a tale about lemurs and chameleons

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I met Reza few years ago on my stop to Jordan during my "career break" backpacking adventures, we get along very well and we decided to meet up and travel together again. Meeting up in Paris and spending a few days there I had the chance to see the first weekend action at the French open. When it was time to go I was a bit sad, leaving the modern comforts of Paris, I wonder what awaits us in Madagascar. We arrived early at CDG and already long queues formed at the Air Austral counter, mostly French speaking people. The flight was full and so crowded, took ages to board the plane. This is my first time flying with them and though the plane seem a bit worn out, service was good. We loved the salmon salad side dish for dinner, yum. Movies were aplenty too, it was about a 10 hour trip and arriving in St.Denis, Reunion for a layover,we were both tired. The airport is small but clean and modern looking. There is only one monitor for flight departures and did not post our gate number til the last minute, and the announcements were all in French, oh also in English but still sounds French to us!

It took maybe 2 hours and we arrived in Antananarivo, Tana for short, capital of Madagascar. Immigration was a mess, since we are staying less than 30 days, no visa needed but we have to queue at a different line, it was confusing, this lady takes our passports and the entry form you need to fill out and wants us to write something at the back of the form, I think our home address,and departure date, whatever else we complied, you have to wait on the other side of the counter while 6 people in the booth work all the paperwork red tape, then all you get is a messy red ink based stamp in your passport that you can't even understand. Gather the backpack at the carousel, off to customs which was a breeze and out to the arrivals hall full of taxi drivers wanting your business, we booked a pick up from our hostel, Tana-Jacaranda to lessen the blow of the culture shock, the driver has my name on a piece of paper, he took us to the car and off we went but not until we got money from the ATM machine, driving in what seems like a poor neighborhood/part of the city, then all of a sudden,you see a huge fenced complex, the US embassy, surrounded by rice fields on the other side of the road. It was a Monday, bit of traffic from time to time, it took about an hour to get to the city center, it's nice and cool,as it is winter here, with temps akin to early fall, but a tad bit gloomy, much like Paris weather when we left it.

The hostel is up on a hill, they are very friendly, all smiles, Jeanine the receptionist checked us in and we paid 37,000 ariary or roughly $17 for the taxi ride. We got a room on the top floor, the building is narrow and different levels so am not sure at what floor we are in, there is a veranda overlooking the city, which was nice, it was cold and no heater but it's ok, they have hot showers at least. We settled in, had a shower and decided to check out the town a bit. Headed down and climbing up the hill it started to drizzle, we passsed a Palace looking place, then headed down sets of stairs and then more stairs! It is quite interesting as it adds different layers to the city. Lots of vendors selling fresh fruits, like bananas, pineapple, soursop, mandarin oranges, huge prawns! our mouths watered but we decided to wait till we get to the coast. The main purpose of the walk is to find food which was easier said than done.

I thought I was a hardened traveller but maybe now lacks practice, there were plenty of street food but we just could not get the courage to try it, it seems not clean and unappealing to us, we feel uneasy, and finding a decent restaurant was hard, we went to the main street with banks, and boulangerie and lots of vendors, we finally found one nice eatery and sat down for some good eats and THB, their beer here, which I should say takes a while to get used to. They have zebu meat, a kind of cattle and Reza tried it, he said it was good. Now back to the hostel, we chilled out and rested and not even bothered to go out, we ordered food in for the night at the hostel, as they also have a kitchen. Our room was simple but adequate, we slept early as we have to leave the next day to begin our adventures.

We ordered breakfast of their omelette which was good, and while having our meal, we met Noro the kindly hostel owner, she is of Asian extraction, as it is common here in Madagascar, as some of their ancestors came from Indonesia. Tahina, our driver picked us up to head for Andasibe. Let me backtrack for a moment, we have only 12 days to see Madagascar and I have read transport can be a pain, literally on those brousse taxis that are common here to go from town to town, and it's such a big country, we have to pick the area we want to go, then I found Remote River Expeditions, owned by an American guy named Gary Lemmer, from the get go, of exchanging emails and inquiries he had always been very helpful and their hotel in Morondava, from the photos I have seen is what I am looking for to relax at the end of my holidays. So he set up and itinerary for us and now it shall commence.

Tahina was a bit shy, soft spoken and quiet, he took us out of town towards Andasibe-Mantadia National Park, a 155 square kilometre protected area consisting principally of primary growth forest in Alaotra-Mangoro Region in eastern Madagascar. This rainforest is habitiat to a vast species biodiversity, including many endemic rare species and endangered species including 11 lemur species, and how nice it would be to see them in their natural habitat. Tahina said to get there we have to go through a paved road built by the Japanese because the old roads were bad and takes them a long time to transport materials to finish some projects they have here years ago. Anyway but first up he took us to some forest/farm park, a bit tacky it's like a zoo for chameleons mostly. There was a guide that walked us around the area, it was quite good an introduction of what kind of reptiles we might see here in the wild, the chameleons are cool and the lizards too, they blend in to their environment quite well, we had fun checking them out, there's hardly any tourist,we can take our time.

From there we drove to our accomodation in Andasibe, Feony Ala, a nice place with thatched roofed bungalows, ours was cool it has an attic with a bed and that is where I slept, it is cold and rainy when we arrived, we had a good lunch of grilled tilapia fish. We rested a bit then Tahina scheduled us for an afternoon walk at Vakona lodge where they have this small island, man made lagoon sanctuary for abandoned and former pet lemurs.Obviously they are tame as they feed them to get closer, but also a great opportunity for us to take a good close look at them, not exactly authentic wild habitat but nevertheless fun and entertaining, they go crazy looking for bananas, jumping on our heads and shoulders! At least they did not bite, they follow us wherever we go, they are quite cute, there's the indri, bamboo lemur, ring tailed, cifakas etc..The guide told us to hop on a canoe, but only to cross to the other side, a 5 second ride! then we walked to meet the lemurs from there, later we took the canoe for a spin around the lagoon and went to an island where the ring tailed lemurs were over eager to get bananas from the guide, and I took tons of photos. When we finished we left and gave the guide a ride back to his village on the way to our hotel. It seems not a busy time for them, all the guides were just sitting around waiting for tourists.

Later in the eve, Tahina arranged for us to have a night walk, hopefully it does not rain. We ordered our dinner ahead of time then our guide came with a torch and we walked the road just outside the hotel and looked for nocturnals. He makes this funny sounds hoping to get the lemurs close to us, damn he is good, he sees lemurs from a long distance, the torch makes their eyes shine but from far away he is able to identify the species, I think we saw a mouse lemur of sort, and a few chameleons, but overall it is rather boring, we have another forest walk in the morning, in the meantime we had dinner and for night cap tried the restaurant made lychee rhum, this one is my favorite. Slept well despite the cold night and woke up to a bright sunny day.

The next morning, Tahina brought us to the park entrance to do our day hike, we decided to do the 4 hour hike, suddenly we have a new guide, some disagreement ensued, our new guide Nestor claimed Gary phoned him to be our guide and he was not around last night because Tahina does not have his number, we felt bad for our night guide we haven't tip him yet expecting he would join us today, but anyway we proceeded, Nestor seems ok, good at spotting wildlife which was scarce, but somehow we manage to see some cifakas and other types of lemurs, we walked around the forest floor following groups forage in the forest, a group of indris were still sleeping atop the trees and we have to wait for them to wake up but once they did they were a treat to watch as they feed, but watch out, don't get under them or you get shit on, literally! The highlight were the brown/white cifakas, lots of them and I had the opportunity to snap a few photos while chasing them, not easy. Nestor guides bird watchers too, and for some reason he would not give up on this blue bird we saw, we keep chasing it even if we told him we are not too keen on it! A number of chameleons were also in sight, the little one mostly. Happy with our excursion later, we bid Nestor goodbye, had a quick lunch at the hotel and then we left and drove back to Tana to head out west to Antsirabe,slowlty heading west.

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Photos

Andasibe
Nile croc

Peireyras Farm
bull frog

Peireyras Farm
moths

Comments

[dozenmada]

great pictures...
Crazy wildlife. Most are endemic?

[D MJ Binkley]

Madagascar
Good to see you blogging and traveling again. Sounds like a great place to explore. Wonderful photos.

[Dancing Dave]

SENSATIONAL PICS
Often have my eye on Madagasgar as a destination. From your pics it looks a magical wildlife locale.