Lemurs, beach time and long lost friends


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Africa » Madagascar
July 14th 2017
Published: July 14th 2017
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We made it to the town of Morondava, first stop Chez Maggie to meet Gary (owner/trip coordinator for Renote River Expeditions). We had a beverage, chatted and he helped us find accommodation in town. Not only did he help us arrange our river trip, while we were on the river he did some foot work in locating our bikes. Surprise, surprise, they arrived in Madagascar on July 3rd. So a few emails later, with the help of Gary and the owner of a hotel in Antananarivo, our bikes were on our way to us!
It would be a couple days, so we headed to Kirindy National Park hoping to see some wildlife. Oh man, we were so pleasantly surprised. We stayed in a bungalow right in the park and were greeted within an hour of arrival by 2 Fossa wandering around camp. Pretty crazy - the Fossa is Madagascar's largest predator. After an afternoon nap (I've been pretty sick for over a week now) we went for a night walk. We saw the oh so cute gray mouse lemur, some geckos and a red-tailed sportive lemur. I probably scared some of the other animals away with my chest cough and hacking, oops. Woke the next morning to the sounds of the animals - neighboring bungalows woke to my coughing... We went for a morning walk after breakfast and saw so many lemurs. At one point a troop of about 7 brown lemurs descended from the tree tops and literally surrounded us. They were definitely close enough to touch, but we resisted. We saw a few sifaka and birds as well. The brown lemurs had a cute little snort as a way of communicating but when a big hawk flew overhead the song changed. Really neat.

Upon arrival back in Morondava, we had lunch, rested a bit, and then we were reunited with our bicycles!!! They arrived, boxes a bit messed up and barely taped shut, but nothing missing. It seems they had a little holiday in Ireland. Andrew was also very excited to finally have a change of clothes - he has gotten pretty stinky. We were all set to leave on our bikes the morning of July 13th, but that didn't happen. Andrew and our new friend Jason wanted to eat a kilo of lobster for dinner. They did. Let's just say the lobster didn't really settle well. So we contemplated heading out on our bikes with Andrew's stomach in bad shape and my chest congestion, but decided to wait around one more day. That one more day turned into two - laying low in Morondava (not a bad place to be 'stuck'), trying to get well again.

Assuming dinner goes well (digests properly) tonight the next blog post should be a bike adventure!


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15th July 2017

Fossa!
Yes, yet another new animal on the list. I looked up details and Wow! would I love to see one walking through my campsite. Very cool memory, no doubt. Hope you are both feeling well now and off to more adventure via the bicycles.

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