July 28th 2013 Starting home

Up 5:00 with the alarm, still didn’t sleep that well.  When I got up at 4:15am, the stars were impressive again.  Orion was the only constellation that I have recognized yet.  The Milky Way was again so bright that you could see structure in it.  Had the tent, sleeping bag, mattress, and clothing all put back in the red duffle.  I left several things there so not sure why everything barely seemed to fit.  We got on the road by 7:15.  I sat in the front seat of the truck.  The roads are twisty and full of almost impassable potholes.  Made good time and we got off the R25 and turned north on the R7 at 9:04. Got to Ambositra for lunch at 11:50.  I ordered steak and fries.  This is a tourist hotel so they actually called it steak not zebu.
Lunch was rather quick, we had paid by 1:10.  Stopped for gas before hitting a souvenir shop. Left there at 2:00 with 255K to go.  Passed kids making gravel out of bigger rocks, by hand.  Sunset is 5:33, people here for the most part don’t use headlights until it is very dark. It is sunset now and we still have 37Km to go.  Made it to the hotel by 6:30 in the dark.  I got to the showers first!  The last shower I had was on 7/9, I feel much better now.  Next is a bit of waiting for the drivers to get back, then off to the airport.  After getting gas and a minor snafu with the extra bag, we were ready to go through security about 10:45.  Once inside, it was 11:00 before I got a simple ham sandwich to eat.