Up at 6:30 with alarm. Ian came down for the expected 7:00 breakfast and didn’t look well. He had been throwing up most of the night and it was decided that he should just stay at the hotel for the day.
We were on road by 8:15. First stop was MBP, the Madagascar Biodiversity Project. We went over the crates that came up with us to see if everything was as expected. There was a bit of confusion about a couple of items and before we head out to get more of the things we need, we need to review what we had. We thought we were missing part of the mounting brackets, but later figured out that we do have them. Stopped at a parts supply house and picked a few things. By the time we got back on the road it was 11:45 and we stopped at a pizza place. Driving from point A to point B is very slow. After lunch, off to another place to pick up the batteries that we ordered. We also stopped at something close to a Wallmart, but I got distracted by the phones that were for sale. I picked up a Nokia 105. I had read about the phone as built for the 1st world. The material cost to make the phone is less than $15 and was expected to sell for close to $20. Here there are a bunch of taxes that bumped it up to 89,000 ariary or $40.45. I put 10,000 credits on it and it cost me another 2,000 for a SIM card. The phone should be able to be on standby for 35 days! Back to yet another hardware store and I think we got almost everything figured out. Back to the hotel about 5:30 and dinner at 7:00. I had the chicken fricassee, but they just cut the chicken into parts with a cleaver. The bone fragments are not nice. Service was the usual very slow and with dessert, it took 2+ hours before we were done. Back in my room about 9:10 to work on this journal and trade text messages with Antje. Tomorrow we pick up a couple of bigger things, then we hit the road on Wednesday very early for the trip South.