The wilderness and the wildlife

Madagscar’s national parks have many different landscapes and terrains. There’s also the most incredible fauna diversity; when it comes to figures, I can never remember, but it was pretty evident just walking through the tropical rainforest and dry national park over 4 days that chameleons are plentiful, lemurs are something to behold, and frogs are, well, just everywhere. Lemurs aren’t that shy in these parks as they’ve become accustomed to the human invaders, so it is quite a sight to see them jumping about less than a meter away from you through the trees, stopping occasionally when they find a good leaf or two to nibble on. Our guide said they like bananas, then walked on ahead, so being the naïve lay-people we are, the thought of enticing a lemur down from the trees with a banana on a stick seemed like a good idea. The lemur thought it was a great idea – until the banana (via stick) MOVED DOWN THE TREE!!! “How did that banana do the that? Bananas don’t move! I don’t like this at all. But that banana does smell nice. I wonder if I could just grab- OW it moved again! This is not usual. I’m abandoning banana mission, I think it must be controlled by aliens or something, hey other lemur, watch out for that moving banana. There’s something very suspicious going on here.”

The trademark ravanala (traveller’s tree) spans itself across the skyline like a rising sun, canyons hide the most beautiful treasures of delicate, picturesque waterfalls, a boa constrictor curls motionless next to the entry point of the swimming hole, and tiny frogs jump out right from under your feet as you tramp through puddles. And then there’s the beach. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I at least expected a clothes shop. Mangily is an hour’s 4x4 drive from Toliar, on the south west coast. The lack of fresh vegetables on this sandy village was made up for by the steady supply of meaty fish called Margarette andd langoustine. Fish at least twice a day and I didn’t get tired of it for the 4 days of beach bumming we did after 4 days hiking through those tough trails which rewarded us with their incredible diversity and beauty. 

Even the animal parks in Madagascar are excellent. The Lemurs Park near Tana is a lemur refuge where they aren’t in cages, they have territories and run wild, great for getting up close and personal with them. Lemurs do bite though, so there are guards to shoo the ones with reputations away from the paying tourists and there really is no way to contain them within the park except to chase them, so there are also guards for that. We saw several dancing Sifakas bound over the high wall with ease, the road is not too far away so I hope they have at least learned the road rules ie. Don’t dance in front of a truck!