How long is the hike to Mangevo?

July 03, 2017

How long is the hike to Mangevo?

Truly a loaded question. Depends who you ask. Mariah hiked it in 8-9 hours last summer. Amanda, a friend and fellow researcher, says it takes her about 6 hours. Justin, legendary CVB guide, says "it's my favorite site, but it's too far. 5 hour hike!"

Mangevo, me and Mariah's first field site of the season, is located 18 miles from the nearest road and is the most remote field site in Ranomafana National Park. It had been a while since I last went on a serious hike, and I had no idea what to expect, but kept my expectations as neutral as possible. Mariah and I were set and ready to leave by 8am, but by the time our food and supplies had been packed into rice bags and picked up by porters, we finally headed out at 12pm, in typical Malagasy fashion (mora mora, slowly slowly).

The hike to Mangevo began in high spirits, as we sang along to the hours-long playlist we had made especially for this journey. About an hour and a half into the hike, we stopped for 15 minutes to break for lunch. At this point, we had only climbed 3 mountains, not knowing there were about 7 more to go. As the day went on, we encountered numerous rice paddies. The first few rice paddies we crossed were enjoyable - soft, squishy mud under our rain boots, a close slip here and there, but overall stable ridges to walk along. However, as rain crept into the forecast, the rice paddies grew more and more treacherous and towards the last 4 hours of the hike, I had never experienced dread like reaching the top of a mountain and looking out across fields upon fields of filthy, stagnant, swampy rice paddies.

In the final stretch of the hike, Mariah and I realized we had been held up behind some of our team members who had been hiking at a pace much slower than we could have gone. As night fell and despair started setting in, we decided to leave the team behind for the rest of the hike. We had not anticipated arriving as late as we did, and therefore had not kept headlamps and flashlights handy for the portion of the trip we hiked in complete darkness, led only by the lights on our phones (which were dwindling on charge).

Along the way, my rain boots completely filled up with rice paddy water twice (a living nightmare) and I was carried by my guide across two rivers that would have been too deep for me to walk across. We arrived at Mangevo at 10:30pm in the pouring rain, both freezing and drenched in sweat, with 15 porters sitting around our fire waiting to be paid, and only zebu (beef) prepared for us vegetarians to eat. By the time we scarfed down some plain white rice, pitched our tents in the dark, and gotten out of our sloshing, soaking, rice paddy clothes, it was 1am. The hike to Mangevo took us 10 hours.