Madagascar part 3---Trekking along "La route du sud" (suite)

After Antoetra/Sakaivo, it was time for lemurs! The best spot was in Parc National de Ranomafana, where I went for a 4 hour trek in the morning and a 4 hour evening hike to find the nocturnal animals. The only disapointment was to see all the collars on the lemurs: researchers were trying to keep track of the different spiecies.

Parc National d'Andrigngitra was beautiful, but I had no luck there: I did not see a single lemur :-(

Not too far from Ambalavao, I got my first glimps of the famous ring-tail lemur (also known as the catta lemur) at the village reserve of Anjaha. They had tons of them! I only saw one other group of tourists. They came, took 2 or 3 pictures and left. I sat there for at least 90 minutes, enjoying the play-fighting of the cattas. They were also feeding and sunning themselves. No other lemurs in sight, but this was a real treat to be able to watch them for so long!

My last memorable stop along the Southern route was the Parc National de l'Isalo. I decided to take a 2 day hike, starting in Le Canion des Makis (maki is another name for lemurs), where I insisted on staying until we could find the Verreaux's sifaka (see below). To me, this is the most beautiful lemur and the one I first saw on a kiddy show called "Zaboomafoo" with the Kratts brothers (these guys now have a show called "Be The Creature" featured on National Geographic's channel). Tourists came and went (tons of tourists= yuck!), but we stayed in the Canyon until we finally found 4 of them up in the trees. We followed them through the jungle, until they found a spot to rest. When they would be back on the move, we followed them again. Awesome! I also saw the ring-tailed lemurs, but I had already spent time with them further North, in another park, so I was really obsessed with my nice white sifakas. We then hiked up the mountain, into the valley and up the other side to go swim in La Cascade des Nymphes. The water was freezing!!! I was alone with my guide. I asked him to take a picture, but as usual, people take shitty pictures when they don't know how to work your camera... So no pictures of Cat in a bikini, swimming around in the cascade ;-) We made our way to camp, where our cook was waiting for us with dinner (he had taken a shortcut). Next morning, we went to La Piscine Naturelle (Natural Pool). Gorgeous spot! I met other travellers that needed to go North and were supposed to take the taxi-brousse (local transport. A note on these taxi-b: if there are 20 seats, once they are full, the driver figures he can still stick another 15 bodies in, including flying chickens and pigs just dropped on your lap!!!). I offered for them to ride with my driver. I had company for a day and the driver earned a few bucks (like 10$). We took 2 days to make it back to Tana.

Madagascar part 2---Trekking along "La route du sud"

This part of my trip was a big gamble: I was going to test "the feet" out. Could I now manage to walk for more than an hour? Time to give it a try. If it didn't work, I had my diving gear....

If you look on the map of Part 1, this "route du sud" (Southern route) goes from Tana (Antananarivo) to Fianaransoa and then goes West toward Tulear. My plan was to make it all the way to Parc National de Isalo and back to Tana, 8 days South and 2 days without stopping to make it back to the capital.

The reasonable thing to do on my first trek is to take that 2 hour trek, in and out of this region. BORING! If I'm in this part of the world, I need to live it up a little, so I went for the overnight trek over the 2 mountains separating me from the Zafimaniry people, known for their woodcarving, in the village of Sakaivo at the other end.... I was told it would take 5 hours to get there and the same amount of time to come back, the next day. Guess what? It took me 3.5 hours!!! Wooo-hooo! The feet survived!!! re-wooo-hooo!!!


When I got here, all the adults were out of the village, building a road to get here. There were only kids around. They were so camera shy, I couldn't believe it. All that changed when I was able to show them right away the pictures I was taking. Then, they just wouldn't leave me alone! Here, I'm holding up the camera towards us, but on the other side, there are a few little boys holding on to the camera, looking at the screen. I don't know if they had ever seen themselves (I didn't see any mirrors), so they were all asking for a photo and wanting to see it right after. What an experience for all of us!

Madagascar part 1---Nosy Be

I know I've been back in Singapore for a while and haven't updated my blog, but I couldn't upload any pictures on blogger and figured you guys would rather get the pics...

I had an awesome summer! I had been waiting for this trip for a long time. Some people think seven weeks is too long to visit a single country, but quite honestly, I didn't even get to see everything Madagascar had to offer. Need to locate the country? Here you go:

Want to figure out the itinerary as you read on?

To start off smoothly, I started with a week of diving in Nosy Be (North-West). The diving didn't compare to what we can see in South-East Asia, but it was still good. I got to see my first school of sharks (10 of them swimming together), my first eagle rays and a small manta. I saw nudibranches I had never seen before. Most of the dives had an average depth of 25 meters, so most of these dives were shorter than what I'm used to, with no shallow reef to prolong the dive. Too bad! You guys have seen so many of my dive pictures, I figured I wouldn't post any on this trip.

I had changed money at the airport, but I needed to buy a ticket out of Nosy Be. I went to the ATM, but they didn't accept my ATM card or my credit card (only advances on a Visa were possible). I started freaking out and went back to the hotel. I met other tourists that told me that Air Mad (nice nick-name, no?) took the master card. When I turned up there, they said that their office didn't take MC and they were the only ticketing office on Nosy Be (an island, by the way). Crap! I had enough money to fly back to Tana (the capital, Antananarivo, is shortened to Tana), but I didn't like travelling with no pocket money... Oh well, this was just the beginning of my money nightmare...

As I was eating lunch by the beach when I saw these two ladies walking by. I rushed out of the restaurant to take this picture.

This is actually the first of many chameleons I saw during my trip. I was so keen on finding one. When I asked my dive guide where I could catch a glimps at this cute creature, she said: "you're welcome to walk around my garden; there are plenty of those walking around!" I thought I'd have to work a lot more to find them...