Today was our last day in Madagascar (this trip). Our plane was scheduled to fly out at 10P.M. so that left us with a whole day to spend in the capital. I discovered the "sport" of geocaching a couple of months ago and one of my online acquaintances had asked (or suggested... I can't remember which) if I was going to hunt for any caches while in Madagascar.
I did a search and found that there were only 4 caches on the entire island! (Pretty amazing considering that there are dozens right around where I live!) There were 2 geocaches around Tana that were going to be possible for us to find, so we got up early and headed out to find them and hide the travel bug that I had recovered from a Wilson Lake cache and brought 1/2 way around the world. 
The first cache took us way up a hill on the Tana skyline near the queen's palace. It was hidden on private property and the guard was very nice about letting us in to search for it. I placed the travel bug in its new Madagascar home and we were on our way to the next location. The second cache was about 5 miles away and took a bit more searching once we found the general vicinity of it. But Byron stepped up and found the treasure. I was sad to see that all of the travel bugs that were supposed to be present in this cache had been "taken" and moved on since I downloaded the cache info. Oh well, the fun is in finding the cache! We spent the afternoon shopping for souvenirs in the market. They had all kinds of unique things: games, jewelry, musical instruments, paper, purses, etc. It was definitely a sight to see, but since I'm really not a great bargainer I didn't particularly like the "agreeing on a price" part of the market experience.All too soon our time on the big red island has come to an end. We tried all day to get ahold of Air Madagascar to confirm our flight, but no one answered. Our plane was supposed to leave at 9:45P.M. so we showed up at the airport at 8P.M., only to discover that our flight had been cancelled. We literally stood around for 4 hours waiting for them to decide or figure out what they were going to do with all of us. There was an Air France flight leaving at 12:15A.M. that we were hoping to get on. Finally, at about midnight we were called and told that we were able to get on the flight. Our bags were checked and we were rushed out to the Air France flight. We said our goodbyes to Kyle (what a saint he is for all he did for us on the trip and for waiting around that long at the airport on us).
I was fighting back tears as we said good bye to this country and to the people who have made such an impact on our lives in such a short time.I know I've said it once or twice before... but God is sooooo good! The Air France plane was a large Airbus that was much roomier than the 767 we arrived in! It had much more leg room and I'm sure that we slept much better on this flight than we would have on the Air Madagascar flight (not that Air Madagascar was that bad, but we loved the extra room and we also were a lot more tired since the flight took off shortly before 1A.M.). As we approached France, I realized that they did not specify whether or not our luggage was checked through to Wichita or not. The flight also arrived late and we were pushing the limit on reaching our connecting flight. As soon as we deplaned we rushed to the Air France transfer desk to inquire about our checked luggage. She told us that we needed to get to United and check for sure, she could not give us any information. We sprinted to the bus for Terminal 1 and then to our gate with just 2 minutes to spare for our Chicago flight. However, we were told we were too late for that flight. Also, we were told that our bags had been checked to France only and they were back at Terminal 2 with Air France! There was another United flight to DC and they were able to set us up on that and also on a connecting flight to Chicago where we could catch our original Chicago to Wichita flight on time. The flight was leaving immediately, so there was no time to get our luggage. The very nice United lady did make some phone calls to Air France in an attempt to get our luggage to the flight, but it did not make it. Oh well... did I mention that God is good? We got to fly in economy plus from France to D.C.!
We made it home in great shape and our kids were very happy to see us. (Except for our 1 year old who was not very happy with us for leaving her; she "punished" us by having nothing to do with mommy or daddy for about an hour after we arrived.) Our luggage arrived about a week and a half after we did, but it did finally get here!
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