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The RN7 National Park trail

Saturday, September 18th, 2010

A week ago we returned to Antsirabe from western Madagascar and have since enjoyed, for the first time in our many years of travelling, the luxury of a rented car and driver for an extended period. We banded together with a Dutch couple, Knelis and Patricia, who we met on the Tsingy tour, and have since been zipping up and down national highway No. 7 at a pace you could only dream of while travelling by taxi-brousse. Having our driver ‘Tax’ and a 4WD (for dirt road forays off RN7) has been brilliant and it will be very hard to go back to public transport on future travels in the third world.

Along RN7, the architecture, market-atmosphere and waving kids of the highland villages has been wonderful to see, but our true purpose for travelling the road was to visit the string of national parks which were all thoroughly enjoyable. Our visits went like this:

Ranomafana NP: Ranomafana is probably the most famous, and certainly the best-named, of all national parks in Madagascar (though the Malagasy pronunciation is more like ‘Ranmafan’, which takes some of the fun out of it). Ranomafana is a rainforest that protects 12 species of lemur, and though we saw six of them on our day walk (including three we had not seen before: the golden bamboo lemur, the greater bamboo lemur and the Milne-Edwards sifaka), they were all high in the trees, perhaps as a result of the previous night’s rain. The highlight of our day walk was (for me anyway) an extraordinary leaf-tailed gecko, even better than the one we saw in Andasibe and truly one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. Not just the tail, but the entire thing, is virtually indistinguishable from a plain leaf and we could barely believe it even after it was pointed out to us. The other major highlight of Ranomafana was to see (baited) mouse lemurs at close range on the night walk. Mouse lemurs are tiny and, as you might expect, look rather like mice, and it’s pretty astonishing to see one and realise that this is the same animal as the Indri Indri.

Anja Park: This is not a national park but a private reserve, and we stopped by the day after visiting Ranomafana on our way down to Isalo. Aside from seeing, up close, the granite boulder scenery that dominates this section of RN7, here we enjoyed our first sightings of the ring-tailed lemur (of the animated film ‘Madagascar’ fame). We arrived in the middle of the day and they were mostly sleeping in the trees, but we were very lucky to see a new group just as we were about to leave, who were scurrying along the ground very close to us, many with three-week old babies in toe (including one with twins!). This was pretty fabulous and ranks alongside the Indri Indri viewing as our best lemur experience to date.

Isalo NP: Having left the rainforest and boulders behind, we continued southwest on RN7 to Isalo National Park, famed for its sandstone cliffs and escarpments that rise out of the plain. Here, as in the far west of the country, the heat is pretty unforgiving, and the daily showers of the highlands seemed a world away. Nevertheless, we came here to hike, and hike we did for eight hours on our first day in the park. The scenery was quite stunning and the heat was thankfully countered by a series of swimming holes, the most beautiful of which was undoubtedly the stunning ‘Piscine Naturelle’ (Natural Pool), a gorgeous, crystal clear oasis among the surrounding sandstone cliffs. The next day we visited the Lemur Canyon (curiously called the Monkey Canyon in French), which was also very striking and had surprisingly few visitors – we only saw two other tourists there after encountering 100 or more the previous day.

Andringitra NP: Heading back up RN7, we detoured for two hours off the highway on a pretty bad dirt road to Andringitra NP, another beautiful part of Madagascar ideal for hiking.  Wendy and I chose the Circuit Diavolana (Knelis and Patricia did a different, shorter route) and spent a glorious 5.5 hours walking among the park’s celebrated and imposing granite boulders, little streams and yellow and brown grasses. We didn’t see any other tourists on the entire trail and thoroughly enjoyed it – it was long enough and contained a somewhat strenuous climb at the beginning to give us a workout, but easy enough to allow us to enjoy the scenery.

Today, we kept heading north and visited a handicraft village (which I didn’t enjoy much) and a well-run orphanage that was filled with playful and smiling kids but was nevertheless quite an emotional experience. Now we find ourselves back in Antsirabe about a week earlier than we had planned, so we’re going to keep the car and move on to the eastern part of the country with the aim of reaching idyllic Ile Sainte Marie about four days from now.