Wednesday 5 June 2024 – And so it was time to say goodbye to everyone at Masoala Forest Lodge: to Jessie and Alban, who had made us feel so welcome and run everything so efficiently; to Ursula and Pascal, who had shown us so much wildlife and taught us about it; and to Tom, who had added so much context and background to what we were seeing. We were lucky in a way; the high spring tides forced a later-then-usual departure of 9am, which gave us time for a more leisurely breakfast and to say our farewells.
Before we left, though, Jessie showed us the two tree boas, who had now separated. The male, still, presumably in a post-coital glow, didn’t seem to mind us taking a few more photos of him.
Tom went off kayaking
and we left on the boat to Maroantsetra.
You really can hardly see any sign of the lodge, it is so nicely blended in.
The boat trip was, as before, bumpy and almost devoid of interest. Towards Maroantsetra, one passes a couple of islands, the largest of which is called Nosy Mangabe and which is heavily forested.
looking closely, you can see egrets, too many to mention,
and then the waters calm as you reach the shallows around Maroantsetra.
It was clear that the boat had to negotiate some very shallow water in order to reach the landing point; we presumably couldn’t set out until the tide had come in sufficiently to enable the boat to get through.
But then, there we were at the dock
and it looked like quite some shopping had been done for stock to take back to the lodge.
Paola and Kenny were there to meet us and take us back to the airport. As before, the route took us through the periphery of the town
and we eventually bumped our way into the airport
where Fury was waiting for us again, with an aeroplane that looked the same as the one we arrived in,
but which was actually a Cessna 182, rather than the 206 of our previous journey.
Clouds obscured the landscape for a part of our flight, but cleared as we went along, and we took another load of photos of the landscape as we went. Reviewing them later, and given the extra information we’d gleaned from Tom, it was actually quite difficult to understand what was going on below us. For example, parts of this landscape look ravaged, but is it erosion? Was that caused by over-exploitation? There’s plenty of other agriculture happening over to the right.
What are the little lighter-coloured pit marks that dot this landscape?
What’s the story with the grey areas?
These gouges in the landscape: was this mining for something like sapphires? Whatever, if you look carefully, you can see lots of terracing, so there’s clearly still some level of agriculture going on.
This landscape looks terribly scarred, but is it just natural erosion? Or has it been exploited for mining? Again, there’s plenty of agriculture going on around it on the flat bits.
This final photo of Jane’s gives a great insight into the amount of rice planting that goes on, to support this important part of the Malagasy diet.
So many questions, so few answers. Anyway, Fury got us safely down and we were escorted back through the domestic terminal where a driver called Adza (again, ?sp) was awaiting us. He took us back through the colourful streets of the outskirts of Tana
and explained that he would be our driver for the next 12 days or so whilst we explore parts of the island south of Tana. We meet our guide, Kenny, tomorrow and head off eastwards to Andasibe and Mantadia. The next few days should prove to be as educational and absorbing as our time in Masoala, and quite possibly as busy and involving as many photos of wildlife. Stay tuned to find out how our onward journey unfolds.
Tuesday 4 June 2024 – The day started the same way that the preceding days had – having rained all night, it rained on us as we headed to breakfast, which, by the way, was taken every day on the “sea deck”, virtually the only clearly visible building to indicate to passing boats that there is actually a lodge here.
The photo above was taken a couple of days before; this morning, the conditions were much less benign, with a cold wind and some rain. This made the prospect of going out anywhere much less attractive; the original plan A had been for everyone to go for a serene outing on a canoe along a nearby river, and I didn’t much fancy the idea of floating along getting wet, which in any case makes wielding a large, heavy and expensive camera setup inadvisable.
Also, I was getting all behind with writing this blog.
I therefore decided that a morning at leisure, or at least at the laptop, was my plan. Jane and Tom decided eventually that the canoe thing did appeal, and so made ready to go for the short walk down to the river. As they were doing that, Jessie came by to tell us that there was a good snake photo opportunity nearby. She led us through the lodge buildings Out Back (where all the hard work takes place – see later) to this scene.
It was a little difficult to make out what was going on, but it became clear that there were actually two snakes, tree boas, and they were making out.
There’s a snake at the top of the photo, and another one at the bottom. Careful examination revealed its head
and where the action was happening.
Apparently, they would be At It all day, and, while we were careful not to disturb them, they certainly seemed to have their minds on other things.
So whilst I sat in the beach house doing my blogging thing, Jane and Tom departed, in fairly gloomy weather but bright spirits, to their canoe ride. I will let Jane take up the narrative.
A short forest walk (no wildlife of note to report) brought us to the bank of a river and a largeish dugout canoe – the locals make these dugouts from the buttress-rooted trees in the forest, but this one had been treated with an extra skin of fibreglass to make it slightly more robust and smoother for the softie tourist! The boatman and our guide Pascal shared the paddling fore and aft while Tom, Ursula and I perched on the cushioned seats amidships.
The rain held off until the very end of our trip; the vegetation was lush and dripping from the previous showers, and it was very quiet and peaceful.
Of course the air of peace and tranquility is completely misleading, since what is going on here is a silent and almost motionless fight for survival, as the various trees compete for light, air and water; either by being the tallest, or having the biggest leaves, or growing the longest aerial roots:
I say motionless, but in fact trees here can “walk” – a phenomenon we also saw in Costa Rica; aerial roots are thrown out in the direction of improved conditions, be that more air, light, or water, and the tree is therefore gradually supported further and further in that particular direction.
There are no crocodiles or water living predators; we saw a pair of dimorphous herons
and several of the tiny jewel-like kingfishers.
We saw evidence of the presence of the Aye-Aye, a lemur we are very keen to see – they demolish rotting tree trunks to reach the tasty grubs and larvae inside – but no sign of the (nocturnal) beast itself.
Our boatmen managed the river very smoothly, avoiding the many sunken boulders in the rather shallow water
and we were back unscathed and relaxed at the Lodge in time for lunch.
The Masoala Forest Lodge operation is superbly well-run, and yet is a distant outpost of civilisation – Maroantsetra is a 75-minute 40km boat ride away. Ever since we arrived we were wondering how the team dealt with this remoteness such that everything fitted together to give such excellent service to their guests. Jessie had told us that there were, all told, some 57 employees, once you take in the kitchen staff, the hotel service staff and the grounds maintenance staff, all marshalled with great efficiency by the administrative team. Going to look at the tree boas in the morning showed us that there were quite a few buildings behind the scenes, and after lunch Alban offered to show us around. It was really interesting to see how things fitted together so that the guests were properly looked after. We had, for example, wondered where the solar panels were that powered the lodge, and they were part of what was behind the scenes,
and fed into a battery room
where there are a couple of freezers to keep essential supplies. These are used alternately so one can be cleaned whilst the other is in use.
The site also uses another ingenious idea to keep some fruit and vegetables fresh – a charcoal ‘refrigerator’ – the charcoal acts as a dessicant enabling the contents to remain fresh for longer.
For storing other dry goods there’s a building which looks not unlike the horreos we saw in such profusion across Galicia in Spain.
Note the “mushrooms” atop the legs, which serve to keep the rats out (and, yes, they take the steps away at night!). The roof thatching for these types of buildings is made from traveller palm leaves and lasts about four years before needing to be replaced.
Alongside the laundry and kitchen facilities there’s the bread oven
where the bread is baked fresh every day (and the room can be used to dry wet boots as a welcome side effect). The staff sleep in dormitories
and even the lodge’s two dogs have their own traditionally-built kennels.
All of this infrastructure sits behind the beach house, which is where the guests eat lunch and dinner, and, importantly, find the bar.
All of these facilities came together for today’s dinner, which was a traditional Malagasy meal.
The tablecloth is made of traveller palm leaves, and diners also have a spoon made by doing origami with palm leaves. The final table was well loaded with food.
In the foreground, you can see a pile of rice. There were four piles of rice to be shared between the 10 diners, but Jessie pointed out that actually each pile of rice would be what a single Malagasy person would eat in a day; as you can see, rice is an important part of the Malagasy diet. There were kebabs and samosas and kingfish and cassava root and fried sweet potato and beans, and altogether it was a splendid dinner. The way to eat is simply to use the spoon to take a scoop of rice, add a little bit of whatever takes your fancy and eat it as a single shot. And at the end of the meal, you simply roll up the tablecloth to clear the table – a marvellously sustainable approach.
Staff, guests and guides after an excellent traditional Malagasy meal
The last activity of the day was another night walk, with the hope that finally it might be possible to track down the Aye Aye. Once again, I decided to prioritise writing over squelching around in the rain forest (because I thought the likelihood of spotting an Aye Aye was remote), but it wasn’t long before Jane came back from the walk demanding that I come at once to see something. I knew better than to demur, and so picked up the Big Camera and followed. This is what the excitement was about – something that Jane herself had spotted – the guides had missed it!
It’s a Leaf-Tailed Gecko – quite a sizeable beast, probably the better part of a foot from top to bottom. It was not at the best angle for photography, so Pascal chivvied it along a bit so we could get a better view.
It has simply extraordinary eyes,
like the Eye of Sauron in Lord of the Rings. Its other noteworthy feature is the leaf-shaped (shed-able) tail; that, together with its tree-bark-and lichen colour scheme, makes it very difficult to see when perching against a large tree. Since this one was on a thin branch, which allowed its shape and pale underbelly to show, it was less well camouflaged.
After that, it seemed a good idea to join in with the walk, so we all carried on, and, indeed, found a few other creatures.
Tufted Tail Rat
Young Brown Leaf Chameleon
Long-nosed Chameleon
And, among some excitement, Pseudoxyrhopus Tritaeniatus, which any fule kno is the posh name for the Three-striped Ground Snake
This one had lost its left eye somehow – we’re not quite sure how.
That was that for the day’s action. In some ways I regretted not joining in on the canoe outing, but on the other hand I was happy that I had looked through and processed all the outstanding photos and brought the blog up to only a day behind.
This was our last day at Masoala Forest Lodge. The morrow sees us transferring back to Tana in order to continue our Madagascar adventure. This will be the reverse of our journey out – boat, car, light aircraft – but maybe we’ll see some things worth writing about. Who knows?
Monday 3 June 2024 – As if yesterday weren’t busy enough, today has been something of a day of relentless achievement also. We had a comfortable night, lulled, I suppose by the crashing of the waves on the beach outside our “bungalow”. As background noise, this was quite loud, and at times supplemented by heavy rain, but it didn’t keep us awake, and I managed to get down the steps to the bathroom during the night without injuring myself or damaging the property.
We had agreed an outline plan to congregate after breakfast to decide whether to proceed with the plan A half-day rainforest hike; and the weather prospects seemed OK, not that it’s easy, or even possible, to predict from one minute to the next whether it will rain or not. So, off we pottered in one of the lodge’s Zodiacs, with Ursula and Pascal.
Ursula had suggested that we use poles to help us on the hike. I was initially reluctant – I have my manly pride, after all – but when she said that she would be using one, I decided that it might be worth doing; and she provided both Jane and me with suitable sticks. As it turns out, I’m exceedingly glad that I swallowed my pride, as the going was
pretty tricky underfoot and
somewhat up-and-down. It turns out that the first 20 minutes or so was a test to see whether we were up to the rest of the hike. (We passed.) The trail proper started at a noticeboard
whose photo gave a clue as to the main objective of the hike – to see if we could find, view and (of course) photograph the red-ruffed lemur. The going continued to be quite tough in places; the combination of that, and both guides’ insistence on “mora, mora” (slowly, slowly) – as that way you’re less likely to miss something and also to injure yourself through over-ambitious orienteering – meant that my Garmin watch refused to credit us with moving at all for most of the way up to the top. (I turned off auto-pause for the way down, which is how I know that we climbed about 130 metres during the hike.)
Given that rainforests are supposed to be a haven for biodiversity, there was very little by way of wildlife to be seen. Ursula is something of an expert on the plants of the forest, particularly also on their medicinal properties, and so was able to point out some interesting things on the way. For example, this particular palm tree
is unusual in that dead leaves don’t drop, but stay attached and continue to provide nutrients to the plant itself. There were some substantial tree ferns
which are a marker that one is actually in proper rainforest. Ursula pointed out what looked like fungus on another tree,
which is actually the fruit of the tree, which is colloquially called a cauliflower tree. If you look just above the “fungus”, you can see another fruit about to burst open, too. Buttress-rooted trees were not uncommon, and some of them had very substantial root systems
(distinguished academic provided to show scale). Generally the rainforest was quite a spectacular environment.
On a couple of occasions, Ursula and Pascal had to engage in bridge-building
in order to ensure we could safely cross some of the streams that were, erm, streaming down the hill.
By this stage, we had spent some two and a half hours squelching up and down in search of the elusive varecia rubra, and time was beginning to press if we were to return to our start point punctually. Ursula and Pascal decided that they would try one last possible location, so off we went and
bingo! There it was, apparently guarding some fruit to stop other lemurs (typically white-fronted brown lemurs) from stealing it. (I guess that’s how the guides knew there was a good chance it was there.)
By the way, it was bloody miles away up in the treetops. I am frankly astonished, as ever, that they could see anything. Even through a 560mm telephoto lens (that’s about 10x magnification) what was on view was this.
You can imagine that to mere mortals like Jane, Tom and me that was simply a bit of tree, but the guides could somehow see that this blob was not just a trick of the light but was actually a lemur.
A word on image quality, here. Both Jane and I were sporting Samsung Galaxy Ultra phones, and it was possible to get a clear image on either of them.
This is an untouched image from one of the phones (left), put beside an enhanced one from my Nikon-Zf-with-hulking-great-lens-attached (right).
On the face of it (and particularly viewed on a phone screen), they look pretty similar. But look at them in detail and a difference is much clearer – phone first, then Nikon.
It’s a great tribute to the imaging power of modern phones that you can get such astonishingly good results; but a large sensor and top-quality lens still trumps that if you’re after the best quality results.
In other words, it was worth lugging that sodding lens all the way up the hill.
Just as bloody well, really – that was the only wildlife we saw during the entire morning. But we were really glad that Ursula and Pascal were able to find the elusive red-ruffed lemur for us.
We returned to the lodge for a well-deserved and, as usual, excellent lunch followed, in my case, by a bit of a siesta until it was time for tea followed by another sundowner cocktail hour. Once again, this was interrupted by calls to go and look at some wildlife, one before dusk
White Chameleon
and one after.
White-fronted Brown Lemur (male)
After dinner, we did another night walk scramble, which turned up a few more images. Our little mouse lemur was there again, and looked very unimpressed with all the lights being shone at him.
I got another chance at a decent image of a woolly lemur, with slightly better results than yesterday.
Woolly Lemur
We saw a big-nosed chameleon, although it’s not, frankly, easy to see why it gets that name from the photo I was able to take.
Big-nosed Chameleon
There were some tree crabs in, erm, trees,
and there were moths and frogs, too, but you’ve seen one Cyligramma Joa Boisduval, you’ve seen ’em all. Oh, you haven’t? OK, then:
Cyligramma Joa Boisduval
They are rather lovely, aren’t they?
Finally, a cricket match.
This night walk was interrupted even more markedly by the rain, so we hastened back to the lounge for a final cup of tea and consideration of the possibilities for the morrow before retiring for the night. The main candidate seemed to be a canoe paddle up a nearby river, but again this is going to be subject to whether the weather permits; the prospect of drifting slowly along whilst getting drenched is not an appealing one. Who knows what we’ll get up to?
