Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Stanley goes to Washington


It's official: Stanley will find a home at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington DC. Too bad I will miss the introduction party next week, since its my second day of real work... Anyway, a must see next time your in the area!

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Back to Tana - Andasibe


We headed back to Antananarivo on Friday and met up with Coco who took us to Andasibe. This time, we stayed the night at the Vakona Forest lodge, a very nice bungalow-style accomodation (second in our "best of" list best after Anakao Club Resort). We went on a nocturnal walk to observe some microcebus, and we even found one that stuck with us for the pictures. The next morning, we went into the reserve to try to find some Indris. Indris mark their territory by "singing" at the crack of dawn. They make these spooky supernatural sounds (part car alarm,
part scoobidoo-ghost) that carry for miles through the jungle. Amazing. We saw two families of Indris, the pictures are not great because it was raining a lot. Back at the hotel, we had a surprise waiting for us: our transfer back to Tana had been "postponed". All in all a routine day trip in Madagascar: hitch a ride with a family from La Reunion Island, 6 people + luggage in a Peugeot 309 (for car illiterates that's the size of a Corolla), run out of gas in the countryside, hitch a ride to the closest gas station (1-hour) to fill our waterbottles with gasoline and get going again. 5 hours for the 80 mile trip, not bad really. Last goodbyes to Balsama, Coco and the crew in Tana, and off we are. We'll be back.

Anakao


The transfer to Anakao was unremarkable: we took the same tiny De Haviland plane that took us to Morondava and had a mysterious layover in the middle of nowhere (see pix) en route to Tulear (I suspect the pilot had to use the boys room). In lieu of a romantic cruise from Tulear to Anakao, we had a slight logistics change that made us take a Taxi-Brousse for half the way, followed by a tiny fishing boat that stopped at every fishing village on the way to our hotel... very exotic. Five hours after landing in Tulear, we finally disembarked at the Anakao Club Resort. A rare find, our hotel was the first bit of real luxury we experienced on the big Island. Nice. We did nothing but relax and went snorkeling/bird watching on Nosy Ve (a tiny Island off the coast - a 30 minute pirogue ride). Anakao Club Resort is a brand new property held by an Italian perfectionist from the Val D'Aoste. Although it was not mentioned in any of our guidebooks, we highly recommend it for its exceptional management and impeccable facilities (currently 6 bungalows).

On the road again


The ride back from the Tsingys was our first true bush adventure. We had been cruising along on the "road" for about an two hours when our right back wheel fell off (I mean this litterally). The drive shaft gears had fatigued to the point it broke off and fell out. After stepping out and assessing the damage under the scorching midday sun, our driver confidently estimated he would need an hour for the repair. I know nothing about bush mechanics but this sounded rather optimistic so we looked for a contingency plan. We hitched a ride with a group of swiss people from Zurich to the next town, a crammed 1-hour drive (8 people + luggage in a mid size SUV). While we were having lunch there our guide arrived in another vehicle (a Toyota land cruiser seating 10...). He announced that the repair hadn't gone as smoothly as expected, and proposed his "solution": joining the group of 10 people in the land cruiser (between 4 and 5 westerners per row of back seats) for the second half of the trip. I gladly refused this unattractive option, and once again used my newly developed Malagasy negociation technique which consits of repeatedly stating exactly what you want (in our case our own car) with complete disregard for the other party's argument. A crucial point of this technique is to carefully listen to your opponents explanation, making it clear that you understand his argument and by facial expression giving him the impression he convinced you of his position. At that point, when his hopes are high he won the argument and stops talking, you calmly repeat what you want, making for a disarmingly absurd discussion that will quickly discourage the person you are facing. Works every time... We got our own car, the drive back to Morondava was a (bumpy) breeze, and after a night in a Bungalow on the beach we took off for Tulear en route to Anakao.

Tsingy de Bemaraha - size matters


The Tsingys are a UNESCO world heritage site (the only one in Madagascar), attracting more and more visitors each year. To get there you need to brave 130 miles (200km) of "piste" a loosely defined dirt road. The drive from Morondava can take up to 10 hours, so it's rather rough on sensitive stomacs. There are also two river crossings (the "ferry" only takes you accross twice a day, so you better not miss it, as we found out...). There is only one really nice hotel at the entrance of the park called the "Relais des Tsingy". The bungalows are rustic, but have water and electricity for 4 hours a day (a huge luxury) and are in a beautiful setting on top of a hill. We stayed three nigths and visited both the Petits Tsingy and the Grand Tsingy. The extra day was probably not necessary, as the larger Grand Tsingy are pretty much a bigger, more impressive version of the Petits Tsingys. However, given the 10 hour drive, staying the extra day is probably the more reasonable thing to do. Update to our critter count: we saw the elusive jumping rat, another check in our book.

Kirindy


Maureen arrived on Friday and we took off the same day for Morondava. We flew in the smallest Air Madagascar plane so far, an ancient prop with 15 or so foldable seats, fixed landing gear and an analog radio. In Morondava we met up with Florence, a friend from college who had spent 7 month in Madland to work on a small tv broadcasting project. She gave us the quick tour of the town feeling somewhat nostalgic as it she was leaving the same day for home (via Tana by Taxi brousse). After lunch we took the road to Kirindy, a forest preserve 30 miles (50km) north of Morondava. When I say "road" I don't want to mislead you into thinking of something paved (hah!), or even remotely straight or even. It took us 2 hours to drive the 30 miles, so this should give you some indication of the shape of the road. On the way to Kirindy we passed through the "avenue of the Baobabs", you can't get enough of these strange trees. In Kirindy Maureen got her first glimpse at Malagasy accomodations, as well as a bunch of lemurs. We did a night tour and the day tour, saw some snakes, some chameleons, the local (tiny) version of a puma a bunch of nocturnal and diurnal lemurs as well as the relatively rare mouse lemur (as you would have guessed, it's a lemur the size of a mouse - the smallest primate on earth). Early start Saturday morning headed furhter north to the Tsingys.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

Got Lemurs


Yesterday we took a quick day trip to Andasibe, a rain forest located about 145km from Antananarivo (~3 hour drive). The big attraction of this park is its Indris, the largest lemurs of Madagascar. The forest in Andasibe is much denser and wetter than in Berenty and it felt much more like a jungle, complete with leeches and other bugs. We walked around in a slight rain for an hour before we spotted our first group. Indris are very impressive animals, moving around by making huge leaps from tree to tree. Most of the time they don't even land but merely bounce off one tree trunk to the other in game of giant pinball in the forest's canopy (I realize this probably only makes sense if you saw it). Here are a bunch of pictures. On our way back, we stopped at a private collection of critters (from French entomologist Peyrerasse - spelling might be off - its 80 km from tana) where we saw some amazing chameleons as well as more lemurs. The collection was worth the stop, and its no detour on your way back to Tana. Here is a video of a brown lemur eating a banana up close, and a chameleon medley, enjoy!

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Baobabs: check - Lemurs: check


We spent the weekend at Fort-Dauphin, in the far south of the Island. The place itself is a dump. The very few decent buildings are occupied by QMM, a mining company subsidiary of Rio Tinto, and there are really no good accomodations (we stayed at top-of-the-line but decaying "Le Dauphin") and surprisingly prices are the same as in Tana. Locals blame inflation on the mining guys. But people come here for another reason: the town is located in a stunningly beautiful setting - a peninsula with opposing half moon beaches and mountains only miles away from the shores. Botany enthousiasts have access to all three types of primary forest (dry/transition/wet) within an hour drive. On Saturday Alvin and I visited Berenty, which is a small enclave of primary forest that was preserved in the middle of a gigantic agricultural complex growing some kind of Mexican Agave to be exported to China. Today I am pleased to say: mission accomplished. In fact, not only did I see Baobabs and Lemurs, but I even saw Lemurs on Baobabs! Because of its isolated nature, the animals in Berenty are trapped on a relatively small surface, and there are very easy to see. There are (lots) of Lemurs (ringtails, brown lemurs and the dancing sifaka), as well as boas, flying foxes (a 50-inch wingspan bat), and a bunch of colorful birds (sorry, no names, not really into that). Unfortunately, the boas were hibernating, so we only got to see a nest, and we were not allowed to get close to the godzilla bats. On the other hand, we saw a LOT of lemurs and these things are really fun to watch. One of the species (sifaka) can only walk upright... and sideways. Imagine white fluffy monkeys breakdancing to "walk like an egyptian", very entertaining. Here is a video of a ringtail feasting off a cactus.
Travelling tip: if you want to get an overdose of lemurs you should stay at the Berenty hotel, a bunch of bungalows right in the park. This is the lemur-watching equivalent of Pier 39. Don't spend more than one nigt though, as the reserve is rather small. Berenty is only 88km (55miles) from Fort Dauphin, but it takes 3 hours to get there because the road is in such a bad shape.