Tag Archives: Wildlife

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!

 

Coasting into Toliara – end of the RN7

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Sunday 16 June 2024 – Today is the day we completed our journey to the south-western coast of Madagascar by reaching Toliara – from Antananarivo, over 900km of sometimes absolutely ghastly road surface, but expertly – and safely – driven by Haja over the course of 6 days.

Shortly after leaving Roy’s Garden (Le Jardin du Roy – gerrit?) we went through a town called Ilakaka, which is the main town in the sapphire mining area of Madagascar (not being a jewellery kind of guy, I had no idea that Madagascar was well-known for its high-quality sapphire).  It’s a busy place,

and one immediately understands the importance of the sapphire mining here.

These, by the way, are not selling finished stones, they are mainly buying what people bring in. Thousands of Malagasy are involved in what is turning into a “sapphire rush”, like the north American gold rushes; deposits of sapphire-bearing soil and gravel are being mined, often without due respect for the environment – or indeed health and safety – by hand.

The excavated material is then searched for raw sapphire – exiting the town, we crossed a bridge over a river which is clearly a prime spot for panning for sapphires.

The entire industry is based on manual labour – no heavy machinery of any description is used, as far as I know. Kenny was of the opinion that the miners are being exploited by the traders (often Indian and Pakistani) who understand the value of the gems far better than the miners do.

The nearby town of Sakaraha specialises in cutting the raw sapphire to produce saleable gems.

A side note, here: in one of our conversations with a large group of European – Belgian, Dutch and German – tourists, we learned that their minibus stopped in the area, presumably at one of the establishments that sells sapphire as well as buying it. They weren’t impressed, they would much rather have got on with their journey.  It made us glad that we had the flexibility of being just the two of us with Kenny and Haja, Kenny having picked up by this stage our vibes that we weren’t much taken with retail opportunities.)

Although we started out in sunshine, there was mist in the valleys

and there were several “table top” hills in the surrounding countryside.

I guess that the tops were of softer sedimentary stone, worn down by erosion.

We passed several roadside tombs on our journey.

Some were well-established and some were newer.  One stood out in particular,

a boat-shaped tomb of someone who was clearly very rich.  The tombs illustrate the importance of Zebu to the ethnic groups who inhabit the area. Zebu are used as a sort of bank: if wealthy, buy Zebu; if in need of funds, sell Zebu. When someone dies and is buried in a tomb, Zebu play a part in the process. For a wealthy person, several Zebu might be killed and their skulls used to “decorate” the tomb, showing that it was of a wealthy person or family; for a poorer family, just one Zebu might be sacrificed.

It’s the sort of thing that sparks a debate about poverty in what is officially one of the poorest countries in the world. Looking at the lives of rural people through western eyes, one is tempted to think of them as poor, but this is perhaps a cultural illusion. Money and possessions might be in short supply, but life as a farmer provides food for the table and the market, and a rhythm of life that doesn’t require a significant income stream; and there’s no tax to pay. Raw materials for building come from the land and the capacity of the Malagasy to repurpose things is astonishingly inventive and effective. Where they need them, people have their mobile phones and their portable solar panels to power them; they may not have bank accounts but the mobile telephone companies enable a sophisticated instant money transfer system which, together with mobile phone charging, is available at any number of roadside stalls.

They seem to our eyes to be happy.  In income terms, yes, they’re poor by our standards, but I don’t believe that they live below the poverty line.

City folk, though – that’s a different matter; they have to pay tax, pay for food, for their electricity and so on; perhaps they’re not as well off as rural folk?

Anyhoo….

We started, once again, to see a change in the landscape.  We began to see Baobab trees, at first in the distance

and then closer to,

like this one, which still had fruit on it.  There were some older trees in the landscape as well;

this one is very old, and regarded by the local as a “sacred tree”. We also saw a major change in the landscape.

which heralded our Activity For The Day; a visit to the Zombitse National Park. It’s quite substantial, at over 360km² and falls within a region classified as Madagascar succulent woodlands, known for many endemic species, and on the transition between the dry deciduous woodlands we have already visited and the spiny forest that is on the plan before we return to Antananarivo.

We had a shortish walk around the park, and saw some creatures we’d seen before, such as the Oustalet’s Chameleon and the Verreaux’s Sifaka; some we’d sort of seen before, such as this Sportive Lemur

who was a Zombitse Sportive Lemur (as opposed to the Masoala variant we’d seen in, erm, Masoala) and, being nocturnal, looked less than delighted to be woken up. We saw a beautifully coloured Day Gecko

and got up close and personal with a couple of huge Baobab trees.

Male Baobab
Female Baobab

These were several hundred years old.  I don’t know if they’d been creating little Baobab trees between them, but they were very impressive trees….

….or not, actually. In fact, Baobabs are not trees, but succulents (like cacti); it looks like bark on the outside, but inside is fibrous and squishy – and no good for building things, making things or burning, which is why so many Baobabs have survived; had they actually been useful, I suspect the landscape would have been bereft of them.

We passed through a town, Andoharotsy, where there is quite a flourishing trade in creating and selling rum, made from local sugar cane.

Barrels of fermented sugar syrup awaiting distilling

Wood to fuel the still

Yellow containers for the final product

Given the random nature of the creation of the raw materials and the quality and length of distillation, one can imagine that there is a huge variation in how the final product turns out. I can imagine it’s rather like poitin in Ireland – something to be treated with extreme caution.

At this point the RN7, which had been reasonably well-behaved for the last segment of our journey, turned mischievous again.  How can you tell the road surface is bad?

Because traffic is likely coming your way on your side of the road. Correct timing of slalom turns becomes more than just a matter of passenger comfort.

The next town, Andranovory, has (surprise!) a very busy market

and the local specialisation is in carpentry, especially making furniture.

The architecture also has a local flavour, with small houses, quite often of wattle-and-daub construction,

and an extended thatch roof, supported by pillars, OK officer I’ll come clean, sticks, which provide an extra shaded area.

The landscape changed again, this time to a limestone base

and we began to see an intimation of the “spiny forest” that we planned to visit the next day.

By this stage, it was lunchtime, and Kenny proposed a lunch stop at  L’Auberge de la Table, which gave us a nice, somewhat up-market lunch, and also enabled us to buy tickets to a connected establishment, the Arboretum at Antsokay, a place which, presumably, anteaters would enjoy visiting. We were expecting to take just a few minutes to wander round looking at, well, trees, I suppose, but – no, there was a guided tour, which would take an hour and, yes, there was a guide.  Who’d a thunk it, eh?  Our initial cynicism, though was allayed when our guide turned out to be both charming and knowledgeable. Jane is interested in things arboretumological, and so she and the guide (whose name, to my shame, I have forgotten), got on famously, while he found us not only some interesting plants for mainly Jane’s interest,

Fake Baobab
Some plant’s fruit that looks like a face
A young baobab – looks like just this tree, you know?
A “compass plant”, which leans south to catch any moisture in the prevailing wind
The “bleeding tree”, with red sap
A 400-year-old pachypodium or elephant’s foot plant

but also some creatures to include mine as well.

Common Big-eyed Snake. We think.
Skink
Day Gecko
The spiny tail of a (hibernating) Collared Iguana
Magpie Robin, female
Magpie Robin, male

Apologies for the poor quality of the final two pictures; I only had the phone with me.

It was actually a pleasant visit, and our guide would have kept on chatting to us, but another group of punters came through the door and so (probably to Kenny’s relief) we took our leave, and headed to our hotel, the Bakuba Lodge, an establishment designed and created, with great style and panache, by a Belgian, Bruno Decorte.

Jane thought its appearance had a lot in common with “La Pedrera”, Casa Milà, in Barcelona.  I thought it was more like the somewhat confected architecture we saw in Finca Rosa Blanca (Costa Rica), or Binibecquer Vell, in Menorca. Whatever, we had a great dinner, with very good service, and a nice sunset view,

so the day ended well.

One would have thought that, having made the epic journey from Antananarivo to Toliara down the notorious RN7, we would at least spend a couple of days exploring the area and relishing the completion of such an expedition, but no, tomorrow we head back to Tana. But at least we have an  encounter en route with a spiny forest in the plan, so the day will not be spent simply travelling. Why don’t you come back to these pages to find out what a spiny forest looks like, eh?

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.