The delayed tin can bumps down the dark wet runway. It's 3pm and the heavens have opened. Rain lashes down as I walk under the dripping wings and taste the warm humid Malagasy air. Passport control is unimaginably easy and I'm changing money and trying to wrestle E95 worth of Ariary into my wallet in vain (the highest note I've been given is worth about £1.60.) I recognise a bit of the rusty French I learnt at school, as the lightning is accompanied by ear-splitting thunder, the taxi driver exclaims a swerving 'merde' and we drive into the streaming streets of Antananarivo, the capital. I am shown the hotel room as the power cuts out and am left dripping in the gloom. I realise I'm actually in Madagascar at last, just as the lightning lights up the water running into the room under the door.
The Hotel Manoir Rouge is like 'ello 'ello with PMT; I fumble with my inept French and the grumpy hotelier scowls and replies at 100mph. It takes about an hour for my 'Je voudrais un sprite' to actually gain me a fizzy drink which I share with the young Brit couple who have been robbed penniless at knife point whilst returning from the beach a week ago. I leave my seat for a few seconds to check out a bizarre squeaking noise which turns out to be a basket full of guinea pigs (obviously) and when I return my seat has been taken by the I'm-so-sophisticated-I-have-to-blow-my-cigarette-smoke-towards-the-sky French woman. She turns her back on me and the sound of the rain seems louder. I'm not feeling very welcome.
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