more of madagascar

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Next morning we got up at 7 and packed everything then bought a cheap breakfast, 2 bagguettes and some happy cow cheese then met up with the other couple at the taxi-brousse station. They had already organized our t-b so we paid the man and got in, we had to wait of course till there were enough people for the driver to go. Surprisingly we left when there were still seats free. We made a few stops on the way to Ranomafana, including a town that must have been having some celebration or market day, the street was packed! We had to go really slowly so people could move around the car. Finally though we arrived at the national park entrance where there is a hotel called Rianala and we all got off there (its about 7km from the village called Ranomafana). We got our dorm beds organized then had some lunch (very undercooked steak that I had to send back for more cooking) then off to find a guide to do a trek. We found Radu, we bought our tickets to entrer the national park and decided on a 3 hour walk. Within 5 mins we saw our first lemurs, the golden bamboo lemurs, not surprisingly they were eating bamboo. The forest we were in is secondary forest and there is a lots of giant bamboo, apparently 2 species are native and 5 are not. There were 4 lemurs, all brown with long tails, they have very cute faces and sat in the tree tops or jumped from tree to tree to get the best bamboo. We did a bit of bushbashing to get the best view, then moved on. Within 20 minutes we saw our next group of lemurs, this time they were red-bellied lemurs, the male has the red belly and white rings round his eyes. They were sitting quite lazily in the trees, unfortunately the guides kept on moving branches and things to get them to look at us which felt very fake and must annoy the hell out of the lemurs. We left them after a little while and hiked some more along the trails, there are so many trails!! And most of them have very steep parts. The French couple we were sharing guides with were definitely fitter than us. We saw another type of lemur, the Milne´s Edward Sifaka, they were bigger and it was just a couple. The male sat in the crook of a branch and the female was eating fruit and dropping pieces from way up the top, then about 10 mins after we got there they swapped, and it was so fast, jumping up and down and then settling in. After seeing them we walked to the lookout which has a great view of the park and then headed back to the entrance. On the way out one of the spotters who was walking with us (they go out all day and find lemurs etc and call the guides to tell them where to go) saw a Satanic leaf-tailed gecko and made us try and find it on a tiny section of a tree and we couldn’t! They are so well camouflaged, eventually they pointed it out for us. It was 4.30 at this point. At 5.30 we organized with the guide and a driver to take us up the road to do some night time wildlife spotting.
Unfortunately the night tours in the park have been banned since there were too many people taking flash photos of the nocturnal lemurs etc. but you can still night spot on the road. First we waited for the mouse lemur to turn up, the smallest of all the lemurs and its nocturnal of course. The guide knew the territory of one of them and as if on queue they turned up, but not just one, we saw 4! Apparently it is unusual unless they are breeding. They moved on after 10 minutes and we wandered up the road with our torches to spot chameleons. We saw 5 different species of chameleon, side-striped chameleon, short-nosed chameleon (smallest tree chameleon in Madagascar), blue-legged chameleon, glows chameleon and shaunessis chameleon and 2 species of frog, boffis frad frog and boffis tree frog. After an hour and a half and many spotting of all the species we headed back to the car and were driven back to the hotel. We had dinner straight away and the French couple who had opted out of the night tour were already eating. Then we went and had a lovely hot shower before getting ready for bed. We were asleep by 8.30, all 4 of us shared one dorm room (10,000Ar a bed at this place). Unfortunately a bunch of American women appeared from nowhere at about 10pm and sat right outside on the verandah drinking beer and laughing! I went out to the loo and waved and they took no notice so after another half hour I went out and asked them politely to shut up, and they did which was nice.
We got up early, had brekky, grabbed a packed lunch and off the 4 of us went with our guide for a 6 hour hike to see more lemurs. It was an exhausting day!! But totally worth it, we saw red-fronted brown lemurs high in the trees, we attempted to take a photo through the binoculars, but that didn’t work. After a long time walking around, up and down a lot, we also saw a family of grey gentle bamboo lemurs, the smallest of bamboo lemurs and they had a baby with them from last november who was jumping around too. There were a few too many people watching them so closely so the mum got a bit upset and started calling and came to collect her baby which was closest to us, at that point I wanted to leave, but had no idea which path led where so just sat still and waited for the guide. We had a break at the lookout again before heading off in search of the broad-nosed bamboo lemur, but we didn’t get to see any. We did hear some black and white ruff lemurs in the distance though. For the remaining 2 hours we walked a lot!! We walked to a really nice waterfall and had another rest. Then headed back out to the entrance. On the way the guide spotted 2 more types of frogs, one that lives in the leaf litter and looks like a leaf, and another that is smaller and lives inside curled leaves that hang off branches. All in all a good day, though very tiring, and we didn’t even eat our packed lunch coz we walked all the time. So we got back to the hotel and at our cold chicken and chips, boiled eggs and fruit for lunch, then begged for another hot shower. We were packing just as the French couple (who ended up being from The Reunion Islands) came back to grab their stuff (they had lunch at a different restaurant) and told us there was a taxi-brousse waiting for us. We crammed everything into our bags and ran out to throw our bags on the roof and squish into the t-b, the 4 of us across 3 seats, unfortunately I had the gap so used Dario´s jacket as a cushion. We arrived back in Fianarantsoa around 5 and found the guys who sold us the tickets on the bus, to our surprise they were a different company to the French couple. For the following hour one guy hung around us the whole time trying to convince us that yes it’s a great idea to prebook our bus from Tana to Andasibe with them, they were trying to charge us 80,000Ar for a 3 hour trip when we only paid 18,000 for a 10 hour trip. We said no and eventually they gave up when we said we had not enough money (was kind of true though Dario snuck out to the bank to get more cash before we left). Then for some reason we got moved from the bus we were on into a more empty one and they demanded we pay for the last seat 10,000Ar so we could leave straight away or wait for many hours, eventually we gave in and they wrote on our ticket that we would get the refund in Tana… bad idea! Of course!!
When we finally got moving half an hour later, those guys had nicked off and Dario had to go and sort out with the manager of the company what the dealio was and apparently we were robbed! At least it was only $5 and no more. The ticket they sold us the day before was fake as well, but they just overcharged us slightly and booked the ticket in our name and took the extra, so at least we still had our seats. The rest of the people on the t-b thought it was hilarious and one who spoke English apologised and said something needs to be done, the managers need to take responsibility to get rid of the louts. Anyway, off we went. We tried to sleep and failed a lot, but got enough to survive in the uncomfy positions we were in. At about 4 in the morning we were both awake and the fog was so thick you could hardly see 10m and a truck nearly hit us which was scary! But apart from going off road for 50m to avoid the crash we were fine the rest of the trip, though our legs ached. As soon as we arrived we got our bags and ignored everyone trying to get us in their taxi, went to the rank and got a lovely cabbie in a 1965 citroen, very cute! He drove us to the eastern t-b station where we needed to get the t-b to Andasibe, about 3 hours from Tana. We found a company going to Toamasina on the coast which goes past Andasibe and bought tickets and just waited for 2.5 hours for it to fill up. The ride was nice, lots of green valleys once we were out of Tana but we both kept nodding asleep. The t-b dropped us at the t-junction 3km from Andasibe, but we only needed to go 400m to a hotel called Feon´ny Ala (which means song of the forest). We got the cheapest bungalow option, just a bed with shared bathroom for $12, it has an amazing view of the reserve next door and at around 7am the Indris (biggest of all lemurs) start calling right next door!
We had lunch, I ordered steak with spaghetti and fried egg… sounded good… it came out on an awesome sizzling hot plate and was delicious, especially since we had had a baguette each for dinner and only biscuits for brekky so we were ravenous! During lunch we heard the Indris in the forest, loud calls echoed out, so cool!! Since we were very tired we retired to the room and got ready for the following day. We had the earliest dinner possible, 6pm and went straight to bed and slept for 11 hours. Next morning we felt much better and got up at 6am to have an early breakfast, the continental brekky had this awesome kind of soft fried sweet bread with it! We then walked down the road towards the entrance to the national park, where we intended on going for a guided walk to the see the Indris!!! We stopped just short of the park at another forest called Mitsinjo which is on private land and did a guided walk there instead. It was cheaper and they also have Indris. It is a community project as well and they have tree nurseries to start replanting more forest. Most of the forest as well as the national park are secondary forest, so it has all been replanted at some point. Our guide, Christof took us straigh to one family (of 8) that live in Mitsinjo that was close by. There were 3 french people and their guide there already. The first Indri we saw was so close! A young 7 year old female who was doing her morning grooming. Her mother and father and baby sibling (no one can tell if it’s a boy or girl until it starts to sing, just like us boys have tenor voices and gals have higher pitches) were waiting in nearby trees. After a bit more grooming she jumped from tree to tree to the same one as her mum. We followed quietly but they seemed fine with our presence, this family lives close to the entrance to the park so apparently they are used to people which is bad and good I guess. The 3 french people lost interest but we kept following their movements for half an hour or so. The guides had left us to go and find other lemurs in the area and came back later for us. When they did, one older man who is the ticket checker who had hung around with us (the French people left) asked us to come with his, he grabbed some young leaves he had picked and the young female Indri came down to take them from him and sat on the tree eating, only a metre from us! Very cool experience, but we both weren’t sure what to think since these are supposed to be wild Indris.
We then went to see some sleeping Eastern woolly lemurs that are nocturnal and were sleeping all together in a bundle in a fern tree. We saw a few chameleons including a parson´s chameleon which get really big but we only saw a juvenile. We also saw some frogs, but not much else in the 3 hour walk. We then walked into town past the national park entrance and saw how much more expensive it was and were glad we did our walk, coz all I wanted to see were Indris and I did!! The town of Andasibe is very cute. We walked past the old station which is at the front of town and a cargo train that runs 3 times a week to the coast was just leaving. The old station building used to be a hotel and restaurant and people like Gerald Durrell and David Attenborough have stayed there when it was a hotel, so I took a photo of course! Most things were shut since it was a Sunday but I bought a lamba (type of sarong thing that the women sometimes wear) with a very odd picture of the countries of the world and lemurs on it for 3500Ar ($1.75!!!). We had intentionally gone to town to use Indri Tech, the only place with internet, but were told it was shut on Sundays. So we tried to find a Hotely which is like a little restaurant, very cheap and yummy but they were all shut, so we walked to Hotel Andasibe, an upmarket place with a restaurant and ate lunch there, they had pizza, and it was the cheapest option (it was expensive there) so we had one big one between us and it was ok. We also had… icecream! But it was more like ice with flavor.
We walked back to the hotel and on the way booked a night tour at the same forest for 6pm and also saw a family of the common brown lemurs eating on the side of the road in the trees and also crossing the road by going out on a long branch and then jumping onto the power poles on he other side! We did a bunch of things like picking up the laundry and updating photos etc then headed out for the night tour. Our new guide Fidundi (I think) took us through the forest again (if you do the night tour with the national park you can only go on the road and wildlife spot) and we saw a mouse lemur as it ran away from us, many types of frogs including an awesome looking red and green spotted tree frog. We ended up on the road for the last 20 minutes with numerous other groups walking along with torches. We saw chameleons and another very shy mouse lemur, we could only see the shine of its eyes. Then we returned to the hotel for dinner (that we had pre-ordered so it came quickly) then headed for bed.
Next morning we got up early again at 6 to go and have brekky and find out if the hotel car would take us to Vakona lodge like we had asked. They said yes and we had met an aussie from QLD who was going to Mantadia (part of the national park but further away) so we split the car ride. They dropped us at the lodge on the way. We walked to reception to buy our tickets. The attraction at this lodge is that they have tame lemurs living on islands in the middle of a man made lake and a reptile park open to the public. We paid our $6 each and went back to the lemur islands. The guide took us across in a canoe and had some bananas ready. We almost instantly had brown lemurs sitting on our shoulders eating bananas!! The guide told us that most of the animals here are rescues or orphans or they were born here hence they are so humanized. The islands don’t have enough foliage for food for all so they supplement their food each day. Other lemurs came to say hello including little grey bamboo lemurs, a black and white ruff lemur which jumped on our shoulders and arms too and a Diademed Sifaka… so beautiful and he was shy but still ate from our hands. All of them were very gentle and had such soft hands! Apparently on one of the islands there are aggressive brown lemurs because they were originally imprisoned in tiny cages in peoples homes in the area before being set free on the island, but they don’t like people.
After the lemur island we walked 15 minutes to the crocodile farm and reptile park. The crocs who live on the coast of Madagascar are apparently Nile Crocodiles… they were massive!! They lived in a large enclosure with a big lake and were fed once a week about 100kg of Zebu between them. There were a lot of them to. We walked on, across a few rope bridges that swung a lot to see tortoises from the south of Madagascar, a tree boa that I got to hold, smaller crocs, different birds (whisteling ducks, pourpour heron, egrets and ibis) and also some small falcons that really didn’t like their cage… it wasn’t tiny but they were clearly stressed. Then we saw the Fosa, they have 3. They are a cat-like animal that is nocturnal and predates on lemurs in the wild, The male is in one cage and the female and a baby have the reign of two cages connected by an underground tunnel. Concrete floors with some climbing beams and a soft place to lie down is all they had. Felt a bit sorry for them especially since apparently the adults were taken from the wild. Next door were some more giant crocs. Our guide told us that one day a stupid tourist threw a plastic bottle at a croc… and since the keeper knows the croc with eat it and get sick he jumped in to get the bottle but the croc bit his hand and threw him into the water still holding on! The stupid tourist then threw a rock at the head of the croc and it let go and he got away… the croc is the biggest one in the enclosure… very old.
We walked back to the entrance where there is a model of the local graphite plant (the mountains are full of it and it is mined)… we asked about the safety and they said that the people who work there get sick a lot… probably emphysema. There was also a museum of local artefacts, instruments, blow darts etc and a giant crocodile skin from a croc who was 6m long hanging on the wall.

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Photos

female blue-legged chameleon
only difference is the female does not have a horn on its nose, they both change colour

short-nosed chameleon
smallest type of tree chameleon

o,shaughnessys chameleon
i think thats how u spell it

Andasibe station
it used to be a hotel and Gerald Durrell and David Attenborough apparently stayed there!! cool!!!

upside down black and white ruff lemur
he does this a lot, very funny!