From Maputo to Antananarivo, Madagascar I had to fly via Johannesburg stop there overnight and catch a flight the next day. I stayed at a hotel close to the airport that had a free airport shuttle, very convenient. Johannesburg to Antananarivo was at three hours the longest flight between African countries. For some unknown reason I was upgraded to Business class, something that has never happened to me before. You have to fill in an Arrivals card and a Covid card when you arrive, these were not distributed on the flight and there were no signs so there was confusion at immigration and it took ages. Next I had to change some money and the exchange rate was not good. Then I bought a Telma SIM card for MGA 1000 and 2.5GB of Data for 15,000 a total of MGA 25,000 or US$6, it started working immediately and I never had any problems. The taxi into the city was a fixed price MGA 80,000 or US$18, traffic comes to a standstill as you approach the city and it will take at least an hour.
Antananarivo – more commonly know as “Tana” population 2 million and it is set among steep hills, which means you are always walking up or downhill very narrow streets and steps, the language is French. There are many different ethnic groups from Asia living here along with the natives. Crowded with whole families sleeping on the streets and the most distressing part were the hundreds of children begging some looked only a few years old. There were also the usual crowd of touts, money changers and beggars. I also experienced my first phone snatching attempt which was unsuccessful because I had a tight grip on my phone, the thief kept running. This is not a tourist destination.
Chris's space 