Category Archives: Uncategorised

Mitsinjo reserve and the journey back to Antananarivo

3 Replies

Sunday June 9 2024 – The afternoon today was spent retracing our tyre tracks towards Antananarivo. But first we had one final wildlife walk in the Mitsinjo reserve within the Analamazaotra park.  This actually started from the same place as yesterday’s night walk, but today we entered a reserve where yesterday we walked along the road. We met Abraham there, and before we started the walk proper, he was able to show us a young Elephant-ear Chameleon that he’d spotted on a tree outside the reserve.

“Mitsinjo” comes from the Malagasy for “looking ahead”; it is a private reserve set up by guides to promote conservation and community tourism.

It also features the steepest trails with the trickiest access of all the walks we’ve done so far.

It starts of with a fairly standard-looking path, oh yes.

But this gives way very soon to narrow, steep and tricky paths through the rainforest.  Before we started up the steep bit, Abraham showed us a reforesting centre that has been set up in the reserve.

Original species – some trees, some other plants – are started in pots, which are set up in a potting shed

beyond which is a nursery area for bring on the more mature seedlings.  it’s very encouraging to see initiatives like this, dedicated to countering the ravaging deforestation that the island has suffered over the years.

The Steep Bit was only 60 metres or so of vertical ascent, but was quite hard work. However, the walking we’d recently done in Spain served us well and so when Abraham offered us a rest at a specially-constructed rest area

we were able to decline, and so pressed on. As we did so, Abraham spent a lot of time on his phone, and it became clear that he was chatting to other guides who were out in the reserve, to get pointers to where there were creatures to see.  The first of these was an Indri, who was not inclined to be helpful to us paparazzi.

Abraham woke him/her up by playing Indri calls from his phone, and so we got a bleary glance

before it decided to go back to sleep.

Some time later, we came across a male Parson’s Chameleon, obligingly sitting at head height in a tree.

I took some detailed photos; I’m fascinated by ithe eyes which look like elephant eyes within the spooky, independently-moving chameleon socket.

The Parson’s Chameleon is the largest of the Madagascan chameleons.  This one was apparently not particularly large, as they go – here’s a photo to give you an idea of scale – as I say, he’s head height above the ground.

Nearby, Abraham also found us a young female of the species, which was a distinctly different colour.

As she matures (in about a month’s time) her skin will turn more green and she will end up a darker shade of green than the male we just saw.

Within a few minutes, we found a small family group of common brown lemurs, but they were very high, difficult to see and not very active.  I got a snap of two young’uns,

but that was all that was on offer, really. Towards the end of the walk, I got this photo

which looks like just these leaves, you know? But on closer examination, there’s a cricket there.

That was it for the Andasibe area.  We bade Abraham goodbye and set out on the road back to Tana, so the rest of this post concerns the scenes we saw on that journey.

We passed once again through the substantial town of Moramanga, which is the site of a national monument to the 1947 Malagasy Uprising, a revolt after the failure of Madagascar’s 1945 effort to achieve independence through legal channels. Malagasy nationalists, armed mainly with spears, attacked military bases and French-owned plantations in the eastern part of the island. The French response was, in a word, barbaric. It tripled the number of troops on the island to 18,000, primarily by transferring soldiers from French colonies elsewhere in Africa, and then engaged in a variety of terror tactics designed to demoralize the population. The French military force carried out mass execution, torture, war rape, torching of entire villages, collective punishment and other atrocities such as throwing live Malagasy prisoners out of airplanes. In the 20th Century, for Christ’s sake!

Combining this with the French political skulduggery that gave rise to the 2009 defenestration of a president who was improving the lot of the islanders in many ways, but who was moving in a direction that didn’t suit French interests (which led to the worst economic crisis in the island’s history) leads one to lower one’s opinion of the French political classes. This is further lowered by hearing about its further manoeuvring to prevent his re-election in 2018 by getting the rules of the election changed to exclude him. Furthermore, the French are still pulling political strings and interfering with Malagasy affairs to the point where many locals consider the island’s 1960 independence to be a sham.  All in all, these actions present a very sorry story about French foreign policy in Madagascar.  The celebrations on June 26th – Madagascar’s Independence Day – will be more muted than they might have been had independence truly been achieved.

A feature of Malagasy life – possibly a consequence of the economic turmoil that started in 2009 – is that everyone seems to have a side hustle – farmers, for example, will often make charcoal; the fires that can sometimes be seen dotting the landscape.  We passed one who had finished making charcoal and was busy bagging it up in standard-sized bags, either for his own use at home or, more likely, for selling on. The grass visible at the top of the bags is just to keep the charcoal in.

Every village we passed has an array of (normally, it has to be said, ramshackle) shops, most of which sell foodstuffs.  Occasionally there are roadside markets as well, like this fruit market we passed.

Because the route we were on (National Route 2) is a major route for transporting of goods from the port of Toamasina to Tana, the heavy traffic necessitates much repair work. This does sometimes get done, which inevitably causes huge queues to form.  Drivers therefore often nip out to have a quick roadside pee – so we had a giggle at the “roadworks” sign, which actually appears to be advertising a toilet.

We eventually got past the roadworks, and took a sandwich lunch, once again provided by our hotel, at a pleasant riverside picnic area,

which provided an opportunity to photograph a Madagascan Sparrowhawk, which is just as handsome as its European counterpart.

Some way down the road, we passed a crowd scene, which proved to be a cockfight. Cockfighting is a recognised activity in Madagascar; according to Kenny, it’s not the vicious sport that one finds in illegal and undergound events in other countries, because the fight ends as soon as one bird leaves the arena. It was amusing that one chap spotted Jane videoing and kindly stepped out of the way so we could get a little sense of the flapping and jumping that was going on inside the ring.

Mr. man got a thumbs-up from Jane and gave one in return.  We passed other cockfighting venues, one of which was a permanent arena, advertising itself on its walls.

Another interesting scene we passed was a laundry party,

where many members of a community will get together to do their washing at a stream or other water source.  it’s a great opportunity for community bonding, community spirit and gossip; it can also be a chance, for example after a bereavement, for people to help the healing process by gathering to wash the clothes of the deceased as part of closure.

Everywhere we went, the scenery featured rice paddies.

The journey was torturous as well as tortuous, and it was mid-afternoon when we arrived in the outskirts of Tana and could start to see the city itself.

On the horizon in the photo above, you can see two huge buildings – the Royal Palace (left) and the former Prime Minister’s Palace.

Our hotel for the night was La Varangue, which was simply (and wonderfully) bonkers, evident from the moment you stepped into its courtyard,

into the hallway,

and thence into the bar

where they also had a reception desk.  We checked in, and were led through the restaurant terrace

which has two remarkable pictures on its wall

across a courtyard

to our room, which had a veranda with a nice view across the city.

The restaurant is something of a destination restaurant, and the decor there is just as bonkers as the rest of the place.

The food was very good, and we ended a very enjoyable dinner by having a chat with a Dutch couple we’d met in the primary rainforest in Mantadia; they were on their honeymoon, and, having been in the south of Madagascar heading north, were bound for Mauritius to decompress, whereas we, of course, are now heading south.

That journey southwards starts on the morrow, with a day spent mainly driving in the direction of Antsirabe.  Maybe it will be an interesting drive, maybe it won’t; stay tuned to find out which.

 

 

 

Analamazaotra and Andasibe Nature Reserves

1 Reply

Saturday 8 June 2024 – We had a really content-rich day today, as you’ll see from the length of this post (I suggest you get yourself a cuppa or a glass of something cold and settle down to it if you want to get through it in one sitting). As usual, it started with an 0530 alarm call and an 0730 departure.  We had only two destinations, but did four walks during the day.  In the case of three of them, I was struck by the similarity of wildlife walks and Wagner operas.  It was Rossini who said, “Wagner has some wonderful moments, but some dreadful quarter hours”. Similarly, walking around in Madagascar contains some wonderful moments, but also hours of tedious crashing through undergrowth, overgrowth, mud and tree roots. Sometimes in the rain.  I got quite tired and grumpy at one stage, since we’d only managed about 10 hours’ sleep over two nights; but nonetheless we came out with some good photos and some lovely experiences.

I haven’t talked much about the weather we’ve experienced so far, apart from moaning about mentioning the rain. Actually, we’ve been quite lucky in that it hasn’t often rained on us so as to ruin our enjoyment. The temperatures have been on the cool side – about 12°C in the mornings, a few degrees warmer during the days.  Today ended up in wonderful sunshine and temperatures in the low twenties Celsius, but as we left our hotel room, the start of the day was misty and cool.

Walk No. 1 was in a local National Park, the Analamazaotra Reserve.  Kenny told us that this was secondary rainforest (i.e. there’s been a degree of replanting over the years), that it was smaller than the primary forest we’d visited in Mantadia and more visited; also it was Saturday, so it was likely to be quite popular.  This view was supported by the activity in the hotel car park.

There were several tourist minivans awaiting groups from the hotel, and we knew that one such group was a bunch of Americans; we wondered if they were headed for the same place as us (see later).

Like most of the reserves we’ve visited, Analamazaotra offers toilets at the entrance.  There’s little doubt which is the way to the gents, that’s for sure.

We met Abraham, as before, and set off into the reserve.

The double line of blocks is something we’ve come across several times.  It’s not necessarily unbroken, but is a common way of laying the trails.  Abraham, of course, led us off the trails a few times, so there was quite a lot of crashing through undergrowth.  It wasn’t raining, but it obviously had been, as we were mercilessly dripped on by the forest trees.

It was half an hour before we came across anything noteworthy, and that was a quite substantial termites nest.

Someone had poked a hole in the top, and the termites were busy mending it.

At around the same place there was a wonderfully-shaped spider’s web,

but it was a further 30 minutes before we came across any major wildlife.  However, it was a splendid encounter, with a family group of Diademed Sifakas, At  first, they were a bit elusive;

but eventually we got good visibility of them, feeding in a really athletic fashion.

They were lovely to watch, so I took lots of pictures. Obviously.

The popularity of the reserve was demonstrated by the number of other people who had congregated to watch and photograph the action.

I have no right to be snarky about this, but I quite resented all these other people trying to get in on my action. At one stage, the entire group of about a dozen Americans from our hotel tramped past us in their search for things to see. The place was really quite crowded.

A few minutes after we left the Sifakas, we heard Indris shouting at each other, much closer than we had the day before, so I recorded a bit more of the sound, as it’s really (a) distinctive and (b) loud – apparently the Indri call is among the loudest animal calls known.

We did get to see the Indris, but they were very high up and I didn’t get any striking images or video, just a few snaps.

We pressed on again, and eventually Abraham led us off another path, which took us by a fish farm, something one doesn’t normally expect to find in a forest.

It’s partly a research facility, partly commercial, but the farming seems to be done in a responsible way, starting fish in the smaller enclosures you see above, and moving them between enclosures as they grow, then into successively larger enclosures before extraction.

A few metres on from this view of the fish farm, we got the second charming encounter of the day; two Eastern Grey Bamboo lemurs, stuffing their cute little faces with loquats.

The path then led to the Green Lake.

Yup. It’s green.  Not a lot to add to that, though, I have to say. And it was the last thing we saw on the walk, which was five kilometres spread over four hours, hence (looking at how many encounters we had) my comment about the similarity with Wagner’s music.

On the way back for lunch at the hotel, we stopped at Andasibe village and walked through it.  It’s very picturesque and colourful any day of the week, but this was market day!

Obviously, I took a load of photos of this very vibrant, colourful and noisy place. I have put them up on Flickr, if you’d like to take a look. Walking through the village also gave us an insight into what people of colour must feel in the UK; everyone was smiling, friendly and welcoming – but we were the only white faces in the village. I felt like an intruder, even though I wasn’t being looked at that way.

It was now lunchtime, the sun had come out and it was a glorious day.

During the afternoon, we returned to the VOIMMA (community-run) reserve at Andasibe, as Jane wanted to see some chameleons during the day time when we’d see their best colours. Thus started another Wagnerian walk.

After about half an hour, we saw a Parson’s Chameleon, which is the largest of the Madagascan chameleons.

Chameleons move very slowly.

We saw very little for the next 40 minutes or so. But then what happened was rather lovely – a group of common brown lemurs came to play with us.

I had never expected to get this close to lemurs, but these were clearly habituated to humans.  They didn’t even appear to mind when the arsehole of a Frenchman who was also at the scene started using them for selfies and had to be warned off actually touching them.  The vacuousness of some people utterly bewilders me.

We saw no wildlife of any pith or moment for the rest of the walk, but our path took by the river, across which was a Sacred Place.

This is reserved for spiritual occasions. The colours, red and white, represented the colours of the king’s first and second wives in those times when the island had a monarch (deposed by the French in 1897). It seems to be used to mark special occasions, sometimes accompanied by an animal sacrifice.

After an all-too-brief rest back at the hotel, we embarked on the final walk of the day, a night walk around the Analamzaotra reserve.  This was clearly also a popular option for a Saturday night.  We started off along a road and there were dozens of people in front of us all heading along the same route.  The path led by a lake, and it was faintly amusing to see our American gang from the hotel walking along the opposite side,

We didn’t see much, to be honest.  A poor unfortunate Goodman’s mouse lemur got spotted

and caused another of those feeding frenzies which I find so uncomfortable.

Apart from that, all we saw was a small (but pretty) frog

and a couple of big-nosed chameleons.

A note, here.  Their noses might be big, but they themselves are tiny.

Thus ended a day which seemed to be largely filled with tramping round dripping rainforest, but which had actually had some really lovely moments.

Sorry to have droned on for so long about the day, and well done for reaching this point. We leave Andasibe tomorrow and take the five-hour drive back to Tana, albeit via a final wildlife walk, so I doubt there’ll be that much to write about. You’ll have to keep reading these pages to find out, won’t you?

 

 

 

 

 

Mantadia National Park

3 Replies

Friday 7 June 2024 – What with yesterday’s night walk and a latish dinner, having to get up at 0530 this morning wasn’t particularly welcome, but, then again, we’re travelling, and early starts seem to figure frequently when we do this.  We compensated for the early start with a sumptuous breakfast before meeting Kenny and Haja for our day in Mantadia National Park, which held out the prospect of seeing Indri and Sifaka lemurs.

I say “day”. We only spent about four hours actually walking around in the National Park looking for interesting things, but the entire process took nearly double that, because the drive to get to our starting point took a long time. The distance we had to cover wasn’t all that great – perhaps 17km – but the going was exceedingly tough.

It was a misty morning as we picked up Abraham

and we started out on our journey.  The road was never a good surface, but before long we were bumping along an extremely rough track

The track passed through a village

Note the chickens sheltering under this house

and led to a control gate, where Abraham showed our entry tickets.  From there, it was 13km to the place where we could leave the car and start walking – another hour and a quarter of this horribly bumpy progress. On the way, we passed a work party

who seemed to be replanting original tree species as well as (we hoped) maintaining the track. This track

has fallen into disuse largely as a consequence of the 2009 Madagascar “coup”. The president at the time, who had been in power since 2002, was ousted in a way that the international community condemned and so immediately withdrew financial support and investment, precipitating one of the worst economic crises in the island’s history. There is a suggestion that the French were behind the defenestration of the president, who had overseen a successful period in the island’s development, but seemed to be moving in directions counter to France’s interests.  As far as Mantadia National Park is concerned, the practical upshot was a withdrawal of the support necessary to maintain the access road in good condition; it used to be possible to drive coaches along it, but this is clearly not possible now.  It seems to me that this reduces the inflow of punters and therefore cash for maintaining the facility, so it is in something of a downward spiral.

Anyhoo….

The car was a bit muddy by the time we parked up.

Haja walked off a short way and came back quite excited about something he’d seen.  I think he rather hoped it would spook Jane but I told him no,

she was not afraid of snakes (this was another tree boa). Then Abraham led Jane, Kenny and me off into the forest, which is so-called primary rainforest, in other words largely untouched by human activity, with old trees and an undisturbed forest floor.

Well, not quite undisturbed; there were signs that things have been put in place to facilitate the ability to walk around.

We started a few minutes after 9am, and it wasn’t long before we saw our first lemur,

or, rather, lemurs – this was a group of three Eastern Woolly lemurs, one of whom we’d (hopefully briefly) woken up. As we walked further, we heard the distinctive sound of Indri staking their territorial claims.

Our path appeared, though, to be taking us away from the calls we could hear, and we wandered around for the better part of an hour without seeing any lemurs at all.  We did see a rather spectacular ants’ nest

and a fungus the like of which I’d never come across before,

but I felt that this was just temporising.  What did we want? Lemurs! When did we want them? Now! Fortunately, Abraham spotted one for us.

In fact there was a group of at least four Common Brown lemurs.

We wandered on, hoping to come across some more lemurs. Without much success, it has to be said, for another three quarters of an hour.  However, we did get a rare treat,

a Madagascan Pygmy Kingfisher; these birds are quite difficult to find.

Just a few minutes after that, we found our Indri!

In fact, there were a couple of Indri moving around in the trees,

including this female, a shot I’m really quite pleased to get.

There were two slightly amusing aspects to this encounter.  We had come across another group, two Dutch people with their guide, and as we were taking photos of this group of Indri, they were in the environs, taking photos too, having spotted the Indri themselves. There’s obviously a little competition between the guides, because Abraham said to me, quietly, “but we saw them first“.

The other comedy moment was the expression on the faces of the Indri, because each of the three guides were playing Indri calls on their phones, to try to attract the attention of the lemurs.  I suspect the Indri were thinking “what the bloody hell is going on here?”

It went quiet again after the excitement of seeing the Indri.  I fell to wondering what else we might expect, and remembered that Kenny had mentioned that there might be Sifakas around. It struck me that we would like to Si one of them Fakas, and, before I knew it,

there it was – a Diademed Sifaka! There was another one nearby, too,

but it was too busy feeding itself (very noisily!) to be interested in us.

It wasn’t long before Abraham spotted some movement among the trees which resolved itself as a group of Red-bellied Lemurs making their way through the trees.  I found the next half an hour very frustrating, as all I got were photos like this

and this.

These lemurs were very active, and were moving quite swiftly along; they’re very agile and were leaping from branch to branch with gay abandon, which is marvellous to watch but an utter bastard to photograph. Our group – and the Dutch group, too – crashed through the undergrowth trying to keep up with these lemurs and get ourselves into a position where one could get a clear view for a photo. Crashing through primary rainforest is pretty unrewarding, as there are all sorts of vines and trailing branches to trip up the unwary.  I became grimly [grumpily, more like – Ed] resigned to not being able to get a clear shot, when all of a sudden they stopped moving for just long enough to get some photos.

This was the male of the troop.  There were some young ones playing about in upper branches

and I managed to get a clear shot of one of them, which was very cute indeed.

By this stage, we’d been chasing around the forest for well over three hours, but had seen no fewer than five different species of lemur, as well as the kingfisher. This counts as a very rich haul; apparently a group that had been there the day before came away having seen none, so we were very lucky indeed, as well as being indebted to the skill of our guides, Abraham and Kenny, in spotting them and, further, finding the right position to get clear photos. So, tired but happy, we headed back to the car, where a packed lunch, prepared by our hotel, was waiting for us.

Then we just had to repeat the slow grind of the bumpy ride back to the hotel – Haja certainly earned his corn with the three-plus hours he spent wrestling the car along that benighted track.  Amazingly, whilst driving along, he actually spotted another lemur!

This was an Eastern Grey Bamboo lemur; it was a bit tricky to get the right angle for a clear shot, but I think I managed in the end.

Not that one is counting, of course – perish the thought – but six species of lemur in a day! It was by turns boring, frustrating, tiring and rewarding – an excellent outing overall.

We had planned to stop in the village of Andasibe on our way back so that we could wander round what is a picturesque place; but the heavens opened as we drove back (more luck! it could have rained whilst we were out in the forest) so we simply headed back to the hotel.

Tomorrow’s plan involves a shorter drive to a longer walk, to be taken in the Analamazaotra National Park – more chances to see Indri and Sifaka lemurs.  This is secondary rainforest and a more popular tourist destination, apparently, so the lemurs are more habituated to humans, so it should be interesting to see what effect that has on the chances to see and photograph whatever we happen across.