Madagascar 22 october - 4 november 2010

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Madagascar is like playing tennis with a lefthanded opponent. Everything looks as usual, till you realize something is completely different. We drive across a savannah, looking for animals. But there no are antilopes staring at us, wiggling their tails to warn eachother, no wildebeasts showing their horns in defense and even no guineafowls, running in front of the wheels of the car. Madagascar is completely different from the mainland. Even the trees are different. In stead of acacia's with their flattened canopy's we see majestic Bismarck palms and the strangest trees ever: Baobabs. But why is nature so lefthanded? We have two weeks to find it out during our trip thoughout an Island as big as the countries we travelled across in East Africa. In these two weeks we will bridge a distance of more than 4000 kilometers.

Antananarivo
In Le Karthala Guesthouse in Antananarivo, the capital, we make plans for our trip. We rent a car with driver for 12 days. The problem with the mainland is, that you never can leave your car because of the wild animals. Here in Madagascar there are no wild animals, but everyone warned us for the people. Madagascar is dangerous, they say. Our experiences are completely the contrary. What a nice people we will meet here. They are a wonderful mix of Africans and Asians. But we did not know that beforehand. So we rented a car with driver for safety reasons. And we did not regret it, because our driver Dani turned out to be the niciest person we met on our trip.

Andasibe
Andasibe lies about three hours driving from Antananarivo at the East coast. Most of the Island is deforestated to create agricultural grounds, but here is one of the last primary rainforests left on the Island. It is one most beautiful jungles we have seen, with plants we have never seen elsewehere, like the gigantic treeferns (Asplenium), which they call Birds'nests here, and the Pandanus vendanus, who look like enormous agaves. Inside the little ponds in between the Pandanus leaves we find little treefrogs. On the stems there are all kinds of orchids. And in between this lush jungle we see the proud of Madagascar: Lemurs. You cannot find these monkeylike animals anywhere else in the world. But here they are. There are even tens of species of them. Now we see the Indri's and the Sifaka's. Later we will see other species as well. While watching them jumping sometimes 15 meter horizontally from one tree to the other, we suddenly discover a chameleon. As far as I know it is the only animal which can move his eyes independently (apart from mr Bean). The chameleon reminds us that Madagascar has far more reptiles than mammals. The lemurs are the biggest mammals here.

Morondava
Via Antsirabe and Miandrivaro we arrive at Morondava, at the west coast of Madagascar. It takes us two days driving. The most beautiful thing of Madagascar is its ever changing landscape. Every time you are astonished how such landscapes can exist and most of all how they can shift every now and then to a landscape which is even more dramatic. In between the brownreddish foothills, covered with yellowish grasses you suddenly see the bright green of the rice paddies, as if it is something artificial, something from another continent.
A thunderstorm is looming and gives a special atmoshere. Finally the clouds break and torrential rains come down. We pass little villages with brownish loam huts, covered with straw roofs. People try to hide for the rain under the roofs, while we pass. It is as if we are watching a movie. The last 40 kilometers we drive over the worst road we have had thus far. Actually the road is an obstacle. Most cars drive along the shoulders of the road. The landscape is flat now. Like a savannah, but still surprising. Because fields with elegant palms arrive and in the last 25 kilometer from the coast the famous Baobabs appear. This is why we are here: to see the surrealistic Baobabs. Why they are so strange?

Baobabs look like they need the help of a psychologist. A kid who draws a tree without roots is not normal. It is not rooted in life, psychologists point out. It looks like Baobabs do not have roots at all. The stem looks like a bottle of beer. Forget the stem and you have a more or less normal tree. It cost them about 600 years to produce such a stem. So it must be good for something, we guess. Later we find out that they store water in their stems (not beer). Together with their small leaves, they are perfectly adapted to hot and dry circumstances. And indeed Morondava is extremely hot, more than 35 centigrades. We found some Baobabfruits on the market. Mireille and Louise from our hotel Eden Rocks in Morondava teached us how to make a drink out of them. It is delicious. Almost holy.

Ranomafana
The jungle in Ranomafana is even more beautiful than in Andasibe. It took us two days driving via Antsirabe and Ambositra to come here. Ambositra is a nice city, the capital of handicraft, specially woodcarving.
In the woods of Ranomafana we saw the treeferns again, the Pandanus, but also new orchids and a kind of Christmas Rose. They call it Madagascar plant here, because the leafs looks like the map of Madagascar. We made a walk of five hours through the parc. New lemurs we saw. The most famous of them the Golden Bamboo Lemur, a species discovered only in 1986 by Patricia Wright.

Parc National de l' Isalo
It is a long drive from Ranomafana. In Ambalavao we visited the Fabrique de Papier Antaimoro. The Antemairo paper seems to be famous, but we had never heard of it. It is made of the Havo shrub and imprinted with flowers from Indonesia. The landscape still changes and finally we drive over endless grassy plains. No one lives here in this harsh climate. Finally we stop in a village called Ranohira. Of all places what to do here? We are surprised to see beautiful hotels and restaurants. Something must go on here. We find it out next day when we make a whole day walk with our excellent guide Coco ([e-mail]).
Passing the rice paddies of the Bara we see strange rock formation in front of us. The Bara are the local people.
'Boys has to steal a Zebu to become an adult', tells Coco.
'And what when the police catch them?', we ask.
'Then they go to jail. It is great honour for the Bara's.'
He points to a spot in the rocks. 'Do you see the coffin there? That is a temporary grave. Some months later they will take the corpse out and bring the bones to their village. It is a big ceremony, when they wash the bones. Then they will bury the corpse in a permanent grave, higher in the mountains.' He points to a vertical cliff high in the mountains. With our binoculars we see a coffin in a cleft.
'How it is possible they can put a coffin on such a place?', we ask.
'It is not easy', says Coco, 'sometimes they fall down and die'.
We enter one of the gorges. It is full of clean water and a lush forest surrounds us with plenty of beautiful ferns and palms.
When we go up in the mountains the landscape changes completely. It is extremely hot and dry and we see the most wonderful plants. Like the Salotso. Isalo is called after this shrub. Its leaves are like grass to prevent evaporation. And the poisonous Menabea venenata. It was used to kill criminals, who were sentenced to death. On the branches we find an enormous grasshopper with pink wings. The abdomen has yellow and black bands, like a wasp. 'He himself is poisonous, because he eats the leaves', tells Coco. 'That is why chameleons do not eat them.' On another shrub we find walking sticks. And under the stones we find little scorpions. The smaller a scorpion, the more poisonous it is.
We see the Tapia (Vapaco boger) whose leaves feed the silkworm. In Morondava they use the worm for wonderful silk shawls.
All plants are fully adapted to extremely dry and hot circumstances. But the most wonderful of them is the Pachypodium gracilis. Like the Baobab it stores water in its stem. It roots in the sandstone rocks with temperatures over 50 degrees Celsius, while the Baobab roots in sand. It looks like a Baobob with its swollen stem, but it has nothing to do with it and it is far smaller. Though just a small plant they reach an age of 600 years.
The nature is so special here that we almost forget that we ourselves are dried out. At the end of the walk we find a swimming pool in between the rocks with a beautiful setting of palms and waterfalls. We hardly can believe it and we duck in the fresh water.
When we see the dramatic and mysterious landscape with sunset we realize how special it is. Once Gondwana splitted in Africa, South America, Australia and Antarctica. Because of the same tectonic movement Madagascar (and India) drifted 165 million years away from Africa. Like an Arc of Noah it took the then existing animals with it. It was in the era of the Dinosaurs. Mammalians existed, but were small. It explains why we do not see antilopes here, no warthogs and no waterbucks, but lemurs. It explains the high amount of endemics and possibly the majority of reptiles. It explains the lefthanded appearance of the Island. Actually we are eyewitnesses of the very process. Because tectonic movements tears the Island apart it caused a depression, a pit in the center of the Island. The pit filled with layers of sand of all colours. Sand became sandstone and upheaveled because of an upward pressure. Erosion did the rest. The result is a gorgeous and amazing landscape, we have never seen before.

Toliara
Toliara is our last destination here in Madagascar. Along the road boys hold sticks, like fishermen do. There is something on the stick. When we pass we see what it is. They offer chameleons. Why to buy a chameleon? 'You can eat them?', we ask to Dani. He grins. 'No, no, just a pet.'
From Toliara we would like to go to the dunes of Anakao, to find the rests of egg shells of the elephantbird (Aepyornis), who lived on Madagascar up to 300 years ago. It has been the biggest bird ever with an height of over 3 meter. The circumference of the eggs is about 1 meter and the length is about 34 cm. It was the biggest bird ever. But... Anakao can only be reached by sea and there is a strong wind at the moment, so there is no boat going there. So we stay in Toliara and take some rest.

Back in Antananarivo
It took us two full days driving to come back in Antananarivo. We are extremely tired and we also have some stomach problems. From our hotelroom (Le Karthala) we look out over the city. It looks like Paris. But it is not Paris. It is Antananarivo. One side it looks familiar with the French style buildings, the 2cv's and renault 4 taxis. But it is different. Lefthanded. The purple Jacalanda's are still blossoming. It is a beautiful sight.
Dani, our driver has done a wonderful job. He brought us all over the Island. Together with his wife Anja and his son Brian he says us goodbuy at the airport. We really need a rest now. Hopefully we find it in South Africa, in Cape town.

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Comments

[Vlado]

Velmi sa mi to paci a hlavne Andre a jeho styl pisania a vedomosti,ktore ma. Horsie je to pre mna s prekladom,lebo prekladac vsetko neprelozi,takze vela veci si domyslam...Ale je to super. Fotografie su nadherne a tesi ma ze nemate ziadne problemy.