Tag Archives: Scenery

Activities at Anjajavy – and Farewell

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Tuesday to Friday 18-21 June 2024 – We had three days to relax at Anjajavy before we had to return home. Following is a summary of it all, therefore this is a Long Post Alert.

As well as being a splendid place to relax e.g. after two weeks’ relentless tourism, crashing through forest and bouncing along dodgy roads, Le Lodge at Anjajavy offers a variety of Things To Do, some at no extra charge and some at, it must be said, prices which cause a sharp intake of breath; for example, a 1-hour night walk with a guide is €50 per person with an additional €50 for a limited group. In other words it would have cost €150 for Jane and me to do a guided night walk; for one hour, even taking into context the overall cost of the holiday travel, this is too steep. So we didn’t do that, but confined ourselves to things that were on offer at no extra charge. Typically, there were two of these each day, one starting at 0900, the other at 1600. There was also afternoon tea by the rather lovely pond in an area called The Oasis,

1990s Britpop in a single image

where, if we were lucky, we could see lemurs frolicking in the surrounding trees, and possibly other wildlife also.

Here’s a summary of what we got up to.

Sakalava Walk

Our relatively early arrival on Tuesday meant that we could participate in this afternoon activity, which was advertised as a chance to explore the different terrains in the Reserve, including a path which villagers working at Le Lodge would take to walk to work.  We were taken by car a short distance, walked a while and were picked up and driven back to the lodge.  Our guide was a young lad called Tom.

Tom led us along a well-defined trail, which led through a specially constructed gap in the fence

designed to be big enough for humans to squeeze through, but not Zebu; we had entered an area where traditionally Zebu would be herded for grazing, and through which local villagers would walk to get to work. Here, we got our first view of one of the species of lemurs to be found in the Reserve, the Coquerel’s Sifaka, which is a beautiful creature.

As is normal with these lemurs, this was a family group, and one of the females had a tiny baby, which it carried on its belly.  I may have got a shot of it – we’re frankly not quite sure if what you can see on her belly is actually the clinging baby or not. Your call.

I also got my first view of Tsingy; I had seen this mentioned in articles but wasn’t sure actually what it was. It is karstic stone into which groundwater has gouged fissures. Anjajavy has areas of Grey Tsingy

which is formed from limestone. There is also Red Tsingy in other areas of Madagascar, which is the same idea, but in sandstone and therefore a lot more fragile. More on Tsingy later.

We continued into an area with Mangrove trees in it.

You can just about make out the roots sprouting from the ground around it, which is a good indication of the type of tree. The big one is many, many years old, the smaller ones, as you might infer, being younger, but still some decades in age.

Our path led among these Mangroves; it became first muddy, and then

much wetter – full-blown swamp, in fact.  I was not particularly happy about this, as I had merely expected mud and puddles and so was wearing long trousers, walking shoes and socks. [Shorts and sandals in my case, ha ha – Ed] But there was little choice but to wade through the water, being rather careful about where we put our feet, to avoid stumbling and falling. Where there were mud banks, there were tiny mud skippers

who scattered if one stepped near them.

You can pick up a fallen Mangrove seedpod, which has the remains of the flower on its tip, and take the flower off.

If the remnant shows a little  spike such as you see above, it is ready to grow, and can be planted just by putting it directly into the mud.

Within two weeks, it will start to sprout leaves and will grow satisfactorily into another Mangrove tree if left alone for long enough.  We could see a few that had been planted by other tourists

and also some that had, we were told, been systematically planted as project sponsored by the Lodge to repopulate the area.

The repopulation project is important to the overall health of the Reserve. Mangroves are important for the environment: they support biodiversity through providing critical habitat for a variety of species; they act as a defense against soil erosion; they sequester carbon by storing it in their biomass; and they have cultural significance among the local people – one area, which was once a rich source of fish, they call fady, sacred or taboo, where silence should be observed.

The Crab Path – To The Batcave!

On the Wednesday morning, we set out from the lodge on a path signposted as the Crab Path. Anjajavy has two varieties of crab, a land crab and one called the Hairy-legged Crab, which is the one we hoped to be able to see.  Both sorts dig and live in holes, so it was not a given. We did see other wildlife, of course.

Bees had made their nest in this limestone formation

Chabert Vanga

Flycatcher, taking time off from catching flies

We also saw a Coquerel’s Sifaka near the path.

He didn’t look all that happy, and there’s a chunk missing from his left ear. Tom, who again was guiding us, told us that he had been ejected from a family group after losing a fight to be the alpha male, so he would be solitary unless a) the alpha male who defeated him died, or b) he could creep back into his old, or perhaps another, group by using very servile body language and behaviour. It sounds a sad story, but it is, after all, Nature taking its course.

There were several large crab holes: one of them contained a crab which we could make out bits of by shining a torch down it; beside another, a crab had been digging, and so there was a large pile of black, oozing mud by its hole; and one was actually out and about.

This was a substantial crab, possibly as much as a foot across, and it looked dead sinister when it started towards us – but it was only retreating to its hole.

As well as crabs, the walk offered the opportunity to see subfossil examples of giant lemurs (now extinct for 500 years through human activity, apparently).  To do this we had to get into a cave, which required us to get Geared Up

Your intrepid blogger donning hard hat and harness

and to clamber down a 5-metre ladder.

Your intrepid Editor nearing the bottom of the ladder

The cave itself was not huge, but nonetheless quite spectacular

and we had to make our way carefully a little further down

in order to see the bones of this creature.  There were two sets of remnant bones (called subfossils because they’re not old enough to be grown-up, proper, fossils). The first one we saw is the smaller of the two.

To help orient you, I’ve circled its skull, which you’re viewing as from above. There are also leg bones to be seen lower and to the right.

The first set is actually under (salt) water

The other subfossil was of a larger beast; the main things you can see here are its skull and a couple of leg bones.

The second set of subfossil bones

At their largest, these creatures would have been gorilla-sized; these two probably fell into a hole whilst fighting, which just goes to show that violence really doesn’t pay.

As we climbed out, it became clear that this was, indeed, a Bat-cave!

The Tsingy Yard

Later on on the Wednesday, we were ferried a short distance by car, where we had a walk along a path through a particularly striking set of Tsingys, at times looking almost like an art exhibition.

“Tsingy” is Malagasy for “Stone that cannot be walked on barefoot”. You can see why.

The Baobab Walk

Some 15 minutes drive from the lodge is an avenue of Baobabs.

Like Tsingy, Baobabs come in Grey and Red, and there are many Red baobabs among the Anjajavy crop.

They come in all shapes and sizes

and, sadly, are threatened by increasingly high levels of seawater at high tide; salt water kills them.  So the team at the Reserve are trying to plant new ones, on higher ground.

However, it’s not just as simple as taking seeds and planting them. Baobab seeds are more likely to germinate if they have been through the digestive tract of a creature. When the Giant Tortoises were roaming the area, they acted as a vector for Baobabs, being one of the few creatures which could crack open a Baobab fruit and eat the flesh (and, of course, the seeds).

The other significant sight on this walk was something that Jane spotted;

tracks of a fossa, Madagascar’s largest carnivore – weasel-ish, something like a cross between a cat and a dog – which we’d dearly love to see in the flesh, but probably won’t, as they’re very shy and reclusive. Unless you’re a lemur, in which case you are dinner.

The Salt-Wells Walk

The limestone karst formations which erupt above ground as tsingys also, of course, continue underground. The passage of water through the stone creates channels which evidently reach the sea; the water covering the bones in the bat-cave was salt water and that cave is a good 250m from the nearest shore. This walk led to two salt water wells, equally far from the sea, which fill and drain according to the tides. The first was a bit of a scramble to reach…

Our path then led along the beach for a short distance

before turning inland again to reach the second salt water well.

In the same area are several caves which have been used in the past as resting places for the dead, according to local custom. This one was evidently of a fisherman, since a boat, as well as amulets and figures of spirit guardians, mark the place. The wall of small stones is a relatively recent addition as villagers were uncomfortable with the bones being on display (presumably to tourist such as ourselves).

Afternoon Tea

Served at 1700 daily beside the lily pond at The Oasis,

this was an opportunity to relish the relative cool of the late afternoon, and a chance to see lemurs as they came by on their afternoon patrols. Engagingly, Le Lodge operates on an artificial time zone, one hour ahead of the rest of Madagascar. This carries the benefit of extending the daylight time to make the afternoon tea a delightful time as the day cools.

Common Brown Lemurs and Coquerel’s Sifakas routinely came by towards 6pm and we could admire their agility as they clambered and leapt through the trees surrounding us.

These creatures are so beautiful and so eminently watchable that it’s difficult not to keep trying to get just that one extra great photo.  The Oasis lawn during teatime was dotted with people watching and photographing these lovely lemurs, who, although not fed by humans, are quite habituated to them.

“Hi, Douglas. What are you up to?”

Other guests

Among the Anjajavy photos, there are pictures of some of the other guests whose company we enjoyed at the lodge. Above, you can see one of them, Douglas, who was accompanied by his wife, Robin and their friend Val. They were on our flight up from Tana, as were a younger couple, Jenny and Sam, who had been on an itinerary around the north of the island and who, it turned out, were driven to Andasibe and back by Aine, the chap who had greeted us on our arrival to Madagascar; it was they who told us how to spell his name. Also joining the Lodge a couple of days after we arrived were Shirley and Ian, completing a gemütlich group of kindred spirits (the spirits in question being mainly rum and gin).

There were two other guests, an American couple, but they completely ignored us all, which seemed strange, but, hey….

Other animals

We’ve seen 20 species of lemur during our time here. Not that we’ve been counting or anything.  As well as them and the other animals you’ve seen so far, we have seen Banded Iguanas,

Drongos (yes, really) and Parrots (a very dull colour),

and the lesser-spotted bathroom frog,

a little chap who persisted in finding his way back to our bathroom no matter how often we tipped him into the bushes or how firmly we closed the doors and windows.

There was also the remarkable Coconut-Collecting Pool Guy. There are footholds carved into the trees, but still…

And…farewell

Saturday June 22 2024 – I write this as Jane and I sit in the familiar surroundings of Room 24 at the Relais des Plateaux hotel – the very room we first stayed in on arrival to Madagascar.

Frederic joined us on the drive to the airport from the Lodge and we were able to tell him how much we’d enjoyed our stay.  He then had to marshal the incoming guests – 16 of them!  It took two aeroplanes to deliver them.

The flight down was uneventful, and we were delighted to be met at Tana airport by Haja, who transferred us here to the Relais des Plateaux, and who will also take us back to the airport later for our flight back to the cold, wet weather that’s bound to await in Europe.

Oh, wait…

Our time at Le Lodge was supremely relaxing; a great end to a wonderful three weeks exploring a new country and an unfamiliar culture. Although our phones are full of photos and our brains are full of new experiences, we realise that we’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to understanding Madagascar; but what we have experienced has been intense, educational and fun.

After previous travels, I have often done a valedictory post to sum up our impressions of a place, but Madagascar is too complex and varied to even consider doing that.  I hope that these pages give a reasonably coherent impression of our 23 days as strangers in a strange land.  We’re very grateful to Kate at Whisper and Wild and to Tamana, the local agency, as well as all the teams at all the places we’ve stayed for creating an absorbing itinerary that took us faultlessly around fascinating and welcoming places across 1,000km of a remarkable and unique island.

Maybe we’ll be back!

 

A scramble in Isalo National Park

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Saturday 15 June 2024 – Le Jardin du Roy is very nicely put together. The rooms are spacious and comfortable; my main gripe is that there’s not enough light to see what you’re doing.  I suppose that this is a consequence of running from solar power and/or a generator, but it makes finding things (e.g. a black laptop on a dark surface in an underlit room) very frustrating. The internet availability was pretty poor, too, but the food was good and the service very agreeable.

Its buildings were in very lovely stonework,

and whoever designed or crafted it put several “hidden” things among the stones. At a basic level, you could find things like this star among the stones.

but there were more complicated creations as well.

Two lemurs and a palm tree

A nativity scene in our room

The day dawned, as I imagine is a regular pattern at this time of year (beginning of the Malagasy winter), cool and misty.

Our mission for the day was to explore Isalo National Park, so we headed to town (Ranohira) and Kenny (a) introduced us to our guide, José and (b) got tickets for the National Park , which, at 815 square kilometres, is pretty substantial. It was created in 1962, and is mainly dry, deciduous forest, based on sandstone landscapes, which means there has been plenty of erosion from wind and rain, creating rocky outcrops, plateaux and canyons up to 200m deep.

Our main objective for the day was to walk along one of these canyons.

After a short drive, we started our hike, for it definitely wasn’t a walk in the park, as you’ll see as you read further.

The scenery was quite spectacular with the sandstone cliffs we’d seen elsewhere.

 

We were headed alongside a river, as one could tell from the aquatic bamboo plants we could see.

The path started off easy enough

and, as happens so often, we started off with José explaining all sorts of non-wildlife stuff, such as: the difference between young Pandanus palms (single stem, thicker leaves, in the foreground) and older Pandanus (branched, leaves thinner, in middle and background);

and the iron pipe leading water to the town, some 6km away.

We did see some of the local fauna:

A butterfly – sorry, don’t know which sort
A red dragonfly, nothing to do with Hannibal Lecter
Sleepy Scops Owl
Sleepy Scops Owl

Darwin’s Bark Spider and its web

Madagascan White-Eye

I was dead chuffed to have nailed the image above, as the birds that we occasionally saw around us were exceedingly skillful at detecting the instant before a camera shutter is pressed and buggering off.

We soon reached a picnic area

where some lads were starting the preparation of a cooked lunch (what is it with men and outdoor cooking?) for those who had booked it (we’d chickened out, or rather cheesed out, and ordered a packed lunch to protect our, but particularly my, digestive systems). Here, we saw a Red-fronted Brown Lemur

who was very cute, but actually had a very sad back story.  She had got separated from her family group during a bush fire, and had failed to find them again; so she was lost and solitary. She hung around the picnic area trying to steal food – of course everyone was told not to feed her – and she must have been very lonely.

José also found us a White-browed Owl

but the real excitement was seeing a Ground Boa crossing the trail just in front of us.

We stayed very still, hardly daring to breathe, so that it carried on its way into the forest. It was about a metre and a half long.

The walk continued alongside the river into the canyon, which was the main objective of the day’s hike.

and we were treated to a succession of great views as we scrambled over the rocks (it was a real scramble in places,

and we were both grateful for the sticks we’d brought with us from Ranomafana).

Some of the trail had been prepared to make it easier for the punters

and José told us about what happens during the rainy season, when the water level rises several metres.  Some evidence of this could be seen in the trees that had been deposited among the boulders in the canyon.

We eventually reached a couple of pools: the Blue Pool

and the Black Pool (which had no illuminations)

where the trail basically ended.  So we took a rest while Jose and Kenny shot the breeze

and then headed back the way we came. There were a couple of encounters with the local fauna:

Dragonfly

Water beetles

And the colours of the stone were fascinating.

When we got back to the picnic area, we were lucky enough to see a group of Verreaux’s Sifakas.

They were very athletic, as ever, leaping from bough to bough, rather better than the Monty Python sheep, who, of course, tended not so much to fly as to plummet.

After our packed lunch, eaten amid the haunting scent of delicious food being cooked for the other picnickers,

we headed back to the car.  On the way, we passed a rock on which was perched what I heard Jose describe as a “snot bug”.  Eventually, we understood it was a Snout Bug, for fairly obvious reasons

though I suppose that if it caught a cold, then maybe Jose’s original description might have been the better one. We also saw (among the other, more orangey coloured ones) a butterfly with a beautiful blue hue.

That was it for the hike; the canyon was a lovely, if slightly tense, experience, and I was glad to have caught some video of the sifakas.

On the way back to the hotel, we passed a couple of very colourful local scenes.

We had an evening entertainment laid on – a short walk to watch the sunset. On the way, we were lucky enough to see a Hoopoe,

though I had the wrong lens on the camera for a truly good shot. It was still nice to see it. The hotel had laid on a resting place for us (which we laid on)

and a cocktail service

(with nibbles).  The scenery was striking in the setting sun

and the sunset itself was not bad,

(middle photo from a mobile phone; outer two from my Big Camera; shows that mobile phone cameras these days are pretty damn’good).

Actually, we got more striking colours looking behind us

but it was a nice way to finish off the day. The nibbles had been enough food for us, so we simply retired to our room and took no dinner. Since we were (we were told) the only residents at the hotel for that night, it must have meant an entire kitchen staff on duty for no purpose; but we’re at the start of the tourist season, so I guess the hotel must expect quiet times.

We leave the hotel tomorrow, rather early, as we continue our south-westerly journey to Toliara, on the coast.  We have a Thing To Do en route, which we hope will be interesting.  I’ll of course report, so please stick with these pages to find out what we got up to.

On the road (1) – Antananarivo to Antsirabe

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Monday 10 June 2024 – We have to get to Ranomafana in order to see our next batch of wildlife, a journey of about 420km that can’t be done in a single day. The distance equates to about 260 miles, or London to Durham, a journey which can be driven in under six hours.  So, why not Tana to Ranomafana?

RN7 is the answer. Read on for details.

The practical upshot is that today was the first of two days spent on the road – 170 km to get to Antsirabe, then 250km tomorrow to complete the journey.

Getting out of Tana through the Monday morning rush was the first hurdle. It was motorbike central for quite some time through the city and into the suburbs.

It took us about three quarters of an hour to get into the countryside

where the views of the passing landscape were quite good. However, there was also plenty of evidence of quarrying, past and present.

The demand for granite blocks and chippings is sufficient to maintain plenty of small scale quarrying, often run as one of the various side hustles that farming families undertake. Another such side hustle is excavating clay from the rice paddies to make bricks, and we saw plenty of evidence of this, too.

One thing Madagascar does not have a shortage of is bricks, which (outside rain forest areas) are a principal house building material.

In many cases, the bricks are covered in a plaster based on the local soil (enriched with zebu droppings which apparently set hard!), so the houses look as if they’re mud houses, but they aren’t.  They are, however, often the same colour as the landscape and can blend in rather harmoniously.

Interestingly, later on in the journey, we passed through an area where the houses are built with bricks but without using any mortar – the brickmakers and masons are skillful enough that this works as a construction technique.

It also helps that the cyclones which bedevil the edges of the island rarely reach this far inland.

Brickmaking sites dotted our journey

and in some places were part of larger scale operations which dominated the landscape.

The roadside retail opportunities demonstrated once again the entrepreneurial spirit which is ubiquitous in our experience of the island so far.  The types of stall varied by region, it seemed.  We stopped briefly at a craft market

and other roadside stalls in the area all, like these ones, specialised in raffia work.

Later on, several stalls specialised in ceramic sculpture,

then came a series which sold musical instruments

and then toy vehicles carved in wood

(with some overlap!).

It seemed that when someone had a good idea for a roadside stall, others in the area picked up on it.  This actually doesn’t seem such a good idea to me; after a while, choice is so wide that custom must inevitably drop off, one would think.

Roadside stalls were plentiful throughout the journey, often selling fruit and/or vegetables;

others we saw sold plants;

inevitably, charcoal;

and even live animals, either as pets or as lunch, apparently.

Everywhere, we saw rice paddies, often terraced:

the country’s appetite for rice is phenomenal.

Despite our driver Haja’s best efforts, progress was slow.  We left Tana at 8am and were on the road for six and a half hours to cover the 170 km.  The reason for this was that we were on Route National 7, the principal route from Tana to the south west of the island. The reason for slow progress was partly congestion (these vehicles are all local or longer distance minibus buses)

but mainly a crappy road surface.

We thought that we’d suffered bad road surfaces in Costa Rica, but that was nothing compared to the slaloming necessary to avoid the craters in this road. That’s why the journey to Ranomafana takes two days.

So, what else did we see on this first segment?

As well as brown brick buildings, there were some more gaily appointed;

there were plenty of churches along the way, both protestant and catholic;

it being sweetcorn harvesting time, several houses were using their balconies to dry the cobs;

ox carts (the first I remember seeing on the island) were frequent as we approached Antsirabe;

and the landscapes were impressive, with significant irrigation channels to support what is a very large, but not the largest, agricultural area on the island, growing a variety of crops in addition to the ubiquitous rice.

(I just chucked in the photo of the man with the straw because it was interesting.)

And then we were in the outskirts of Antsirabe, where we stopped for lunch. We actually managed to get proper Malagasy food, which was very tasty but a bit tricky to deal with – Jane’s chicken had a gallon of broth with it and it was a bit tricky to get the good meat off my zebu with vegetables.  The restaurant we were at had some other tourists in it, and by the time we had finished lunch, the word had got out that There Were Tourists In.

The entrepreneurial drive of the Malagasy showed itself in their willingness to tempt us to buy any number of different sorts of tat.

Antsirabe means the “big town of salts”. It is, also, the town of cycle rickshaws, which are used by local people to get around, and which, we are told, are often contracted by parents to take their children to and from school.

The “salts” bit comes from the local geothermal springs, around which an impressive hotel was built.

It’s still in operation, but if you look closely it couldn’t half do with a lick of paint.  Just nearby is an almost equally impressive railway station building

outside which I saw the first horses I’d noticed on the island.

Nearby were some miniature cars for kids

and a small fairground setup

which Kenny explained was all in place in the lead up to the Independence Day celebrations slated for June 26th.  After checking into our hotel (see later), Kenny then took us on a “city tour”, which meant a bit of exposure to some retail opportunities before a stroll through the town’s market.

We were led to three different outfits, one of which was absolutely fascinating, one quite interesting and the last a little uncomfortable.  The first was really lovely; it specialises in making realistic miniature models of various modes of transport, using entirely recycled materials, which are then offered for sale to tourists.  We got a demonstration about how to make this tiny little bicycle

almost entirely from recycled bits of other things: the tyres are surgical piping, the wheels are cut from aerosol cans, the spokes are fishing line and the saddle is wood.  I have a video of the construction process and will publish it in good time; but it was lovely to see something like this made from materials which would otherwise have been thrown away – nothing gets wasted in Madagascar, it seems.

Part of the same enterprise produces embroidery, which is beautiful but Not Our Thing, and leads to a precious stone emporium which, again, has some beautiful things, but one began to feel a bit of pressure to buy, which makes me very uncomfortable.  Next door is a place which deals in things made out of zebu horn.  Once again, we got a demo of how things can be made, which was interesting; and their showroom

has some imaginative uses of horn,

but once again we weren’t tempted to buy anything. Kenny then walked us through the (busy, colourful and noisy) market that surrounded these emporia.

It was pretty standard fare (i.e. you could find almost anything, actually), but a couple of things caught my eye: a stall with a bewildering variety of rice;

a bicycle repair man;

and rickshaw repair man.

The horsey chaps rode through the market, though I don’t know why

and then we repaired to our hotel, the Couleur Cafe.

It has “bungalows” around rather nice courtyards,

and ours on the face of it seemed very good – lots of space, unusual decor and even its own real fireplace (in which, yes, we had our own real fire to sit around). But it felt actually a bit odd – somewhat faded in its elegance, somehow. We had a perfectly decent evening meal there and retired for the night in preparation for the second leg of the drive down to Ranomafana, with which I’ll regale you in the next post.