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To get to the tiny lemur island, Erica and I had to sit in a small canoe. The journey took all of five seconds. I wondered why the lodge hadn’t built a bridge, but the answer was obvious: with a bridge, the lemurs could all escape the island with ease. Instead, they were captive on a lush tropical island, where all their needs were met and people like me could see them up close.
Erica was out of the canoe first, her mobile phone’s camera pointing to huddle of lemurs jumping in the nearby grass. Lemurs were everywhere, and all of them were friendly. One sauntered up to us, wanting a piece of fruit from our guide. I stroked its thick fur. It felt like a cat. Another jumped on my shoulder, sitting there while the guide took a photo.
“These are common brown lemur,” the thin guide told us. He had a collection of bananas in his hand. “And that one is a black and white lemur. The newcomer was a black and white cutie, who seemed to want to fight the smaller brown ones. It reared up on its hind legs and screeched at a brown one.
The little cousin scarpered. Erica laughed and so did I. The lemur then stretched back into the grass, lying down flat on its back. The white tufts on the side of its head made it look like a clown,
Lemur Island was even smaller that I’d first thought and, in less than thirty seconds, we had walked to the other side. Beyond the water was more jungle, busy with lemurs leaping, hanging upside down and generally playing for tourists with cameras. It was better than I hoped it would be.
Night Walk That evening, Andry organised a night walk for me. As I trainee guide, Erica came along too. Instead of being a wander through a jungle, as I’d expected (I’d worn long trousers especially for this) it was a walk along a quiet stretch of road bereft of artificial light. Because of this, the stars were mesmerising. I could not recall a time in my life when I had seen so many dots of astral light. I gazed them: dazzling group of white sparkles, clustered nebula and possibly even galaxies. As I did so, the night was filled with the calls of a thousand tree
frogs and the powerful aroma of the unseen blooms around.
Leading the night walk was a local guide called Edward. He had a torch strapped to his forehead, and in one hand, he carried another more powerful one. He was forty-five and had worked most of his adult life as an Andisibe guide. “I studied botany at university.” He told us as we traipsed along the road. “And I am an expert in trees and plants; even ferns. I can recognise every species of plant indigenous to Madagascar.”
He was also an expert at lemur spotting. By skimming his head torch around the trees that surrounded both sides of the road, he told me he was searching out the telltale refection of a lemur’s eyes. A few metres further, he stopped.
“Woolly lemur,” he said, shining his hand torch up in a patch of blackness. How he’d noticed the eyes was beyond me, but with the more powerful beam, I could indeed see a pair of orange dots in the blackness. They were like cats’ eyes in the trees.
I asked how he could tell it was a woolly lemur.
“Big eyes. Woolly lemurs have
the biggest eyes.”
A few hundred yards further and he spotted another pair of eyes. The two distant, but eerily bright, eyes looked the same as the others had, but Edward said they belonged to a common brown lemur.
“Different colour,” he explained.
Edward possessed superhuman eyes, that much was clear. And later, even though his head light barely skipped over the surface of some nearby bushes, he saw a chameleon. When it got a face full of light from the hand torch, it looked annoyed and its bulbous eyes swivelled in consternation. But it didn’t move an inch. It just wanted to be left alone.
“Are there any dangerous animals in Madagascar?” I asked.
“Only crocodiles over in the west. And some scorpions that can sting a little, but that’s it.”
“No snakes or spiders?”
“We have many snakes and spiders, but none that are poisonous.”
On the way back to meet Andry, Edward found a tree frog. The tiny green amphibian was sitting on a leaf trumpeting out a call for a mate. Its chest bulged and then retracted. The beam of light shining its way didn’t bother it one
little bit. I took a photo, the only that turned out okay on the walk. When we retraced our steps back to the start of the road, I thanked Edward for showing me the creatures of the night. Erica thanked him too.
Andasibe National Park The next morning, I was up early for my three-hour walk inside Andasibe National Park. It was a twenty-minute driver away from the Vakona Lodge. Edward was my guide again and, once more, Erica came with us.
The forest walk took is along a well-trodden path that cut through the rainforest. There were other tourists in the park with us, all under the expert care of their guides. Each one knew how to make lemur sounds and they worked in unison to entice them down. If one guide found a lemur, he would call the others so that there could be as many as twenty people huddled underneath the canopy. This is where I experienced something uncomfortable and quite unexpected. It was because of Erica, though not her fault by any means.
She’s not my wife! It was the simple fact that she was dressed in Western clothes, was young
and pretty, and was taking photos along with the rest of us. With her Indonesian features, everyone assumed she was my wife, especially with the wedding ring on my finger. I caught the disapproving glance from one Western woman in her forties. Her eyes flicked from Erica to me, and she shook her head. And there was nothing I could do except take her judgement: I was a typical middle-aged letch with a young Asian woman on my arm.
Now of course, this could have been in my head, but if I had been one of them and noticed the Western man in his forties with the cute girl half his age, I’d have assumed the same thing. It was so off-putting that it almost spoiled the fun of the lemurs. But there was one positive thing: at least I knew I could never have a Thai bride: I simply could not take the looks from other people.
The guide, Erica and I, moved off by ourselves, and I calmed down. Then there was the call from another guide to our left, and we rushed over to join the throng, again. Once more, I caught the looks of
the assembled Western tourists and, so while everyone began to coo underneath a family of three ginger lemurs, I tried to distance myself from Erica, moving into a clearing a bit further away. Like a dutiful South Asian bride, she followed me through the foliage, shadowing my every move. Resigned to my date, I manoeuvred past three young men from Sweden, who eyed Erica up and then glanced over at me. I felt like shouting through the forest that Erica was not my wife and was a trainee guide. But what would be the point?
Famous in ornithological circles We left the group and headed off by ourselves, again. As we passed through a deep and dark thicket, I decided to test Edward on his plant identification skills. I pointed at a green plant that looked like all the others around it.
“That is a Bird’s Best Fern. The Latin name is Asplenium Nidus.”
I pointed at a small plant with a profusion of bright blue berries. It looked quite beautiful.
Edwards gave me the names, neither of which I caught, but added something interesting. “It is related to coffee plant.”
Edward was also
an astute birdwatcher. I lost count of the times he pointed at a distant branch and identified the tiny shape fluttering around the leaves. One I did see, the paradise flycatcher. It was a long-tailed bird with a blue head and vivid red body. Edward told us he was relatively famous in Malagasy ornithological circles. He had once discovered a new species of Indonesian finch while out on a trek in the northern part of the country. “I was very proud,” he told us, puffing out his chest like a tree frog. “But that was long time ago now.”
Three hours later, the walk was over and, despite the looks I’d received from certain people, I had enjoyed myself. We had seen the largest species of lemur, the Indri (a black and white creature that could make a horrific screeching sound if it wanted to), and had rushed through rainforest trails and ambled along tropical rivers. I thanked Edward for showing it all to us and gave him a large tip to supplement his salary as an official guide.
Back to Tana Now we had seen the national park, it was time for the long ride back
to Tana. By the time we got there, night was almost upon us. The soldiers had gone but the traffic was just as bad.
Stuck in traffic, I asked Andry about corruption in his country.
“It is bad. People have to pay bribes all the time, especially to the police and government officials. What Madagascar needs is a strong president who is prepared to say no. During the elections, they promise they will put an end to corruption, but when they get into power, they do not change a thing. But it is hard for them. Everyone underneath, from the office boy to the vice-president is taking their cut, and if a president wants to stop it, they will have a fight on their hands.”
“What about people who lose their jobs?” I asked. “Does the government look after them?”
Andry shook his head. “They are on their own. Take my parents. They both lived in a nice suburb of Tana, raising my two sisters and me, sending us to school to get a good education. My father worked in a printing press for many years. Then it burned down and he lost his job. Luckily,
he found a job in the old president’s milk factory. But then, during the riots of 2009, the factory burned down and my father didn’t have a job anymore. Luckily, we were all grown up, so he and my mother left Tana. They live in the countryside where they do not need money anymore. They grow their own food and live a simple life.”
“Are they happy?”
“That is a good question. They are happy because they are safe and their children are doing well, but I know my father finds it hard to accept that he was a man of means in the city, and is now a simple farmer.”
By the time Andry and Erica dropped me off at the hotel near the airport, it was pitch black. I thanked them both, especially Andry. He had been a great guide: friendly, open and full of good advice. Erica too deserved thanks. She had helped me to get some good photos of lemurs by tempting them with fruit in her hand. Plus it was good to share the experience of the lemurs with someone, even if she was only my pretend wife.
I retired to
my room weary but fulfilled. Madagascar had promised much but delivered more.
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taracloud
Tara Cloud
I love lemurs!
How fantastic that you visited a lemur island and had a great guide to point out the lemurs and birds that we mere mortals could never spot. So glad that Madagascar exceeded your expectations--it's the most we travelers can hope for.