WEATHER: Low 15C – High of 29C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing the FAMOUS lemurs
BUMMER OF THE DAY:
BUYS OF THE DAY: Only thing I bought today was lunch for 6AUD
WORD OF THE DAY: Alifar – lets go…….
ANIMALS SEEN TODAY: Nefilar Spider, Uroplatus Fantasticus (gecko), Golden Bamboo Lemur, Velvet Asuty (bird), Magpie Robin, Brown Lemurs, Red Tailed Venga (bird), Milne Edward Sifak’s (lemurs) and the Ring-tailed Mongoose.
Today is lemur day. I miss the PFT’s with the run through of what we need and what to expect and how long things will take. Poor Alan struggles with English, so I just go off the itinerary I was given and work out myself what I need. I knew that we would be heading into the national park, so pants and sneakers and I would buy a bottle of water at the entrance. But I forgot bug spray and I had no idea on how long I would be in there for. But that is part of the adventure I suppose.
I was up at 6.45am, breakfast at 7.15 and then I met Alan and my guide for the national park, Diamond. You’re not allowed to enter the park without a guide, so it was going to be me and Diamond for the morning looking for Lemurs! The drive to the entrance was only 15 minutes, where we parked and said our good-byes to Alan who was staying behind to look after the car and all our stuff. As we started the walk down into the valley I met Seerista who was our animal spotter. He goes on ahead of us and looks for the lemurs and then texts Diamond to let him know where to come. What a great idea and even better for us as we won’t be roaming around endlessly in the ‘hope’ we may see lemurs. A bit like the gorilla set up in Rwanda. There are 12 species of lemurs in the Ranomafana National Park, 7 of which are active during the day and 5 that are nocturnal, so forget seeing the nocturnals and concentrate on the dayers. I did tell Diamond that I wanted to see all 7 species if possible, if not I would just be happy with seeing one. Can you imagine coming all this way and then not seeing any at all!? Oh how devastating, but like in Africa, they are wild animals with 41,000 hectares to play in, there could be a chance that we may not see something **touchwood**.
After walking down around 100 steps and crossing a bridge, we had only gone around 15 minutes into the rainforest when we came across the very rare Golden Bamboo Lemur. There was just the one and he was having breakfast. We had to go bush to see him, it was exactly like the gorillas where we went bush bashing off the trail, walking up hill in a little mud, vines, trees and rocks to navigate around and over, but the outcome was pretty amazing to see this amazing creature. At one point Diamond took my camera to see if he could get some better shots for me but as we had Seerista keeping an eye out, they saw the that the lemur was starting to move down the forest, so they pulled me out of all the other groups and got me in an awesome position that when the lemur moved he was 2m directly in front of me at, at eye level, and then sat there and ate for around 10 minutes! It was AMAZING! This wasn’t any lemur it was the rare Golden Bamboo Lemur! I got some amazing photos and thanks to my team for getting me in that position.
It was strange as we moved around the rainforest, you would see other trekkers, also with a guide, normally 2 people and a guide, but when they got a lemur sighting there would be around 15 groups all converge to where they were. I’m not sure what trails they were taking, but when we weren’t around the lemurs it was like Diamond and I were the only people in the national park. It was pretty cool, whether on purpose or not to stay out of each other’s way, it wasn’t over run by people so the whole experience was kept to a personal basis if that makes sense. After a further hour in we saw a family of Brown Lemurs that were fighting and jumping from tree to tree, but they were too fast and I couldn’t get a photo of them, the buggers, but that makes 2 species crossed off the list, only 5 more to go! Further in again and we found a family of Milne Edward Sifak Lemurs. These guys are the black and white lemurs and they also had a baby with them. They were quite high up in the trees, but I managed with my super zoom to get some really great photos. Once again there were the 15 groups of people with their guides and also their animal spotters, so there were a lot of people, but the lemurs didn’t seemed fazed by us all. They remind me a little of the chimps we saw in Uganda, long legs with hands, and when they jump from tree to tree they really fly and then grab a branch to hang onto. Seerista was all over it, when a lemur moved he would be calling me over for a better view of a lemur, he really was awesome and always holding the branches out of the way for me and lending me a hand if the terrain got too tough when moving around in the forest. We watched this family for around 40 minutes before heading off and slowly making our way back to headquarters.
We stopped off at a lookout point over the valley and on our way out we saw a Ring-tailed Mongoose, which was pretty cool to see, even though I saw a crap load of them in Botswana, I didn’t let Diamond know that, as he was stoked we got to see one. I didn’t want to be a dream-smasher. So we slowly made out way back, seeing a few birds and just enjoying the rainforest, it was pretty amazing in there with vines, moss covered rocks, trees and animals noises all taking up your visuals. I took so many photos of just the paths and tracks as it was picture perfect. We were nearing the river we crossed at the start when we saw one last family of Brown Lemurs just resting off the path. We were the only 2 people there and we got to watch these guys for around 15 minutes. Just Diamond, me and the lemurs. I got some magic pictures, or money shots here and it was an awesome way to finish off the morning. They are amazing animals and I count myself lucky I got to see in total 3 out of the 7 species and in total around 18 lemurs! Can’t complain about that! We decided to play a trick on Alan and tell him we saw none, to which his face let us know he was horrified till we started to laugh and he caught on that it was a joke. So my 3 hours in Ranofana National Park was amazing, tiring, successful and sweaty. There were people still getting there when we left at 11.15am, according to Diamond that’s too late as they sleep through to midafternoon and then become active again, lucky I had Alan, him and Seerista.
So after tipping the guys 10USD each and saying good-bye we drove into Ranomafana village for an early lunch before hitting the road back to Highway 7 and then onto our lodgings for the night. We only had 60km to get us there, but the roads have deteriorated and some instances we have to stop and go slow, as the bumps and ditches would do damage to the car if we decided to fly over them, and also it wouldn’t be very comfortable I am guessing. We left the main highway just after 1pm and to travel 15km took us an hour, that is how bad the roads, well I wouldn’t even call them that, were. It was slow going, but once again it gives you time to appreciate the scenery and as we were going so slow, people were nearly walking faster than us and looking into the car, so I would say Salama to them all and I rekon I said it like 50 times! We are in the middle of nowhere tonight, we are that far in that there isn’t even phone reception here, what’s the likelihood they have Wi-Fi! Yeah right!
We arrived into the Lac Hotel at 2pm. I tell you I’m loving this free afternoon business. So after getting some hand washing done, I grabbed my laptop, camera and IPod and headed to the restaurant to get yesterday’s blog written and to load what pictures hadn’t been backed up since Cape Town. It was a productive afternoon and after dinner tonight I am going to write todays blog and then I am back to doing the current days blog that night. It makes it easier when you are on your own and with not much happening at the hotel to be able to do my blogging each day, which I prefer and reading back you can probably tell what days have been done off notes a week ago and which ones are written fresh off the day.
Dinner was at 7pm and there was a table of 4 French people across the restaurant from me and they were in hysterics about something, all laughing so hard that they had tears. I do miss that, I haven’t had a belly laugh since leaving Cape Town, you know the type that makes your stomach hurt you are laughing that hard. I did get a laugh from their laugh though, it really is contagious and it bought a smile to my face. There was another French couple, who ordered red wine with their dinner, it must have been too chilled for their liking and they placed the bottle right next to the fire to try and warm it up. The wife was laughing her head off every time he went to retrieve the bottle to see if it had warmed any. They didn’t speak English, but I got the gist of the joke and another smile for them.
The hotel is also set up with free standing cottages. I’m loving the individual building thing. They look like tiny little houses from the front and they all face onto a beautiful fenced garden that has flowers and plants in there, and they are all labeled with a small wooden plaque letting you know what each variety is. Pretty cool.
So good-night from somewhere in the middle of Madagascar.
PS: Diamond taught me some more Malagasy words on our walk back.
Inu vowvow – what’s new?
Si misy – nothing
Ekka – yes
Tis – no
Vari – rice
Hakuhu – chicken
Ormbi – zebu
Maffi – fast
Mura Mura – slow
Vazzar – white person
No comments:
Post a Comment