Royal Arches - Yosemite

Alex and I decided to go climbing in Yosemite on Saturday. It was going to be my first "real" valley climbing experience, so we went for a great classic: Royal Arches. 15-pitches and 1400ft of air sounds impressive in a book, and it turns out had quite an effect on my impressionable self. The topo presents the route as a long but moderate effort, adding that "the crux of the climb can easily be bypassed by a pendulum technique". What they really meant to say is that on the 9th pitch, you have the option of holding on to a fixed rope anchored 30 ft up the wall and make a spiderman run accross a blank (and pretty darn steep) slab of rock overlooking beautiful Yosemite Valley (1000ft below), trying to go far enough so you can reach a small ledge with your left hand (if you visualize this correctly at this precise moment you are hanging 1000ft off the ground, holding on to the pendulum rope that is pulling you back to the right with your right hand and fighting the pull of the pendulum with your left hand that is gripping a small rocky ledge to your left... comfy). You then have to let go of the pendulum and somehow hoist yourself onto the ledge you were holding, at which point you can stop hyperventilating. Needless to day I was scared out of my brains and I still wonder how I got myself to do this, I probably should blame heat exhaustion. Anyway, somehow I managed to get over there on my second run. 6 pitches later (all 15 pitches were led by SuperAlex, por supuesto) we were at the top. Of course we had run out of water a long time ago so we were quite relieved when - 11 rappels later - we set foot onto the valley ground. After 9h30 of climbing, it felt really good to inhale some powerade and sit down at the curry village deck. Two pitchers of water, a cold beer and a gigantic pizza later we collapsed onto our sleeping pads. I think I will stay away from rocks for a little bit. Alex's pictures can be found here.

Santa Barbara

Nothing like a short trip to Santa Barbara to feel that life is good in California. Mike, Wei, Maureen and I left the brisk breeze of the bay area on Saturday morning and headed down to SoCal and a textbook californian sun. The warm weather was a good thing since the plane had a little too much fuel in the tanks, and we had to pack rather lightly (5lbs per person max luggage). After meeting up with our local friends Damon, Nathalie and Olav, we decided to pretend to go surfing on the beach. For the majority of us, this mostly consisted of carrying a surfboard around the beach and staring at the ocean, although I did make a valid attempt to brave the rather frigid water (no wetsuit... 5lbs limit, remember?).
On Sunday, we did our traditional tourist walk down State street to the pier, followed by a visit of the Courthouse and the mission. We met up with the local crew at Franceschi park in the hills to have a picnic before taking off to (chilly) Palo Alto. A couple pictures of the trip can be found here, courtesy of picasa web. Mike & Wei's pics are here.

For aviation enthusiasts: here are some videos of our takeoff and landing in Palo Alto.

Napa Din(n)er

After being sworn into the sacred brotherhood of pilotry on Friday, I found two brave souls to join Maureen to be my very first passengers as pilot in command. Amy, Alex, Maureen and I decided to fly to Napa on Saturday evening to have a steak at jonesy's famous steakhouse which most enviable feature is that it is REALLY close to the runway, as the food was much less extraordinary than the patrons (you'll have to go for yourself to figure that one out). The 35min flight to Napa was very pretty over foggy SF and we caught a beautiful sunset on the way back; you can find a couple of pictures here.

Week-ends in the Bay Area

After all our trips around the globe, we spent a few week-ends in San Francisco and around, and enjoyed the great outdoor the Bay Area has to offer. We went biking in Tilden Park (close to Berkeley), spent the week-end in Sonoma with Cedric's Bain colleagues and did some more mountain biking and wine tasting, enjoyed a barbecue in Dolores Park with a bunch of friends followed by the free symphony concert and biked Angel Island's hills with the amazing views of San Francisco, Tiburon, Sausalito, ...

4th of July in the sky

This year was a quite original 4th of July. Marie-Catherine, Andy (Cedric's flight instructor) and I were all passengers of the soon-to-be licensed pilot Cedric. We flew over Sacramento, Napa, Sonoma and the East Bay and enjoyed the Bay Area fireworks from the sky. Now I am just really eager to go flying all around California, Oregon and Nevada, as soon as Cedric got his license. For more pictures and video, click here. Maureen

Stanley goes to Washington

It's official: Stanley will find a home at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington DC. Too bad I will miss the introduction party next week, since its my second day of real work... Anyway, a must see next time your in the area!

Back to Tana - Andasibe

We headed back to Antananarivo on Friday and met up with Coco who took us to Andasibe. This time, we stayed the night at the Vakona Forest lodge, a very nice bungalow-style accomodation (second in our "best of" list best after Anakao Club Resort). We went on a nocturnal walk to observe some microcebus, and we even found one that stuck with us for the pictures. The next morning, we went into the reserve to try to find some Indris. Indris mark their territory by "singing" at the crack of dawn. They make these spooky supernatural sounds (part car alarm,
part scoobidoo-ghost) that carry for miles through the jungle. Amazing. We saw two families of Indris, the pictures are not great because it was raining a lot. Back at the hotel, we had a surprise waiting for us: our transfer back to Tana had been "postponed". All in all a routine day trip in Madagascar: hitch a ride with a family from La Reunion Island, 6 people + luggage in a Peugeot 309 (for car illiterates that's the size of a Corolla), run out of gas in the countryside, hitch a ride to the closest gas station (1-hour) to fill our waterbottles with gasoline and get going again. 5 hours for the 80 mile trip, not bad really. Last goodbyes to Balsama, Coco and the crew in Tana, and off we are. We'll be back.

Anakao

The transfer to Anakao was unremarkable: we took the same tiny De Haviland plane that took us to Morondava and had a mysterious layover in the middle of nowhere (see pix) en route to Tulear (I suspect the pilot had to use the boys room). In lieu of a romantic cruise from Tulear to Anakao, we had a slight logistics change that made us take a Taxi-Brousse for half the way, followed by a tiny fishing boat that stopped at every fishing village on the way to our hotel... very exotic. Five hours after landing in Tulear, we finally disembarked at the Anakao Club Resort. A rare find, our hotel was the first bit of real luxury we experienced on the big Island. Nice. We did nothing but relax and went snorkeling/bird watching on Nosy Ve (a tiny Island off the coast - a 30 minute pirogue ride). Anakao Club Resort is a brand new property held by an Italian perfectionist from the Val D'Aoste. Although it was not mentioned in any of our guidebooks, we highly recommend it for its exceptional management and impeccable facilities (currently 6 bungalows).

On the road again

The ride back from the Tsingys was our first true bush adventure. We had been cruising along on the "road" for about an two hours when our right back wheel fell off (I mean this litterally). The drive shaft gears had fatigued to the point it broke off and fell out. After stepping out and assessing the damage under the scorching midday sun, our driver confidently estimated he would need an hour for the repair. I know nothing about bush mechanics but this sounded rather optimistic so we looked for a contingency plan. We hitched a ride with a group of swiss people from Zurich to the next town, a crammed 1-hour drive (8 people + luggage in a mid size SUV). While we were having lunch there our guide arrived in another vehicle (a Toyota land cruiser seating 10...). He announced that the repair hadn't gone as smoothly as expected, and proposed his "solution": joining the group of 10 people in the land cruiser (between 4 and 5 westerners per row of back seats) for the second half of the trip. I gladly refused this unattractive option, and once again used my newly developed Malagasy negociation technique which consits of repeatedly stating exactly what you want (in our case our own car) with complete disregard for the other party's argument. A crucial point of this technique is to carefully listen to your opponents explanation, making it clear that you understand his argument and by facial expression giving him the impression he convinced you of his position. At that point, when his hopes are high he won the argument and stops talking, you calmly repeat what you want, making for a disarmingly absurd discussion that will quickly discourage the person you are facing. Works every time... We got our own car, the drive back to Morondava was a (bumpy) breeze, and after a night in a Bungalow on the beach we took off for Tulear en route to Anakao.

Tsingy de Bemaraha - size matters

The Tsingys are a UNESCO world heritage site (the only one in Madagascar), attracting more and more visitors each year. To get there you need to brave 130 miles (200km) of "piste" a loosely defined dirt road. The drive from Morondava can take up to 10 hours, so it's rather rough on sensitive stomacs. There are also two river crossings (the "ferry" only takes you accross twice a day, so you better not miss it, as we found out...). There is only one really nice hotel at the entrance of the park called the "Relais des Tsingy". The bungalows are rustic, but have water and electricity for 4 hours a day (a huge luxury) and are in a beautiful setting on top of a hill. We stayed three nigths and visited both the Petits Tsingy and the Grand Tsingy. The extra day was probably not necessary, as the larger Grand Tsingy are pretty much a bigger, more impressive version of the Petits Tsingys. However, given the 10 hour drive, staying the extra day is probably the more reasonable thing to do. Update to our critter count: we saw the elusive jumping rat, another check in our book.