Mount Jmo

On Saturday the 4th I decided that I wanted to go out and explore now that I have my unnamed truck. So, after lunch at the beach I decided to just start driving and see what I could find. On the way out of town I was stopped by the gendarmes (national police). No probs there.

The roads here are soooooo horrendous. Just pot holes everywhere (except for the roads QMM maintains). So, you have two choices. Go slow or just go fast and take your bumps. I tried going slow but its frustrating, so I just go fast and try to avoid the huge pot holes.

I had been driving for about an hour and I spotted a mountain that looked like it would be cool to climb. Stopped and started trying to hike over to it. No luck. There was no trail, etc......but some old guy that spoke a little French pointed to where a trail should be. I walked over there and walked right past it....until some little kids started yelling to turn around. Then I finally found the trail and the kids started following/leading me.

We crossed through some rice fields, over a cement culvert running over a small gulley....kind of scary actually, cause it would have been an interesting fall. We also crossed a small river and they laughed at me because I tried not to get my shoes wet. Actually, the laughed and giggled at me a lot.

After 20 mins or so we reached the base of Mt Jmo (yep, I named a random mountain after myself). We crossed through a tiny village of about 5 huts and some more kids joined us. They only spoke Malagasy and so most things were done by waving hands, etc.

After about another hour of hiking or rather….scrambling up steep, densely vegetated slopes……I decided to stop because I didn’t think it was worth the effort, I didn’t have any water and it was getting kind of late. The sun sets pretty early now. What’s funny, is that when we turned around there was probably 5 small boys that we up on top waving and shouting at us.

The way down was much easier, because we actually followed a trail instead of making our own trail……….I wish they would have shown that to me earlier!!!

Basically, I struggled big time going up this mountain, sweating the whole way and they had jackets on, no shoes, etc, etc and didn’t make it up. The way back down was pretty uneventful. With me trying to avoid getting my feet wet. I tried asking if they had any “Maki” which I thought meant lemur in Malagasy……but I don’t think they understood. So, I didn’t see much wildlife other than a small lizard.

At the end of the trail all of them lined up for a photo……..I think they’ve done this a number of times. Then one of them asked for “argent de poche”……..which means she wanted some money. I was kind of disappointed because I thought they were just being friendly, not trying to make some money. However, a few of them followed me back to my truck and I decided to give them some money. They were so excited…….more excited than I was on Christmas morning, so that made me feel good.

Overall, a pretty cool trip.