for the night where you can rent a little house per night for about 15 bucks. We got some water, Mango and Papaya from a market on the other side of the road and unpacked everything.
Gael had arranged three dealers to come and show us their minerals. We were able to make our first deals after their prices dropped by 95 percent with some negotiation to our expectations. We could get a batch of good to semi good grade Demantoide specimens that are actually quite rare to come up with as the locality dried out several years ago and a smaller lot of small but nice etched Aquas. We were also offered a lot of astonishing very high end Aqua pieces, some really good emerald specimens as well as an outstanding moonstone crystal with quartz crystals formed attractively half around it, but unfortunately our expectations didn't slightly match theirs. Had traditional dinner - bowl reverse - in a local place and went to bed early.
Got up today at six. There must've been some mosquitos in our room cause I've been stung several times. The gecko that we'd seen running behind the picture on the wall doesn't quite seem to do his job right... Now I am taking into concern to actually take the Malaria pills we brought as we are heading towards a high risk region... Had a needed shower and a très petit petit-déjeuner at the hotel. We packed everything and loaded the VWD of Tahin, Gaels uncle that came with it and will drive us around for the first week as we will need a good car for what´s planned. Then we hit the road.
So here we are. In the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere. We are driving since four hours. Tahin says it'll take at least another four (which is kind of fast in Madagascar for the 280 kilometers we have to make, the road is quite good compared to what we know from other trips). The landscape is characterized mainly by Eucalyptus and Pine trees (bushes) covering the hills since the virgin forests were logged off by the French during colonial times. Where Eucalyptus stands once, other species have almost no chance. The urban areas are extremly poor, accordingly simple are the houses. Animals running around on the street and edible fruit producing plants such as banana, papaya or mango trees are everywhere.There are stands offering all kinds of goods along the way, even where you would least expect it. We will stop now to get some bananas.
As the relatives of Gael we had planned to stay with for the night had moved away we have to find a safe place to sleep what can be quite hard in an area far away from any touristic trail. Luckily, we found one after Gael did some calls. We decided to take a room in the 2nd floor to be safe and not having to deal with cockroaches. The miner we will meet tomorrow will come here to show us some pieces he got.
What we didn´t know was that he was about to bring the whole Chrysoberyl production he got in some months asking money with that one could build several schools in Madagascar. We did our calculations and told him to do the negotiating tomorrow for we didn´t want to risk our mine visit in case it got harsh... To not leave him upset we bought a lot of good quality Szepter - Quarzes from a mine nearby.
Had boule reverse for dinner in a local place and got back to the hotel. After removing the first cockroach from the bathroom I am now posting this.