Tag Archives: Wildlife

Still getting there – Day 2: Transfer to Masoala Forest Lodge

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Sunday 2 Jane 2024 – After less than four hours’ sleep, we didn’t exactly spring out of bed with a song on our lips, but we did manage to get ourselves presentable and breakfasted in time for Aina to take us to the airport, past scenes of Sunday morning activity.

Even though it was Sunday, the streets were quite busy and the shops were open. Aina pointed out that shopping was a major activity, since very few people had the means to keep food fresh, so going shopping several times a day is the norm.

Once again, arrival at the airport was a slightly disconcerting experience; instead of dropping us off in front of the terminal building (where quite a lot of people seemed aimlessly to be standing about doing nothing), he parked up and suggested we stay in the car for five minutes.  A couple of guys in red high-vis came over and Aina got out and opened the boot so they could get at our bags.  Trustingly, we followed them and they appeared to be going towards the check in area, which was reassuring.  En route, we met a friendly American chap who introduced himself as Tom and told us that (a) he was going to be joining us on our flight and (b) we three would be the only passengers.  The check-in area bore out his story.

It was a fairly standard check-in, except that all three of us were weighed alongside our baggage.  Having gone through the standard security thing, we climbed into a battered minibus for our mystery tour to the middle of the airfield, which is where we found out why there were so few passengers and why the weight mattered.

Our transport was a Cessna 206, which has just four seats.  One of them is, of course, needed for the driver, who was called Fury.

We settled ourselves in for the two-hour flight and donned ear defenders, which were very uncomfortable, but absolutely necessary.

A flight in a small aircraft is a golden opportunity to get some aerial photos – if the weather permits.  We had moderate luck.  Jane was on the better side of the plane for photos and got a shot of the extensive rice fields outside the town,

but as we ascended, blanket cloud coverage developed below us.  This persisted long enough that I decided I would try to make up for lack of sleep, so dozed for a while.  When I woke up, it was to see that the clouds had cleared and so there were some good aerial shots to be taken. They were quite revealing, and, as it turns out, demonstrated to me how easy it is to miss a story if you’re not paying attention.

Out of my side of the plane, I saw mainly forests.

but what I missed was the signs of cultivation even among the hills, which you can see bottom left in this photo.

What Jane saw on the other side of the aircraft was a radically different story – that of massive agricultural exploitation.

which extended pretty all the way up to Lake Alaotra, which lies about halfway between Tana and Maroantsetra, the airport we were headed to.

At the north end of the lake, there were extensive rice plantations.

Even in the forested areas, it was possible to see the consequences of this exploitation in brown water in the rivers caused by agricultural run-off.

The flight had given me entirely the wrong impression about the state of the land in this area of Madagascar.  It turned out that Tom, our fellow passenger, is a distinguished academic – a Professor and chair of the Global Health Institute at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia in the USA, and heavily involved with the Valbio Centre at Ranomafana, which works to protect Madagascar’s unique and biologically diverse ecosystems through conservation science and projects that directly benefit the local people.

It’s the first time I’ve ever met someone who merits a Wikipedia entry.

In later conversations with Tom, we learned a huge amount about the Madagascan environment including its reckless over-exploitation – 90% deforestation across the island – and its consequences to the health of the population; for example, one in six children born in Madagascar die before their first birthday.  Some reforestation projects are under way, but those aerial photos give some insight into the scope of the problems faced by the people here.

Eventually we landed at Maroantsetra, a decidedly rural airport.

The final stage of our journey to today’s destination – Masoala Forest Lodge – was by boat; but we had to get to the boat first, a journey which was undertaken in the sort of transport

which, it turned out, was essential for anyone trying to get anywhere on the local roads.

We passed the outskirts of the village, but the ride was so bumpy that I completely failed to get any decent photos of the life we were passing, which is a shame; it being Sunday morning, people were going home from church (or possibly to the pub, I don’t know) and so were dressed in their finery.

The boatport was rudimentary

but it had a decent loo (something we had been warned was not available at the airport) and, importantly, a boat.

It was also a chance for us to meet Ursula, who was our guide from the Masoala Forest Lodge. Accompanied by Pascal, the other guide from the lodge, she shepherded Tom, Jane and me aboard and we set off for what was a long, bumpy and really not very interesting hour’s ride to get to the lodge. There were a few other small boats out on the water, powered either by hand or by sail

but otherwise precious little of interest to distract us. So we were glad to get to the Forest Lodge, and were made warmly welcome by Jessie and Alban with a drink and a short presentation about How Things Worked Here, which seemed both content-rich and relaxed at the same time – no mean feat of organisation. There are many possible activities on offer – wildlife walks, kayaks, snorkeling, canoeing – all in a lovely rainforest setting, and executed with as much attention paid to sustainability as possible; built in local materials, powered by solar power, serving locally-sourced produce at mealtimes and so forth. It’s an effortlessly friendly place, superbly organised and a great place for what we were primarily interested in, which is to see some of the wildlife for which Madagascar is justly famed.

Alban showed us to our accommodation

which was the point at which I realised that Jane had snared me into something that was dangerously approximate to glamping – nice and comfortable, yes, but imposing a need to get dressed and to tackle a flight of stairs should one need to visit the loo during the night.

Hmmmm….

Having dropped off our bags, we went to the lounge area where we were once again made welcome and offered cocktails and lunch, which was very good.  After just seven hours’ sleep over the last two nights, a siesta then beckoned before tea and a short excursion on an outrigger sailing boat which was parked in front of the bar.

The enjoyment of the day continued relentlessly thereafter, with sundowner cocktails

and dinner, which was, again, a very good meal. Much was made of the fact that the sun had been shining, which apparently is a departure from previous days.

After dinner,  we had our first chance to see some of that wildlife, on a night walk.  Similar to our time in Costa Rica, night time is the right time to see some animals, particularly the nocturnal ones, and so Ursula and Pascal took the three of us for a short walk around the local trails. As was the case in Costa Rica, I was astonished at the skill of both guides at spotting animals that I would have simply walked by, and with their knowledge about them.  The walk was a good introduction to the local wildlife.  There are 10 species of Lemur in the Masoala forest, and we found several within walking (or, in my case, stumbling) distance of the lodge.

Wooly Lemurs
Wooly Lemur
Mouse Lemur
Mouse Lemur

Masoala Sportive Lemur

We also caught sight of a bamboo lemur, but it was photographically uncooperative.  As well  as lemurs, we saw some of the other denizens of the forest.

Malagasy Kingfisher
Bright-eyed Tree Frog
Cyligramma joa Boisduval

Cyligramma joa Boisduval

Erebus Walkeri

Erebus Walkeri

At this point it started to become apparent why what we were walking around in was called a rainforest, so we retired swiftly to the lounge area and thence to bed for the night.

Before we retired, we discussed plans for the morrow and decided that, weather permitting, we’d go for a morning hike a short way up the coast.  This thing, “weather permitting”, is a feature of staying at the lodge.  The Masoala rainforest is the largest area of rainforest on Madagascar and the Masoala National Park is the largest protected area on the island. I have been to things that called themselves rainforests before, but never one as wet as this.  All the people we talked to seemed to be overjoyed that the sun had actually shone today, and equally uncertain as to what tomorrow’s weather would be like. So we’ll take a check on the rain and perhaps the hike will be a reasonable plan.  Stay tuned to find out.

Videos – and learnings – from the Southern Ocean

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Sunday 31 March 2024 – I’m pretty happy with the way that the images that Jane and I captured during our time on Hondius convey the look and feel of the places we visited and the sights we saw.  However, there’s the small matter of the 460 video files that we accumulated during the trip, so I have spent the last couple of days trawling through that mass of content – about 100GB – for sequences that supplement or complement the images which you’ve already seen.

To be honest, the pickings are much slimmer than I’d anticipated.

It’s not that I’m dissatisfied with the videos.  Though many are utterly unusable, there are a good number of clips which will serve brilliantly in the future to remind us of the dynamism and variety of the scenes that unfolded before us. But I think you might find them dull, because of the lack of context; and buried within that bald assertion is the first learning.

For example, at Port Charcot, I took a video panorama from the ship

and it gives a nice impression of the place, the weather conditions and the scenery.  But from the point of view of showing you, dear reader, what the place was like, it’s not really any better than the photos I included in the blog posting about it.

The learning?  That sort of video has a place on Instagram in showing where I am and what it’s like there. But the restrictions on using internet bandwidth (oh, OK, the expense) meant that its value, as an ephemeral “Instagram-look-at-me” kind of post was negated. So I have several of these panoramas, but will keep them to myself for now.

That said, there were a couple of video pans that I think worthy of noting (as opposed to nothing) here: the view of Elephant Island, which was just, basically, lovely in the sunshine;

and the rather contrasting view of the south end of South Georgia.

So: no more landscape video pans, then;  I have numerous ones of bays, waterfalls or rivers, but their relevance is only to our memories, not to your insight.

I rather like, though, this view of Grytviken, on South Georgia, as we approached it from the water.

and, as a scenery/landscape topic, I thought the general amazingness of some of the icescapes was worth a collage, too.

Oh – and there was that spectacular crumbling glacier in King Haakon Bay, which makes for good viewing, I think.

So, enough of the scenery, already. What does that leave us then?  The wildlife, of course. It was a very rewarding trip for me, photographically, as I got several still images that I’m pleased with, and most of which you’ll already have seen, having assiduously read all my previous posts, you wonderful reader, you. But there are some times when a still image simply won’t do to capture or convey a scene.  Sighting a leopard seal, for example, gave me some good stills, but seeing it come under our Zodiac is a sight which stays with one.

(I have to credit one of our guides, Aitana, with the footage of the seal swimming underwater; I was unable to capture that, so I’m glad to have her snippet as a record.

Penguins, too, are very cute and photogenic even in stills. But one needs to see them doing penguinish things to get the full charm.

It was generally more rewarding to encounter wildlife on land – it gives one a better feeling of connection to what’s going on.  That sense of connection was a bit tenuous in places.  The Falklands, for example, was so windy that at times one felt one was going to be blown off the cliff face.  Here, video can give a sense of what it was like.

It was fucking windy.  I managed to get a vantage point elsewhere which felt a bit less dangerous, to capture a bit of albatross behaviour – feeding a chick until there was no more food, then flying away to get more…a parent’s work is never done.

Capturing footage like that is quite rewarding even if it feels a little perilous at some times. I suspect I’d have been OK; there were plenty of other photographers around to break my fall if I’d stumbled.

There was a second and third learning from gaining this footage. One is to listen to the experts; Ursula was nearby and told me that the parent albatross would fly when it had finished feeding.  All I had to do was to keep an eye out and I would be able to capture the decisive moments.  The other was – patience.  I had to stand and try to keep my camera trained on a particular parent-and-chick for quite some time (whilst being blown to buggery by the winds) in order to get the footage I wanted.

One development of my skill, such as it is, over the trip was to become more interested in behaviours, rather than simply seeking to get a good sharp close-up of an animal. Jane helped me a lot, and having the guides around for extra information and education was excellent, too.

Close-to was definitely the place to be for most photography purposes. But it was possible to see wildlife from the ship.  Most of the time, someone would shout “whale!” and there would be a surge of people to one side or other stare out of the windows or to rush on deck, there to catch (if lucky) the disappearing fin of a humpback some fair distance from the ship.  Having had a very rewarding whale watching experience in New England recently, I tended to stay in my place rather than join the giddy throng.  But there were some occasions where the sights were excellent even from on board. Here are a few: particularly, the fin whale feeding sequence is something that no still photography could do justice to.

And so ends our South America and Southern Ocean Odyssey, a very intense month in our lives, probably never to be repeated.  We might try an expedition cruise to the Arctic at some stage, which will be similarly intense and challenging, but I doubt we could ever be so lucky again as to the weather we had when Due South; the weather gods were incredibly kind to us and our experience was the richer for that.

That’s it for the pages about this expedition. There will be others; in the current plan we have one not-so-ambitious outing and one which could be astonishingly varied and content-rich.  As ever, an internet being available, I will write about them here, so Stay Tuned!

Falkland Islands 3 – New Island

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Sunday 11 March 2024 – Overnight from Carcass to New Island was “not too bad”, a phrase which has been a running joke throughout this whole trip.  When Pippa and the skipper first discussed our overall route and a possible transit through the Drake Passage, the major decision to reverse the direction of our entire outing and make it anticlockwise was done on the basis that the captain’s view was that the wind forecast was “not too bad” – apparently the most sanguine description he ever gives of weather possibilities.  With the exception of maybe two nights, our transits from place to place have been “not too bad”, i.e. absolutely bloody miraculous.  It has been astonishing how good our weather has been, to the point where I was considering (jokingly) the possibility of submitting a complaint about the trip because it wasn’t the “authentic Antarctic experience”.

Anyway, not too bad.

We were able, courtesy of some more skillful navigation from the captain, to get quite near New Island. You can see from the state of the sea that it was pretty breezy.

Closer examination shows it to be a settlement that’s a little more substantial than the one we’d recently visited at Carcass.

Indeed, it has its own shipwreck

and a small but beautifully formed museum

dedicated to supporting the New Island Conservation Trust. This was originally set up by the two co-owners of the island to ensure that it never got exploited and was always a conservation area for wildlife.

Outside, the museum has a gentoo penguin statue

and inside

there’s a lot of information about the trust, many relevant artifacts from the surrounding area

as well as an opportunity to indulge in some retail therapy.

Having perused the place, we started the relatively short walk towards another black-browed albatross colony. On the way, we passed kelp geese,

more of the ubiquitous upland geese

and more rockhoppers using cormorants for added security against marauding skuas,

but the albatrosses were the main objective of the excursion.

An albatross is a big bird and, like the cormorant, one that a skua won’t fuck about with, hence the rockhoppers get the added protection.  The location shown above is also a good demonstration of why rockhoppers get their name, since they’ve clearly hopped up all those rocks to get to a place of relative security.

There were cormorants among the other birds, too;

these were imperial cormorants, distinguished by white on the front of their necks and those yellow-orange eye decorations.

It was windy. Again.  And, as well as some dramatic cliff scenery,

there was tucking fussock grass. Again.

It really was somewhere between “trying” and “dangerous” to find places to watch the penguins and albatrosses – but ultimately rewarding.

The rockhoppers are very engaging creatures

and the wind made their hairstyle very distinctive

and clearly left them at times severely unimpressed.

The albatrosses were feeding their chicks, each residing on the nest that they won’t leave until they can fly.  They’re very demanding.

and it was interesting to watch the way their demands affected the parents.

After a while it was time to head back, this time thankfully with the wind behind us, to the boat, but the final image that stayed with me was this extremely punk rockhopper.

For Jane and me, this was our last landing on the Falklands.  Pippa organised another one, more to the north of New Island, but, frankly, both of us were pretty tuckered out by this stage, and the northern landing didn’t hold the prospect of seeing anything dramatically different from what we’d already seen.  So we awarded ourselves our second Afternoon Off. Which was delightful, I have to say.

And now we had to leave. After our time in the Falklands, all that remained was a Sea Day whilst we headed back to Ushuaia and the end of three weeks exploring Antarctica and the Southern Ocean Islands. We simply hoped that the weather would continue to be “not too bad”.  One of the other captains in the Oceanwide Adventures fleet reportedly has another weather saying: “One day, you’ll pay”. We had to hope that  maybe it wouldn’t be down to us to pick up this particular bill.