Farewell to Madagascar: Our Southern Sojourn

Channeling my inner Ansel Adams in the Tsaranoro Valley

Windhoek, February 19^th

Seated in a warm, dry hotel room while rain comes down outside on this capital city, I am trying to cast my mind far away from mainland Africa, where we have been for the past two months, to the last leg of our Madagascar odyssey, our two-week swing through the south-central highlands of the country.  This section of the trip, although somewhat shorter than we had anticipated in terms of distance, still gave us plenty of scenery and wildlife to take away and provided a fitting conclusion to our trip.  It will also be good for me to start catching up on my much-delayed blog; after a burst of writing energy in early January, I haven’t written a word in over a month, so it’s time to get back at it.  Here goes.

Taxi rickshaw in the back streets of Ambalavao

Terri and I headed out from the squalour of Antananarivo very early on the morning of Tuesday, December 6^th on the most luxurious bus we could find, the Sonaotra+.  The bus was clean and the seats were well spaced.  We had bought an extra seat just in case, and the space and legroom were luxurious after some of the taxis-brousses we had taken up in the north.  It couldn’t compare for luxury with a Chilean, Argentinian or Turkish bus, but it was a relief to our battered backsides.

Our destination was the large town of Fianaratsoa, and it was, by the standards of Madagascar travel, a quick, pleasant and comfortable trip.  We could even look out the windows at a rolling landscape of hills, irrigated valleys and straggling villages of red-brick houses.  I put on my headphones and listened to a big backlog of podcasts, stopping only at the mid-trip meal stop.  One of the sad things about travelling by bus, compared to travelling with your own vehicle or (even better) a bicycle, is that you race past landscapes and sights that you would love to stop and look at, unable to cast more than a cursory glance at them.  In the end you get dozy and stop paying attention, stultified by the swaying of the bus and the fact that you were up at 5 am, and this is the worst thing:  you travel halfway around the world to ignore the country passing past your window, dozing in a stupor.

The main street of Ambalavao

Fianarantsoa is a big, sprawling town built between a series of low hills.  We caught a taxi to the tiny, cheap and friendly Hotel Arinofy and were in bed early.  The long day of imprisonment in the bus and the fact that there was no power both sent us to sleep sooner than expected.  We woke up in the morning to the sight of brilliant red Madagascar fody birds frolicking in the garden, had breakfast and then trudged down the hill to the chaos of the taxi brousse stand.  We enquired about rides to Ambalavao, then went into town looking for a supermarket to buy supplies for our upcoming hike, while I ran off to a gas station to fill our MSR stove fuel bottle.  The supermarket was a bit dismal in its selection, but we scrounged together some potatoes, instant noodles, instant soup, canned tomatoes and a few other items before heading back to the taxi brousse stand with our booty.

The staple of life in central Madagascar

It was a lot less comfortable ride to Ambalavao (despite booking extra seats), but it was a fairly short trip, and within two hours we were tumbling off the bus at the main market square in Ambalavao.  The landscape had changed, growing distinctly dryer and more open, and Ambalavao had the distinct air of a Western cowboy town, with lots of wiry men in Stetson hats and carrying big walking sticks marching up and down the road.  Right in the square there was an office for JB Trekking, and we stopped in to find out about transport to the Parc National d’Andringitra, our next destination.

Another beautiful chameleon

We discovered that we could have saved ourselves the effort of buying food, as an all-inclusive 4-day hike, with food, cook and porters included, was about 120 euros per person, not significantly more than we would pay trying to negotiate a 4WD lift to and from the park.  We signed up and then spent the afternoon in the delightfully French atmosphere of the Relais d’Andringitra, run by an expat Frenchman who regaled us with tales of life in Ambalavao and fed us magnificently on magret de canard and zebu bourguignon.  We strolled around the streets later in the afternoon, drinking in the atmosphere of market day, with the local Betsileo farmers thronging the streets.  The houses along the main street were picturesque in a decaying colonial era sort of way, and it was pleasant to stretch our legs after two days of bus travel. It actually reminded me a bit of a spaghetti Western set, between the wooden balconies, the hand-painted signs and the cowboy hats, and I half-expected Clint Eastwood to come around the next corner instead of another tuk-tuk.

Rice terraces on the way to Andringitra

Thursday Dec. 8 found us up early and piling into a decently maintained 4x4 pickup truck with our guide Tovo, lots of food and equipment and a live chicken, its legs tied together.  The chicken was going to be dinner on the second night, and Terri immediately took a shine to the little fellow, feeding him bread, bits of flour and water to ease his last 36 hours on earth.  We stopped in to see the zebu market, a huge bustling open area on the outskirts of town full of cowboys and big zebu, some of them escaping from their owners from time to time and causing much shouting and chasing and corralling.  From that point on it was a 3-hour slog over a truly awful road, comparable to the Daraina track still burned into our nightmares.  At least the scenery was very pretty, with distant mountains closing in on the road as we climbed past emerald rice terraces towards the forested higher peaks.  By 10:30 we were at the national park office, where interminable paperwork was filled out and we looked at the surprisingly good displays at the visitor’s centre.  We were the only visitors to pass through the gate that day, which is surprising because Andringitra is one of the very best national parks in Madagascar, with great scenery, fantastic hiking and good infrastructure.

Looking up at the King's Waterfall and the jumble of peaks behind

Eventually we piled back into the truck along with a couple of porters that our guide had engaged.  We climbed up an ever-deteriorating track until we could drive no further (the next bridge was a gutted mas of burnt timbers), then got out, distributed the gear and food (and the unfortunate chicken) among the two porters, picked up our park guide Fleury and set off uphill, relieved to be walking at last.  We climbed steadily through lovely forest (a rarity in these parts; only the protection of the national park has saved a small area of native bush), with occasional stops to pant in the cloying humidity.  The forest was full of chameleons, lizards, crickets and noisy but unseen birds.

Nice reflection of the high peaks of Andringitra

After three kilometres of steady climbing past two impressive waterfalls (the King’s and the Queen’s Waterfalls), we finally found ourselves on flattish open moorland on a long plateau at the foot of the high peaks.  The next 3 km were easy and pleasant and full of birds that were easy to see.  The orchids for which the area is famous weren’t in season, but the rugged granite peaks and undulated heath made up for their absence.  We made camp beside a burbling river (a location known as Camp Three), ate a great beef stew, fed the chicken again and were in bed early in the big tent provided by the trekking company.

Pretty mountain peaks seen from near Camp Three

Terri, Fleury and Tovo on the way to Camp Three

Granite shining bright in the morning sunshine

We slept well, and were up early the next morning for our summit push.  A recent change in park regulations meant that we couldn’t leave at 3 am for sunrise on the summit, so we settled for a 5:15 wakeup and a 5:45 departure.  Our guide from JB Trekking was feeling unwell, so we had Fleury, our National Park guide, as our only companion.  It was a very scenic climb, first along the plateau, then steeply uphill across steep granite faces scored with streams and waterfalls, across a second, higher plateau and finally, at 8:45, up to Pic Boby, at 2658 metres the second-highest peak in the country.  (The highest peak is inaccessible by casual hikers, so this is the trekking summit of Madagascar.)

The jumbled, eroded granite outcrops on the final push up Pic Boby

We had perfect bluebird weather and endless views across the jumble of shattered granite peaks (some of which actually look higher than Boby itself) south to the start of the southern desert and north to the forested peaks of Parc National de Ranomafana.  It felt good to be standing (almost) on top of Madagascar and to be walking almost free (with the exception of Fleury) through a wonderful landscape.  We returned to camp in a jubilant mood, swam in the stream, had a quick early lunch and set off across the lower plateau towards our next camp by 12:20.

Made it!  Two tired but exultant trekkers at the summit

The view from the top

The landscape of that afternoon’s hike was wonderful, a mixture of open grassland, exposed granite (the “Lunar Landscape” for which Andringitra is known) and a descent through more dense forest.  Accompanying us most of the way were views of the immense vertical granite walls of the Tsaranoro Valley, into which we were descending.  It was a long day, and we were a bit footsore by the time we got to Camp Yetaranomby, on the boundary of the national park after a 1000-metre descent from the summit.

Our serpentine visitor and his unfortunate dinner guest

The campsite had another great swimming hole and Terri and I bathed, feeling the cool water refresh our dusty skin and tired legs.  While we were in the water, the chicken met his demise and appeared in our dinner.  He was more skin and bones than meat, and it seemed almost criminal to kill a chicken for so little nutritional benefit to us, but we were both hungry and were able to salve our consciences.  Ten minutes after dinner I realized I had left my sunglasses at the table and when I returned to our outdoor dining area, my headlamp picked out the slightly gruesome sight of a boa constrictor halfway through the process of swallowing an unfortunate rat whole.  I called Terri and we watched the rest of the meal; it took almost half an hour for the snake to finish ingesting its prey, and watching the convulsive bursts of peristalsis was fascinating, if grim. 

The spectacular wall of Tsaranoro Peak

The next day we bid farewell to Fleury after breakfast as we left the national park.  He headed back over the mountains to park headquarters while we continued mostly downhill into the heat and rice cultivation of the Tsaranoro Valley.  The views were stunning, with Tsaranoro Peak giving us different colours and angles every few minutes.  When we dropped low enough to be in rice fields, young kids raced uphill to try to sell us trinkets and souvenirs and ask for money, candy and pencils.  They were quite persistent, but Terri managed to divert them into singing while I walked ahead to take pictures.  It saddened me a bit to see how the presence of tourists, as is so often the case, turns kids into beggars and salesmen, diverting them from school and working in the fields.

Terri near the bottom of the long descent into the Tsaranoro Valley

Terri being serenaded by village children in the Tsaranoro Valley

It was properly hot down at 1000 metres’ elevation and we trudged along the valley, wishing that the local farmers hadn’t cut down every single tree for firewood, leaving us in a shadeless oven of a landscape.  The colours of the young rice and the contours of the terraces were beautiful, but they were also reminders of the natural beauty and diversity that has been lost as Madagascar’s population has mushroomed over the past few decades.  We got to Camp Meva, a rather ramshackle camp owned by JB Trekking, at 11:30.  The heat was intense, and after a quick picnic lunch, Terri and I decided to walk uphill to the fancier digs at Camp Catta for a swim and to look for ring-tailed lemurs.  The “eco” swimming pool was delightfully cool but not terribly clean, but it was a great way to beat the heat. 

Eventually we hauled ourselves out of the green water and went off to look for the ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) that live in the area.  It didn’t take long, with the help of one of the Camp Catta employees, to locate a troop of lemurs right in the hotel grounds, and we spent a very happy hour following them around and photographing them.  They don’t have the ethereal beauty of the silky sifakas that we saw in Marojejy, but they are very cute, very active and love to cross open ground with a strange sideways skipping gait, so it weas a lot of fun to take pictures of them.  We watched them marking trees vigorously with scent using their paws, first rubbing their paws up and down their tails where their scent glands are located.  I felt (not for the first time in Madagascar) that I was in a BBC Nature documentary narrated by David Attenborough.  The mothers carrying babies on their backs were of course the cutest photo subjects.  We returned to Camp Meva buzzing with excitement from seeing the lemurs.

Ring-tailed mother and child

We slept well that night and awoke early, ready for a long, hot slog out to the road and a crowded taxi brousse, but a phone call while we were breakfasting told Tovo, our guide, that another trekking party from JB Trekking was on its way to Camp Meva in a 4x4 and the truck would give us a lift back to town once it had dropped off its trekkers.  We were doubly fortunate:  not only did it save us a rather grim walk along the main track, it also gave us more time at Meva where we got to watch a troop of ring-tailed lemurs walk right up to the main building, jump through the windows and start licking and chewing whitewash off the walls.  We had wondered why the walls looked so chipped and ragged, and now we knew:  it was the lemurs!

Ring-tailed lemurs licking the paint off the walls

Apparently the whitewash contains salt and minerals that they crave.  We watched them gnawing away at the walls for a good 45 minutes before they finally gave up and headed off towards the nearby village.  As they were crossing an open field, a domestic dog suddenly raced out in pursuit of them and they split up, two young males heading in one direction and a mother and infant in the other.  We saw the two males sitting high in a tree in the village as we passed in our luxurious truck, but saw no sign of the mother and child.  The two males were calling plaintively and looking around for their troopmates, and we hoped that the dog hadn’t caught and killed the pair.  As with most species of lemur, the ring-tailed lemurs are fairly rare, with a fragmented habitat and falling numbers, so the death of even a couple of them is significant.

Ring-tailed lemurs at Camp Catta

We drove back to town with the owner of JB, his driver and our guide Tovo.  It was a quick, comfortable ride (the road on this side of the park is far less abysmal than on the other side) and quite soon we found ourselves back at the Relais d’Andringitra, tucking into more fine French cuisine and then taking a well-earned siesta.  That evening over dinner we made the acquaintance of Allegra, a fisheries biologist from Alaska, and had a pleasant evening comparing notes on where we had been in Madagascar.

Intense colours in the Tsaranoro Valley

Ring-tailed lemurs fleeing an oncoming dog

It was hard to tear ourselves away from this little oasis of good food, and the next morning found us lingering over breakfast and internet, trying to book accommodation for our upcoming sojourn in Swaziland and trying to upload photos.  Finally by 10:30 we tore ourselves away, found a taxi brousse back to Fianaratsoa and another one to Ranomafana, arriving late in the afternoon after one of the slowest taxi-brousse rides yet, albeit through spectacular scenery.  We found rooms in the Hotel Manja just in time for sunset beers and were in bed pretty early.

It was at this point that our onward progress ran into the sands of lassitude.  We had planned to spend a couple of days in Ranomafana, seeing the lemurs, before continuing north to do some community-based trekking.  Instead we woke up the next day thinking that we wanted to minimize the number of hours and the number of days that we spent on Madagascar public transport, and that Ranomafana seemed like a beautiful place to kick back for the remaining week of our trip before heading back to Antananarivo and our flight back to South Africa.  The trekking option was going to involve a lot more taxis-brousses into the back of beyond, and after six weeks of taxis-brousses this was a prospect too horrible to contemplate.  I don’t know if it’s my advanced age, or the years of travelling by bicycle, or the past six months of comfortable travel driving ourselves around Africa in our beloved Stanley, but the hours spent contorted inside a taxi-brousse, crawling past scenery without stopping (or, often, even being able to see it) really sapped my will to continue exploring.  Madagascar has so much that is worth seeing and experiencing, but unless you’re willing to shell out the big bucks to have someone drive you around, or unless you’re willing to pedal yourself around on a bicycle, it’s a bear to travel around by public transport. 

Wonderful chameleon in Ranomafana town

Having made up our mind to stay, we were in no hurry to race off to the park, especially given the unsettled weather.  We spent our first day wandering lazily along the town (strung untidily along the bottom of a river valley tumbling down off the central highlands).  It was a small hot spring spa in colonial times, and the French infrastructure still exists, albeit mostly in a state of overgrown decrepitude.  The old suspension bridge over the river lies in ruins, with a jerry-rigged temporary bridge meandering beside it.  Many old French buildings associated with the hot springs lie in dereliction behind the modern springs, a complex that was closed that day for cleaning.  We decided to visit the next day when the water would be at its cleanest.  Near the bridge, we spotted a huge, spectacularly-coloured chameleon climbing a tree, but before we could take pictures a disagreeable old woman grabbed the chameleon, said it was hers and demanded money for photos.  We walked off, Terri giving the lady a piece of her mind, and made our way back to the Manja.

The next day was devoted to a long visit to the hot springs.  We got there early and had the hot water swimming pool to ourselves for most of the morning.  It was almost too hot to swim lengths, and we had to climb out from time to time to cool off in the shade of the trees, but it was a pleasant place to read, to watch birds and to do yoga.

 

Ranomafana butterfly

While there, we struck up a conversation with a Swiss guy and a Malagasy woman, Cyril and Mushu, who wanted to share the expense of a guide to the park the next day.  We agreed to the idea, and the next morning Terri, the guide and I were crawling into a crowded passing taxi-brousse for the 10 km drive uphill to the main gate of Ranomafana National Park, where we met the other two travellers waiting for us outside their accommodation.  We paid for admission and the guide (pretty steep, at 65,000 MGA per person for admission, and MGA 75,000 split between us for the guide) then set off into the park, past the cheeky “community levy” desk which extorted a small fee from all visitors on top of the large fee we had just paid for the park ticket and guide.  Terri was not amused.

 

Golden bamboo lemurs in Ranomafana National Park

Ranomafana’s claim to fame is the presence of a couple of species of very rare lemurs, the golden bamboo lemur (Hapalemur aureus) and the greater bamboo lemur (Prolemur simus).  We were hopeful of encountering both of them, but had to content ourselves with the golden species.  We had several close encounters with these gentle creatures who are studied by scientists curious as to how they are able to get rid of the cyanide present in their diet of bamboo shoots.  They were tough to photograph, as we were always looking up through dark branches towards dark lemurs silhouetted against a bright sky, but in the end we got a couple of decent shots.  The same can’t be said about the other new species we spotted, the Milne-Edwards’ sifaka (Propithecus edwardsi) and the critically endangered black-and-white ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata), which we saw in short bursts as they moved rapidly across the forest canopy.  We spotted a few chameleons and saw lots of beautiful forest, but it was a rather low-key finale to our Madagascar wildlife experience.  Our guide Angelin was also a bit of a loudmouth, so we weren’t broken-hearted to say goodbye to him.  We walked downhill back to town along the main road, an hour and a half of trudgery that made Terri’s injured leg pretty sore. 

The last few days passed in a lazy haze, with some blog post writing, some running and lots of watching the huge and amazingly coloured Parson’s chameleon who lived in the hedge outside the Manja Hotel restaurant.  We were sad when he finally disappeared on our last day.  We also had the good fortune to meet Jannico Kelk and Jasmine Vink, an Australian couple who are passionate herpetologists (“we love herping”, according to Jasmine).  I had seen some of Jasmine’s amazing photos on Instagram, and it was great to meet the two of them in person.  They had just come from Andasibe, and from India and Bangladesh before that, and they were looking forward to lots of night-time exploration.  Seeing their exquisite photos, I realized that although I’m quite pleased with the wildlife photos I’ve taken on this trip, there are many levels of proficiency above me to strive for in the future.  (You can see some of their photos here and here, if you’re curious.)  Terri and I also ventured out to the botanical gardens just outside of town, where we saw a number of rare Madagascar species, including one that has exactly one known tree in the wild (the one we were looking at).  It’s amazing, and rather sobering, to realize that there are so many species just being discovered, or still unknown to science, at the exact moment when so much of Madagascar’s unique forests are being cut down rapidly. 

The amazing Parson's chameleon in the garden of the Hotel Manja

Farmer bringing his crop to market in Ranomafana

And then, suddenly, it was December 18^th and we were on our way back towards our flight.  That afternoon we sprang for a private transfer to Fianaratsoa (MGA 100,000 well spent, although the first guy whom we had reserved cancelled about 20 minutes before our scheduled departure, leaving us scrambling to find a replacement).  In Fianar, we stayed at the bizarre Soafia Hotel, a gigantic Chinese-themed complex that seemed half-deserted and half-derelict.  We had dinner that night in the restaurant, where we made up half of the evening’s clientele and where we were told that they had no water and no beer in stock.  Terri got cross with the waitress and finally they found some bottled water, but it was a strange experience.

December 19^th found us on the “luxury” Sonaotra+ bus back to Tana.  Again we sprang for 3 seats to have more space, and again it was a long but reasonably comfortable drive across the endless hills and valleys of the central highlands, binge-listening to podcasts and admiring the emerald green of the rice fields.  It took absolutely forever to fight our way through traffic the last 10 km into central Tana, and more time to fight our way back to the Hotel Sole, our oasis away from the hideousness of Tana’s mean streets.

Mother and child ring-tailed lemurs

December 20^th we lingered over breakfast, packed, wrote blog posts and sorted photos and napped, ready for the sleep-deprivation exercise of the coming night flight.  We dined as usual at the Taj Mahal, an Indian restaurant that had become our local hangout for its excellent cuisine and low prices.  At 10 pm we caught a taxi through the dark and somewhat menacing streets of the capital out to the airport and caught our 2:40 am flight to Nairobi, followed by our connection to Johannesburg the next morning. 

In total we spent six weeks in Madagascar, and we should probably have spent longer if we wanted to see all the amazing animals and plants and landscapes of this huge island.  However, as we had to admit to ourselves by the end, we were burned out by local transport and ready to get out of the country.  I loved being able to see so many species of lemur (23 in total), and the hiking in Marojejy and Andrangitra was a particular highlight.  Seeing the aye-aye and the other species in Daraina was a lot of fun, while swimming with whale sharks off Nosy Be was a wonderful experience.  If I went back to Madagascar, I would want to have my own transport:  a car, a motorcycle or a bicycle.  I would want to explore the remote northeast coast and get down to the south.  However, I think that we got a reasonable taste of the country’s diversity, and I didn’t fall in love with Madagascar enough to want to return immediately.  There are still a lot of countries left for me to visit in the world, and returning to Madagascar would be a diversion from that mission.  I also didn’t fall in love with the Malagasy people or the food, and I really loathed Antananarivo (not quite as much as Dhaka or Jakarta or Manila, but pretty close) and the fact that we had to pass through Tana so often didn’t fill me with great joy.  I was very glad that we visited Madagascar and that we had enough time to see so many highlights, but it might well end up being a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Definitely one of the cuter species of lemur!

Madagascar Part Three: Ankarana and Nosy Be

Nairobi Airport

I continue to make relatively rapid progress at capturing our Madagascar trip in print.  When I last left you, we had just tumbled, shell-shocked and covered in dust, off our 4x4 trip from the lower reaches of Hades into a hotel in Ambilobe where we did battle with the forces of evil embodied in our driver.

The razor-sharp limestone of the tsingy

Ambling around Ankarana

Perfect camouflage

We slept pretty well that night, although not nearly long enough, as we hadn’t gotten to sleep until well after midnight.  The next day, Wednesday November 23^rd, dawned bright and sunny and cheerful, and when we cautiously put our heads outside our room, we found that our murderously angry driver of the night before had vanished along with his infernal vehicle.  We felt stiff, dry-throated and tired and decided to walk around to find water, food and more money from an ATM.  Ambilobe was a slight shock to the system after tiny Daraina, with actual pavement on its main road and several ATMs downtown.  We caught a local taxi into town, found an ATM, then found a small restaurant for breakfast.  By 10 am we were back at the hotel and had rented a small tuk tuk to take us 30 km north along the highway to Ankarana National Park.  At 50,000 MGA (about 15 euros), it was a bit extravagant, but after the previous day’s horrorshow, Terri was very reluctant to try to cram herself into another overcrowded taxi-brousse. 

Hook-billed vanga on his nest

It was an uneventful, mostly flat drive north along the highway, past dry, overgrazed wasteland.  This western side of northern Madagascar is even drier than Daraina, and the human population pressure has resulted in very little wilderness surviving.  The land looked tired and unprosperous, although I assume that when the rains come in December things perk up a bit.  We got to our destination, Chez Aurelian, a rambling cottage complex at the main eastern entrance to the park, checked in and then set about a fairly lazy afternoon.  I went for a long run across the empty fields across the highway; I didn’t see another human being once I left the main road.  Afterwards we lunched with Bruno, the 2CV driver we had met in Daraina; I was once again astonished that he could drive such an underpowered, lightweight, low-clearance car through such a challenging obstacle course of boulders, mud and vehicle-sized holes.  I spent the afternoon working on a blog post about Botswana, then went off with Terri, Bruno and Bruno’s sister and friend to go to the Ankarana Lodge, where the better-heeled tourists stay for 100 euros per person per night, full board.  We bought a round of caipirinhas and had a delightful swim in their swimming pool, chatting up a storm with our French hosts.  When it got dark we put-putted back to Chez Aurelian in the little yellow car-that-could and had dinner, a delicious mangrove crab feast that reminded us that we were not very far from the swampy west coast.

Terri on one of the bridges in Ankarana

Great camouflage!

The following morning we got up and had breakfast in a restaurant that had two speeds of service:  slow and slothful.  Terri was unimpressed with the staff’s very lackadaisical attitude, but it was a nice place to sit and watch birds in the garden.  By 8 am we were at the park entrance, paying the extravagant 65,000 MGA (about 19 euros) entrance fee per person, plus the 90,000 guide fee.  At 210,000 MGA (about 63 euros) for the two of us for a day’s outing, it was not a cheap day out.  It was, however, worth it.  Our guide, Laurier, was knowledgeable and keen (as was usually our experience with national park guides) and the forest and landscape are distinctive and wonderful. 

We started out trudging along a road that led eventually to the original entrance post to the park, now derelict, and a new entrance building that is under construction.  The forest was dry but pretty dense and full of birds.  It was a flat, easy walk, and along the way we spotted plenty of crested couas and paradise flycatchers.  We went first to the Perte des Rivieres, a sinkhole that in the rainy season swallows three separate rivers into the thirsty karst topography of the park.  In the dry season there is no water, and the sinkhole looks like a menacing portal into the underworld.  As we stood watching, we spotted a pair of hook-billed vangas taking turns to sit on a nest high in a tree while its mate went foraging for insects. 

Crested coua

We continued on our way into the park along the main trail, spotting a couple of sleeping Ankarana sportive lemurs (Lepilemur ankaranensis); these nocturnal lemurs spend the day sitting nestled in a crack in a tree trunk to protect themselves from predators, only their faces visible.  Laurier claimed that they are blind during the day, but that seems unlikely.  They rate highly on the cuteness scale, and we got a few good photos of them.

   

Bat in Ankarana

Eventually our path abandoned the cool shade of the forest and ventured out onto the bare rock of the tsingy.  This is a landscape typical of western Madagascar, consisting of bare limestone that has been eroded by rain into a series of sharp ridges that are almost impossible to walk across, shredding shoes and feet and bodies.  The Malagasy name comes from an expression meaning “to walk on tiptoes”, which pretty accurately describes how you would want to try to traverse them.  The heat up on top of the tsingy was tremendous, with the light grey of the limestone reflecting the fierce sunlight up into our faces.  There were a few hardy bushes which had pushed roots into the rock, some with violently red blossoms that contrasted sharply with the monochrome stone surroundings.  The tsingy were a strange and alien world that extended far away to the horizon.  Much of the national park consists of tsingy, and the park was established to preserve this distinctive environment, although there is a big area in the centre of the park that has been invaded by thousands of sapphire miners and is now off-limits to tourists for security reasons.  Madagascar’s national parks are under threat all over the country, but this seems as stark an example of this as you could ask for.

Male paradise-flycatcher

Our path picked its way a bit through the knife edges, down into small canyons, across small hanging bridges and eventually down through a dark cavern.  Inside the cave we came across a couple of bats hanging peacefully at the exit which made for good photographic subjects.  From here we turned back towards the forest and its shade, escaping the furnace-like conditions we had been in for the past hour and a half.  We wandered back through the woods, running into groups of a new species of lemur, Sanford’s brown lemur (Eulemur sanfordi), as well as some of the crowned lemurs we had seen a few days earlier in Daraina.  We wandered out of the park back to Chez Aurelian after five very enjoyable hours of walking and wildlife spotting.  We were a bit drained by the heat, and after lunch we napped before heading out in search of mangoes; the forests near Aurelian are full of mangoes which were in season, and we found a number of ripe ones to eat.  In the process we ran into another party of Sanford’s brown lemurs who were also in search of mangoes.  Another mangrove crab dinner and we were off to bed early.

Ankarana sportive lemur

Overall Ankarana was a very worthwhile (if overpriced) park, with a landscape that was completely new to us, along with new lemur species.  It’s an enjoyable place for walking, and the village is very quiet; we could have spent another day or two there quite easily.

A splash of colour in the limestone of the tsingy

A Tropical Idyll in Nosy Be

The next morning, Friday November 25^th, was a day of getting places.  We were keen to head south down the coast to the little island of Nosy Be, and we were keen to make it as painless as possible.  Our tuk tuk driver of two days previously came to pick us up for another 50,000 MGA and we asked how much it would cost to bring us past Ambilobe all the way to the ferry dock at Ankify.  Given that it was about 3 or 4 times as far as the run to Ambilobe, we thought he might offer to do it for 150,000 or 200,000 MGA, a price that Terri was willing to pay to avoid another taxi-brousse ride.  Instead, after prolonged consultation with the guys from Chez Aurelian, he asked for 1.5 million ariary, ten times what would have been reasonable.  We decided to take the lift to Ambilobe for 50,000 MGA and hop a taxi-brousse from there.  It wasn’t too painful, as we got the front seats to Ambanja and then seats in a car that wasn’t even full for the short hop from Ambanja to Ankify.  Once there we hopped onto a speedboat for a pricey 30,000 MGA per person and almost immediately regretted it, as we were near the bow and got absolutely hammered by the boat crashing from wave to wave in the afternoon chop.  Terri in particular suffered from getting her spine pummelled.  We hopped onto a tuk tuk in Hellville harbour and had him drive us to Madirokely Beach, about 8 km west of town, where we had the name of a good, cheap place to stay from Bruno, our 2CV friend.  His place, Chez Senga, was full, but they directed us next door to the Beluga Apartments where 87,000 MGA a night got us a big, bright, quiet apartment right on the beach.  We took it, not knowing how good a choice it would prove to be.

Late afternoon light over Madirokely Beach

Quite quickly our life on Nosy Be took on a pleasant, easy rhythm.  We bought baguettes, butter, honey and jam, along with lots of fresh fruit, and would start the day with a leisurely breakfast right on the beach in front of Beluga.  Some days we would go out and do touristy things, while other days revolved around mornings of running and swimming and doing yoga on the sand.  Whatever we got up to during the day, we tried to be in the water for a late-afternoon swim, and then to watch the sun set over the ocean in a riot of reds and oranges either with a cold beer or a homemade caipirinha.  Dinner was often fish kebabs ordered from a little restaurant just behind Senga and consumed with another beer and some cold gas water.  It was a pretty easy existence to get used to, and hard to tear ourselves away from.  After the grimness of Madagascar’s towns and cities, and the pain of getting to Nosy Be, it was hard to face leaving our little corner of paradise. 

After a couple of fairly lazy days at first, Monday November 28^th found us undertaking one of the best things you can do on Nosy Be in November and December:  swimming with whale sharks.  There is one outfit, Rand’eau Baleine, based at Chez Senga, that runs trips every day to snorkel with these gentle and endangered giants of the ocean, the largest fish in the world.  A Belgian marine biologist, Stella, is combining studies of the whale shark population at Nosy Be with working as a tour guide, and she was our guide.  Between her and the keen eyes of our boat captain, Captain Black, we had constant encounters with the whale sharks.  We must have swum a dozen or maybe 15 times, and each time we went into the water it was an adrenaline-filled adventure.  I swam with whale sharks back in 2007 in Donsol, in the Philippines, and had enjoyed it, but this was better.  Donsol had very murky water and it was hard to see the whale sharks clearly enough to follow them.  Off Nosy Be the water was very clear and we could see every detail of the sharks’ markings, and we could follow them for minutes on end, finning furiously to keep up.  We had a few swims where we went in after one shark only to find a second one swimming past at a different angle.  A couple of times I had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid being run into as the big fish cruised past.  Terri and I got the hang of following the sharks, and often we were the last ones to give up the chase far from where the boat had dropped us.  Just before we gave up for the morning, Terri had one particularly memorable swim in which she got into the whale’s slipstream and was pulled along almost without effort on her part, while the whale shark turned its eye to look up at her.  She was absolutely elated when she climbed back into the boat. 

On our way to Lokobe

Stella would always jump in with her camera equipment, including a pair of laser pointers that showed up as two dots on the shark’s back to help give a scale.  The pattern of white and blue dots on a whale shark are enough to identify an individual unambiguously, and scientists maintain a worldwide database of such photos to try to keep tabs of whale sharks’ movements around the world.  She also from time to time went in alone with a biopsy probe to take a small sample of skin from the shark’s dorsal fin.  It was exciting to be part of ongoing research, and wonderful to see the rare whale sharks in such numbers.  We finally called it a morning around noon and bade goodbye to the gentle spotted giants to head to Nosy Sakatia, a nearby island, for a huge and delicious banquet lunch.  After lunch we changed our focus to reptiles as we went snorkelling with green turtles in encouragingly large numbers.  A few of them were really big, old turtles contentedly sitting on the bottom munching on seagrass, while there were a couple of really small youngsters swimming around much more actively.  We returned to shore in the afternoon absolutely elated; Stella told us that it had been easily the best day of the season so far.

Female black lemur

The next day found us renting a motor scooter and setting off to see another species of lemur, the black lemur (Eulemur macaco) in the Lokobe Nature Reserve on the southeast corner of the island.  We drove into town, past the inevitable traffic police bribe stations (we were only stopped twice, and showing my license and the scooter’s papers got us through for free), and then turned north from Hellville along a paved road.  After ten kilometres or so, we turned off onto a dirt track, pursued by three would-be guides on bicycles.  Since the track was in poor shape (surprise!), the trio had no difficulties in keeping pace with us.  We ended up hiring them once we got to the tiny village at the end of the track, where we parked the scooter.  The three guys loaded us into an outrigger pirogue and paddled and pushed us (it was extremely low tide) south along the coast for a few kilometres to the entrance to the reserve, a fairly sizeable village.  It was scorchingly hot, and even walking into the forest’s shade did little to cool us down.  The forest was all secondary growth, much of it overgrown fruit orchards from before the days of the nature reserve.  The fruit attracts lemurs in reasonable numbers, and we had little difficulty in spotting several troops of black lemurs.  Despite their name, the females are in fact brown and white and very striking in their appearance, and leap about the trees with their youngsters on their backs with typical agility.  We got some good photos of them along with a decent view of two grey-backed sportive lemurs (Lepilemur dorsalis), nocturnal species that sleep by day in the hollows of tree trunks.  The only problem with our excursion in the forest was that for the first time in Madagascar we were plagued by clouds of mosquitoes, a problem that resulted in us cutting short our walk and retreating to the sea breezes and lavish fish lunch awaiting us back in the village. 

Female black lemur at Lokobe

Sated to the point of exploding, we were paddled back to our scooter through much deeper water (the tide had come in), paid off our guides (it cost about 60,000 MGA, about US$ 18, for the two of us, including transport, guiding and entrance to the reserve, although I sincerely doubt that the reserve will ever receive a single ariary from our trio) and set off on our return scooter ride.  We rode home the long way, around the north of the island, a much less populated and less visited area than the south.  There were big plantations of ylang ylang, an essential oil, and tiny villages, along with a few nice views. 

We spent Wednesday, November 30^th in complete sloth, punctuated by some running and swimming along the beach, a long siesta and some reading.  Madirokely Beach was an easy place to while away a hot tropical day, with caipirinhas and fish kebabs at the end of the day.

Thursday, December 1^st we went out scuba diving for the morning with Silvia, the irrepressible Swiss woman who runs Forever Dive.  We were joined by three French divers, one of them an accountant living on Reunion, the other two dive instructors from France.  We went out to Nosy Tanikely, a marine reserve island about 30 minutes off our beach.  On the way across we again spotted Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins frolicking in the waves.  We did two very relaxed 1-hour dives that were pretty and pleasant without being spectacular.  We had quite a few hawksbill turtles (always a good sign of the health of the marine environment), healthy coral, lots of blue-spotted rays, a large lobster, a pipefish and several decent-sized tuna.  It was good to visit the underwater world again after a few months away.  We returned to a lazy afternoon of reading and strolling along the beach.

Shadows of lacework, a Nosy Be specialty

Friday was a frustrating day of logistics.  Travel in Madagascar is made more complicated than it should be by a lack of information.  We wanted to get back to Antananarivo while spending less money than a flight (200 euros) and having greater comfort than in a standard taxi-brousse (Terri was still experiencing PTSD after the ride to Ambilobe).  We had asked about arranging a car and driver to take us to Tana, and after much time-wasting, we were quoted a price of 1.4 million MGA, or about 400 euros, which was so ridiculous that we had little choice but to laugh.  We had heard that there were “premier classe” minibuses to Tana, but nobody seemed to know where they left from, what their schedule was or how to contact their offices.  We rented a scooter and headed into Hellville through a cloudburst that flooded lowlying section of road.  We got to the offices of Evasion Sans Frontieres, a travel agency, and found the same lack of basic knowledge that we had encountered elsewhere.  The clerk with whom we talked promised to phone around and find out if there were any departures for Tana in the next few days.  We had an excellent lunch in a downtown restaurant and returned, hopeful that we could escape Nosy Be cheaply and painlessly.  A phone call from our helpful clerk, however, shattered our hopes by saying that the company she had contacted didn’t have any departures for the next week.  Finally, however, another company which we had contacted a couple of days previously got back to us to point us towards an outfit that ran daily minibuses.  I tried to talk to them on the phone, but it was impossible to make out what was being said as Telma’s mobile phone network makes it sound as though you’re talking to someone at the bottom of a deep well, possibly underneath the water surface.  I drove back into town and managed, at last, to book seats for Sunday to Tana.  It cost 80,000 MGA per seat, and we splurged and bought 3 seats for the two of us to give us extra room, so it cost us 120,000 MGA, about US$ 35, per person.  Cheaper than flying, but not particularly cheap given the price of everything else in the country.

One very sizeable spider!

At any rate we now had only one day left on Nosy Be, so we booked a snorkelling trip out to Nosy Iranja for the next morning.  We set out late on a boat full of Italian package tourists (Italians seem to have a real love affair with Madagascar in general, and Nosy Be in particular) and our 90-minute speedboat ride was punctuated by a series of encounters with big marine creatures.  We stopped to look at a pair of whale sharks that were circling lazily near the surface; one of them did two complete leisurely laps of our boat, close enough to see all its markings, with one eye turned upwards to watch us.  While we were stopped, a pair of Omura’s whales, a species only recognized and described a decade ago, breached near the boat, while a pod of spinner dolphins erupted from the water in displays of amazing aerial acrobatics.  We were buzzing with adrenaline from seeing three species of aquatic megafauna in one place when we finally set off again.

Nosy Iranja is a picture-perfect tropical island, or rather two islands connected by a very long sand spit that is submerged at high tide.  The blinding white of the sand and the aquamarine water of its shallow are very pretty indeed.  Terri and I spent a couple of happy hours snorkelling in the shallows; it was such a low tide that we were reduced to pulling ourselves along on our fingertips rather than kicking our feet.  There were lots of small fish, including shrimp gobies guarding their shrimp’s burrows in the sand.  At one point I heard a panicked shout from Terri and raced over to see what was wrong.  A big animal had surfaced near her and then gone down again and Terri thought it was a shark.  We could see it nearby in the shallow water and it did look big and menacing, but eventually we realized it was a big turtle who had surfaced for air.  Panic over, we slowly drifted back towards the beach and then headed over to the immense lunch that was included in our 90,000 (US$ 29) MGA price per person.  It was a feast of ridiculous proportions, with shrimp, mangrove crab and two entire huge fish to go with rice, vegetables and pineapple.  We could once again hardly walk away from the lunch table, and after a short second spell of swimming, we climbed reluctantly onto the speedboat to head back to Madirokely.  It was a great way to end our eight days on Nosy Be, and well worth the price of the day trip.  We had a final sunset on the beach, a final feed of fish kebabs and then packed our bags, ready for an early departure.

Male black lemur, Lokobe

Sunday, December 4^th saw us breakfast on the beach one last time, pay our room bill and then climb into a taxi to take us to Hellville.  We dropped our luggage at the minibus office and walked to the pier to wait for our taxi, only to have a big argument with the porters who carried our bags and who wanted 10,000 MGA a bag; if we had known it would be a problem, we would have carried our own bags.  A much longer, more heated and even more pointless argument between the boat captain and the minibus company man delayed our departure by almost 45 minutes before we finally set off.  The morning sea was much calmer than on our outward journey, and soon enough we were at the pier in Ankify and transferring into a Mercedes Sprinter minibus for the short hop to Ambanja.  We had a couple of hours to wait there; we were two of the few passengers coming from Nosy Be; the rest of the passengers were joining us at 1 pm in Ambanja.  We passed the time eating lunch and wandering the dusty streets of the town before finally getting underway.  It was a pretty comfortable ride, much better than any taxi-brousse we had taken so far, and having the extra seat made a huge difference in terms of leg and shoulder room.  I put on my iPod and listened to podcasts most of the way.  It was an overnight bus, and after a stop for supper at 8:30 pm we drove through the night.  I slept reasonably well, but I was glad to make it into town at 7:30 am.  We booked seats on another “premiere classe” line for the next day to take us south, then caught a clapped-out Renault taxi through the teeming, unlovely streets of Tana to our usual base at the Hotel Sole for a day of catching up on sleep.

The tsingy landscape of Ankarana

Overall we both enjoyed Ankarana and Nosy Be, although the cost of visiting Ankarana seemed a bit excessive.  The one big downer to Nosy Be is that, like Thailand, the Philippines and parts of Cambodia, it is a major sex tourism destination for French and Italian middle-aged (and elderly) men.  The other end of Madirokely Beach from where we stayed has a series of bars and nightclubs that run on this trade, and the late-afternoon passegiata on the beach features dozens of sixty-something European men holding hands with eighteen-year-old Malagasy girls.  That said, it’s certainly on a much smaller scale than in places like Pattaya and Angeles City, and our end of the beach was much less sleazier in this respect. 

Yet another wonderful chameleon species in Ankarana

Nosy Be was a welcome vacation-within-a-vacation, a place to unwind from the rigours and annoyances of life on the Malagasy road.  It was nice to be able to drive ourselves around on a scooter (at 25,000 MGA, or about US$ 8, per day, it’s a relative bargain) and staying right on the beach was good for our soul.  Swimming and running along the beach were good ways to get a bit of exercise, and having breakfast and sundowners on the sand made great bookends to our days.  The excursions available were all worthwhile, and the whale-shark watching is absolutely world-class and worth a special trip to Nosy Be.  I’m not sure I would live full-time on Nosy Be, or for a few months every year, as quite a few French expats do (there are certainly much more appealing tropical islands to choose from), but if you’re on Madagascar, Nosy Be is certainly a great place to spend a week or so.

Practical Information: 

Madirokely is a good place to base yourself on the island, and both Chez Senga (if you can get in) and Beluga are good bargain choices; you can get slightly cheaper rooms inland from the beach or in the sex-tourist village at the other end of the beach, but I think location and pleasantness are worth paying a bit extra for.  Rand’Eau Baleine is a very professional outfit for seeing whale sharks, while Forever Dive is a very well-run dive shop with good equipment and a very knowledgeable and professional owner, Silvia.  There are a dozen or more boats offering snorkelling trips to various islands; Nosy Tanikely has great coral, while Nosy Iranja doesn’t have as good marine life but is incredibly pretty.  Hiring your own scooter to go to Lokobe is the way to go, rather than paying for a tour, as it’s a lot cheaper and gives you a lot more control over the situation.  The way to eat on Madirokely is not in the more expensive beachfront restaurants but rather in the little locally-run gargottes.  We had one good meal down the beach at a nameless beachfront gargotte, but mostly we bought take-out from the gargotte right behind Chez Senga; we would have the food delivered to Senga, which doesn’t have a restaurant, and we would eat our food washed down with a cold beer from Senga’s bar.  Senga is a gathering spot for long-term French expats, and they mostly do exactly the same thing.  When in Rome…..

Crested coua

Getting to Nosy Be, either fly if money is no object (or if Nosy Be is your port of entry to the country, as is the case for Air Austral, the airline of Reunion), or else take a premiere classe minibus.  Taking a regular taxi-brousse overnight to save 10,000 MGA is an act of desperation.  I cannot for the life of me recall the company name of our premiere classe minibus, but its office is in an Orange Money wire transfer office at the extreme far end of the main street of Hellville, next to the hospital and just before the road turns downhill to the ferry pier.  There are probably others, but good luck finding them!

Another beautiful sunset over Madirokely beach