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Eastern Madagascar: Lemurs, Islands and Lemur Islands

Monday, September 27th, 2010

With the southern highlands ‘completed’ earlier than expected thanks to us having the luxury of a private vehicle, we decided to head to eastern Madagascar for our final days in this fabulous country.

Since Knelis and Patricia had not been to Andasibe, we stopped there for two nights, and even though Wendy and I had been there before, we still found some interesting things to do. The highlight was undoubtedly the ‘Ile des Lémuriens’, a small, private island owned by Andasibe’s most luxurious hotel, the Vakôna Lodge. Lemurs previously kept as pets have been relocated to the island, where they are essentially captive (since lemurs can’t swim) but there isn’t a cage in sight and they bound from tree to tree just as they would in the wild. They are incredibly tame these days – apparently it took four years for them to stop being scared of human visitors – and the brown lemurs playfully jumped on our shoulders, and took a particular liking to Wendy just as Indonesian orang-utans did many years ago. We also saw two species here that we hadn’t seen before: the black-and-white ruffed lemur, with a face like a dog; and the small grey bamboo lemur that completes our ‘set’ of the four types of bamboo lemurs. But most handsome of all was the yellow diademed sifaka, and even though we saw this species in the wild on our first trip to Andasibe, it was fabulous to see this one so close and so animated.

The second thing we chose to do at Andasibe was ‘Mad Arbe’, in which, using a harness and a rope ladder, you climb to the top of a 20-metre high tree in the Mitsinjo reserve and look out over the jungle canopy below you. The climb up was harder than we’d anticipated, and my complete lack of upper body strength meant my shoulders and forearms hurt for days afterwards, but the view from the comfort of a hammock tied to the tree-top, and the beautiful calls of nearby troupes of Indri Indri, made it worth the effort.

Continuing east to the coast, we stopped at Parc Ivoloina, a research/tourist site containing five species of free-ranging lemurs and numerous more caged ones. Among the free-ranging lemurs, we saw the crowned lemur at very close range and the white-fronted brown lemur performing enormous leaps at a distance, thus completing our lemur species count – for this trip anyway – at 14 wild species and four more contained but free-ranging ones.

Our final stop, and the purpose of this eastern swing, was Ile Sainte Marie, an idyllic, elongated island in the Indian Ocean, an hour by speed boat from the mainland. Once we arrived, we headed for the southern end of the island and took a wonderful trip in a dugout canoe to an even smaller island called Ile aux Nattes, where we celebrated our new-found mid-range status by lazing in a lovely bungalow and eating lots of seafood while gazing out over the crystal clear waters and palm-fringed coast of the tiny island. Plus, there were some free-ranging black-and-white ruffed lemurs at our resort to complete the Madagascar version of an island getaway.

It is perhaps ironic that our last days as vagabond travellers were spent at the beach, which we’ve essentially avoided for the past eight years, but after two months in East Africa and one in Madagascar, we figured we deserved it, and it was certainly a nice way to finish the trip.

We’re now back in the capital Tana, from where we fly back to Nairobi tomorrow for a couple of days before returning to Geneva.

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.

Western Madagascar by dug-out canoe and zebu-cart

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Madagascar is renowned for its dreadful roads and packed-like-sardines public transport, and with this in mind we knew that getting to the western part of the country to see the famed ‘tsingy’ would be the most challenging part ... [Continue reading this entry]

Introduction to Madagascar: Lemurs and plenty more

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Our flight from Nairobi dumped us in the Malagasy capital Antananarivo (hereafter ‘Tana’) at 2am, and after a night in a hotel near the airport and a good sleep in, we were ready to begin the last stage ... [Continue reading this entry]