Ten Ferries to Fort Dauphin: The Story of My Biggest Peace Corps Adventure

Author's note: this is a post that I have been wanting to write for almost 2 years. However, because some of the people involved were still serving as PCVs until now, and because we broke a few Peace Corps rules in doing this, I've been forced to wait a while to write about it. When a classmate of mine asked me 'what was the craziest thing you did in Madagascar?', the story of this adventure was my answer. It remains one of the highlights of my experience in Madagascar, and one of the most rewarding and challenging things I have ever done in my life.

I have always been entranced by maps. I lose myself just staring at them, poring over place names and imagining the adventures they hold. And so when I first learned of my Peace Corps site placement midway through Pre-Service Training, I quickly looked up Vangaindrano on the map at the training center. I pointed at my new town to one of our volunteer trainers, remarking “oh look, I won’t be that far away from Fort Dauphin” [a popular large-ish city on the island’s southeastern tip, located on a beautiful bay]. And then she proceeded to laugh hysterically. 

Map courtesy the Bradt Guide to Madagascar

You see, in Madagascar, sometimes maps lie. In this case, what the map says is a road is actually more of a “road”. It uses the term very loosely. She explained to me that not only is the Route Nationale 12A unpaved, but it’s notoriously treacherous, and just plain mind-bogglingly bad. What’s more, it includes 10 ferry crossings where inland rivers spill out into the Indian Ocean, like the teeth of a zipper. Given how terrible the road has always been, and the vast plains of emptiness that lie between Vangaindrano and Ft. Dauphin, it’s no surprise that bridges have never been built. So as a result, this 230km (143 mile) coastal stretch that should be a straight shot from Vangaindrano to Ft. Dauphin takes at least 2 days in a 4x4, more if you’re in a taxi-brousse (if you can even find one taking the trip.) The paved road heading south from Irondro, the Route Nationale 12, ends in Vangaindrano, giving my site what the Bradt guidebook calls “a frontier town feel”; any road venturing further south is just mud, rocks, and dirt. But on the map it looks like such a straight shot down Madagascar’s arrow-straight east coast. And all throughout the first year of my service, Ft. Dauphin sat on the map on my wall, taunting me, beckoning me. It was so close, yet so far away. I had to find a way to make the trip. And I decided to do it on a bicycle.

But it looks like such a straight shot!

Biker chick

Several years ago I had the esteemed fortune to be visiting London and staying with my friend Jon, whose favorite hobby is riding his motorcycle. Even more fortunate was the fact that Jon invited me to take a motorcycle tour of London. So I hopped on the back, put on a helmet, and off we went for the better part of an hour, before ending at a tapas bar in Islington to get dinner with another friend. When we got off the bike, Jon told me just why he likes riding a motorcycle so much: “it clears the cobwebs out”, he said.

This is an epithet that’s stuck with me ever since, because it’s such a perfect description for the sensation of mental cleansing you feel after speeding through the open air. And recently it’s popped into my head again because that’s exactly the way I feel when I am zipping down one of the local roads on my bicycle.

I’d heard that Peace Corps gives Madagascar volunteers bikes, but didn’t think much of it until I got to site and realized just how vital a bike is, especially in the Sud Est. My house is about a 30 minute walk from the center of town (and therefore the market, the post office, the office where I work, and the taxi-brousse station). But on a bike, it takes a mere 10 minutes. And when I go to my banking town, Farafangana, I always take my bike so that I can make the quick trip to the beach for a splash in the Indian Ocean. Plus, the towns down here in the southeast are all so spread out, so not having a bike makes getting around town much more difficult.

But more than just a simple mode of transportation, I’ve realized how much joy I find in riding my bike. Maybe that it brings out a childlike sense of adventure, reminiscent of when my set of wheels was pink and had streamers on the handlebars, or maybe it’s that it provides me a vehicle for one of my favorite activities—exploring—but whatever it is, I find that I always look forward to getting in the saddle.

Recently I’ve been trying to push myself on longer and longer rides to both get in shape as well as find a fun weekend activity. My recent accomplishment involved biking 25km roundtrip on a back road to find the beach, and then biking 55km roundtrip the next day on a little jaunt with my friend Matt. I arrived home after this ride—my longest to date—feeling a sense of pleasant exhaustion and proud self-accomplishment.  The road leading out of my town, the Route Nationale 12, is paved but extremely hilly, so although it offers beautiful vistas and views of the ocean off in the distance, it’s a punishing ride. But on this trip, I managed to bike up every single hill, without stopping to walk once. (Ok sure, I had to crank the gears all the way down to make it up, but I’d rather go in ‘granny gear’ than walk.) Biking here in Madagascar, especially the southeast, has also brought some uniques challenges that I've proud to have conquered: I've had to become mahay (skilled) at adventurous routes that include biking up sandy hills and down rocky ones. To get to my house I have to bike up an extremely sandy hill, which I'm able to make it up about 60-70% of the time without stopping-- and whenever I do, it feels like a little victory.

My ultimate goal is to be able to bike 100km in one day, and I have a little more work to do to get in shape for this. But I’ve been enjoying using biking as a mode of exercise, because my hip is still messed up from marathon training and I can’t run like I used to be able to. And even more than just a form of exercise, I relish the chance the clear out the cobwebs.