Sunrise brings flying fish gliding, risso’s dolphins porpoising and seabirds squawking. In the near distance, about fifteen miles as the red-footed booby flies, silhouetted by an already bright sun, lies the northern tip of Madagascar. Surprisingly green (I have the impression that much of Madagascar’s forest has been denuded, clear cut) the tip of the island – the 4th largest in the world, bigger than France, considered by some the eighth continent – is bounded by Pleistocene coral uprisings and mangrove forests. But this is all seen from a distance. Landing on Madagascar these days is out of the question thanks to several months of civil unrest threatening civil war.
Why the upheaval? A dismal economy, of course. Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world with seventy percent of its twenty million people living on less than a dollar a day. When in January the charismatic young mayor of its biggest city, Antananarivo – 34-year-old Andry Rajoelina, a former disc jockey – accused the sitting president of failing to tackle poverty and of personal corruption, the country erupted in street riots. That the long time president, 59-year-old Marc Ravalomanana – a self-made millionaire, whose fortune began in the yogurt business – had recently bought himself a new presidential jet, made moves to sell off vast tracts of land to South Korea and offered up the country’s vast oil and mineral reserves to the highest bidder made him an easy target.
The resulting riots cost more than one hundred people their lives, the worst violence for years on the historically politically volatile Indian Ocean island. (The last big contretemps were in 2002, when disputed election results triggered eight months of nationwide political chaos and brought the economy to its knees before Ravalomanana was declared victor.)
The tourist economy has taken a huge hit; typically this most biodiverse island in the world takes $400 million off visitors each year. Today, with civil war a daily fear, that economy has dwindled to near nothing. In central Antananarivo, usually home to throngs of international tourists, blackened buildings gutted by fire scar the central 13 May Plaza, the epicenter of Rajoelina’s month-long campaign of rallies and strikes. Though I am several hundred kilometers north of the capital, there are still concerns.
Today up and down Madagascar the desire for change is palpable among people in the thronging market places and from behind the metal grilles of businesses whose owners remain too nervous to re-open. They are fatigued by what they call “la lutte” – the struggle. For me it is a green/golden opportunity, lying just off the bow that must be missed. I’m sure we’ll come back … one day.
RANDOM NOTES
VIRGIN GLOBAL ROW GIVES UP
My young friend Olly Hicks, who sailed with us to Antarctica a year ago, is apparently giving up his goal of rowing around the world. He left 83 days ago from Tasmania with the intent of taking 500 days to circumnavigate 15,000 miles by oar in his custom-built “Flying Carrot.” But at the rate he’s been rowing since leaving Tasmania, far slower than expected, it was looking like it might take him more like five years. So … he’s headed for port in New Zealand.
“It is with a heavy heart that I must tell you that we will be suspending the global row in New Zealand,” he said. “The main reason is our incredibly poor progress.
REAL CHANGE IN WHO CAN VISIT ANTARCTICA
At the meetings of representative nations with interests in the Arctic and Antarctic last week in Baltimore, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the U.S. would take the lead in calling for the Antarctic Treaty to be amended to address tourism and its potential impacts on the seventh continent. But amending the fifty-year-old treaty will be tricky since it requires a unanimous vote of its 49 voting signators. Yet the media at large – including Discover – are already announcing “big changes” for Antarctic tourists and tour operators.
I’m not sure that wish will happen too quickly, so stay tuned. My guess – though I hope it won’t take this – is that such an amendment will only come when there is a tragedy of a proportion we’ve not yet seen along the heavily touristed Peninsula.
During the decade that we traveled around the world by sea kayak, I can’t remember going around much. Our marching orders were always up and down, down and up, across, from here to there, A to B, etc. Never – or very, very rarely at least since I’m now remembering Enterprise Island in Antarctica which we circled as a warm-up one day – did we set out to circumnavigate.
But I’ve got a bunch of friends in that world whose entire lives, or at least the on-water part of their lives, are programmed to find things – usually sizable chunks of land – to go around.
For example, my good friend and Antarctic teammate Graham Charles and two of his Kiwi mates were the first to go completely around South Georgia Island. Followed a month later by a team of Brits. The unstoppable Justine Curgenven from the U.K. is always circumnavigating something and constantly looking for a new thing to circle; most recently it was the South Island of New Zealand. And the irrepressible German, Freya Hoffmeister – kayaks answer to Johnny Cash, known as “the woman in black” – is currently into her third month of attempting to go all the way around Australia’s 9,400-mile circumference. If she is successful, it will take a year.
(These are kayakers. I have other friends who have circumnavigated in other craft: One of my oldest friends in France, Titouan Lamazou, at one time had sailed around the globe solo without stopping, faster than anyone alive. And currently, young Olly Hicks from the U.K. – who sailed with us to Antarctica in early 2008 – is a few weeks into what he envisions to be a 500-day effort to row around the biggest yet: Antarctica.)
I’ve stayed away from circumnavigations for a simple reason: It – the rounding – becomes the goal. During our OCEANS 8 expeditions, and others, my goal has always been being spontaneous enough to stop and stay in one place should we meet interesting folks or a unique spot. I’m a storyteller and my stories lack much depth if they become solely the meet of the day-to-day grind of getting around. Not to diminish what my circumnavigating friends accomplish (or more often don’t, since most attempts end in vows of “I’ll be back next year.”). They are incredible mental and physical challenges.
I last paddled with Marcus Demuth last fall on the Hudson River. He’d recently returned from a failed attempt at rounding Iceland, but was already planning on heading to the Falklands to go round and round. And sure enough, as of a week ago or so, I understand he’s made it – a solo circumnavigation, 615 miles in 22 days. Bravo Marcus!
He describes a kind of day none of us like, nor like to hear about:
“Unfortunately, 90 minutes into the crossing, the winds increased again to gale force strength … before I could decide what to do (turn around, change course,) a larger wave (15 feet, 20 feet? No idea, it felt huge and very steep), almost vertical in its approach and shape appeared on my left side and made me capsize despite my attempt to brace and lean into it.
“I capsized and tried to set up the paddle for a roll, but was unable to get the paddle ‘up’, to set up for my roll. I felt I was still ‘inside’ the wave, and after a few unsuccessful attempts to get the paddle up, I run out of air and wet-exited.
“Since I was tethered to my boat … and used a paddle leash for the first time on a trip, and also tied my spare paddles to the kayak (after my experience in Iceland where I lost my spare paddles in surf), I only lost everything which was stored inside my cockpit: All my water bags and water bottles. And I saw the foam seat flying away (the seat I epoxied in). I was able to get back first on, and then into the kayak, now sitting in the fully flooded cockpit. I was able to pump out the cockpit despite breaking waves going over me and hauling winds by protecting most of the cockpit with the loose spray skirt. I felt that I had to pump for my life, and yes, the water level in the cockpit went down slowly. I then paddled sitting low in the kayak without a seat – with the luckily onshore blowing gale – towards the next island, Hammock Island, where I stayed for the next 24 hours without any water, which was quite a humbling experience. Until that day, I was never before really thirsty in my life.”
Next up for Marcus? Iceland, again.
When we sailed to the Antarctic Peninsula last year aboard Skip Novak’s “Pelagic Australis” to mount our sea kayaking adventure, the third mate aboard proved to have a big story to tell. An accomplished long-distance rower, the youngest to cross the Atlantic Ocean under his own power, 24-year-old Olly Hicks told us he intended a year later to attempt something never done before: To row around Antarctica. One of his reasons for working on the “Pelagic Australis” was to gain some insight into how the Southern Ocean works. Though he would be rowing around Antarctica in its waters, he would never actually see the continent.
Olly Hicks, in red jacket, during one of our Antarctica climbs, January 2008
Bon chance, Olly! One year later and his attempt is in the news. Not because of any particularly long days on the sea, but because a couple different government’s are not wild about his plan. His late-December hope to push off from New Zealand – and hopefully return some 500 days later! – was quashed by the New Zealand maritime bureau that saw it potentially being pulled into an expensive and risky rescue mission if something were to go awry and which it wanted no part of.
Ever plucky, Olly packed up his rowing boat, “The Flying Carrot,” and shipped off to Hobart, Tasmania, where he is now undergoing scrutiny anew. Have a look at the website of his Virgin Global Row. We’ll be staying tuned in.
Photo, Pete McBride
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