Tag Archives: Wildlife

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.

Striking gold at Ranomafana

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Wednesday 12 June 2024 – Our accommodation in Ranomafana was the Thermal Hotel. It’s called that because it is beside a geothermal hot springs pool; indeed, the pool used to be part of the hotel complex.

Yesterday, having ascended into the clouds and fog, we then descended to the village and the hotel in the rain, fervently hoping (in my case, at least) that today’s walk in the park would be a, erm, walk in the park, rather than a bedraggled squelch in the mud.  We were lucky; the day dawned sunny, and so we could take some photos of the hotel.

It’s an appallingly middle-class British thing to have difficulties with place names in The Foreign; I normally take pride in getting the name right and the pronunciation approximately so. But I’m having a lot of trouble with some names over here and so I’ve had to resort to mnemonics to help me.  Take, for example, Analamazaotra; I kept thinking of it as Anamalazaotra.  To get the l and the m in the right order, I resorted to the 1958 song “Rama Lama Ding Dong”. I was six when this first hit the charts, which of course I don’t remember. There was a 1978 version by Rocky Sharpe and the Replays, but the one that made the impression on me was the Muppets version, which is spot on my cultural level. I have also struggled with the order of the n and the m in Ranomafana, and so I’ve had “Son of my Father” as my mnemonic and front of mind during my say here. Bloody Chicory Tip! I now discover that the man who should take the blame for this song is Giorgio Moroder.

But I digress….

The morning was taken up by a walk, or more properly a hike, in the Ranamofana National Park.  Our guide for the day was engagingly called Dauphin and did a very good job during the day, taking the trouble to find out what our expectations and preferences were, and stopping to talk to both of us rather than calling back over his shoulder as we walked along.  He also had a “spotter”, who was introduced to us as Tila; his job was to crash around in the forest under- and overgrowth to try to find us interesting wildlife. I immediately christened him “Tila the Hunt”.

The entrance to Ranomafana National Park is in a community reserve; to get to the national park forest, you have to descend about 100 steps to a bridge, which is the border to the National Park.  From the bridge, you then have to walk up another load of steps.

One wonders why they couldn’t have pitched the bridge a bit higher.

On the way down, Dauphin pointed out something to us

which looked like an ant-  or termite nest.  Actually, on closer examination

it turned out to be a very dense cluster of fruits.

Having entered the National Park, the morning proceeded like all forest walks – much wandering about with the guide showing us stuff which wasn’t wildlife whilst hoping that we would soon stumble upon something with a pulse.  So, we saw a massive, 40-plus-year-old birds nest fern

which was, as these things do, growing epiphytically on another tree; and we saw some bamboo which looked eerily like a man-made structure over the path,

having been blown to buggery and deposited there by a cyclone in years past.  We also passed a real man-made structure,

which was the original building of the Valbio Centre that we’d heard about from Tom, the distinguished academic up in Masoala.  The forest has taken this construction back, but the centre is alive and well – see later. We also saw some wild coffee cherries which were blue, an unusual colour to find in nature.

The unripe blue cherries are yellow; and there are also red wild coffee cherries in the forest, as we found later.

So, remarkably, it was less than an hour before the cry went up that someone had spotted a lemur. So we rushed over to where it was. Looking at it through my very expensive camera and even more expensive lens, it was just a silhouette,

However, when I could get at my beloved DxO Photolab, we saw that

we had struck gold! (By the way, Dauphin told us at the time what we were looking at).

This was a Golden Bamboo Lemur!

Why the excitment? I hear you cry. This is the species that was first discovered in 1986 by Patricia Wright, founder of the Valbio Centre, and clearly a formidable lady, because she used the discovery to drive through the preservation order that was the basis for the creation of the very national park in which we stood. This required the removal of people who were actually living in the forest, because people aren’t allowed to live in a preserved space; so providing the incentives to make the move worth their while required national government involvement. Many of these people remain involved with the centre as spotters, guides or other helpers, so Patricia’s determination has paid off in more ways than just one.

Anyway, there it was – the holy grail of today’s search. And we still had about three more hours of wandering about to go.  Apart from this small group of Golden Bamboo Lemurs,

It would be a while before we saw another lemur species, but in the interim Dauphin found a puzzle for us – a branch that was apparently devoid of animal life

but, if one looked carefully, revealed

a leaf-tailed gecko.  To make it easier to see it, I’ve over-processed the photo,

but in real life it was genuinely difficult to see, which shows that its camouflage was of the very highest quality.

The going, by the way, was quite hard work.

Even the official trails were narrow and (as we’d been warned) very up-and down.

My trusty Garmin recorded my calories expended as three times as much as any previous excursion into a rainforest.

We did see a red-bellied lemur, but he was basically lazing about and not inclined to be ready for his close-up

and we wandered around for the next hour or so without seeing anything worth noting. It was Jane, though, who spotted the next creatures.  The guides, who were looking deep into the forest, had failed to notice something clinging to a tree literally beside the path we were walking along.

It was a family group of Red-fronted Brown Lemurs. Like the Common Brown jobbies we’d seen in the Analamazaotra National Park, these were curious and playful, although they didn’t come as close as those had.

After watching them play for a while, it seemed that that was that, and we kind of started for the exit. Dauphin did spot a couple of interesting things: a tiny wasps nest

(yes, it was tiny);

and another puzzle for us.

You have to look closely to see it, all curled and looking like a leaf, i.e. more good camouflage.

It’s commonly called a Satanic Leaf-tailed Gecko, and, looking at its face, you can understand why. It seemed we were almost at the exit when there was a ripple of excitement and Dauphin bade us divert into the dense undergrowth, where we joined a bunch of other people who were looking at

a family group of Milne-Edwards’ Sifakas. They were reasonably active, but spent most of the time huddled together, grooming themselves and other family members, which made it very difficult to get decent pictures.  But I got a couple of halfway good images

and one decent one, purely by luck.

That really  was it for the visit, and we trooped back to the park entrance, with its gaggle of bloody nuisance entrepreneurial types. One of them was an artist who wanted us to visit his gallery there, but we were disinclined to do so at the time. We found out, though, that his works were also on display at the Valbio Centre, and we planned to visit there later, so we were able to put him off politely on the basis that we might see him later.

Accordingly, after lunch back at the hotel, we visited the centre,

and very interesting it was, too. Its mission is to protect Madagascar’s unique and biologically diverse ecosystems – and particularly the Ranomafana National Park – through conservation science and projects that directly benefit the local people. It’s an international research station which facilitates hands-on science to sustain the resources and people of Madagascar. It has equipment and facilities to support lab- and field-based research carried out by visiting students and researchers, as well as accommodation for them; it provides education to local school children and their teachers; it provides a level of front-line medical care and advice to the local communities on, for example, birth control.  Jane talked knowledgeably with a couple of the scientists we met about their projects; and a nice lad called Fabrice showed us around and talked about some of the things the centre is trying to do, such as to identify all of the insect species in the forest, which strikes me as being hugely ambitious; but they’ve already catalogued thousands and thousands.  Among other things, Fabrice showed us an example – the Comet Moth,

which is beautiful even in a display case and must be a lovely thing to see in real life.

We also met the artist, Alain, again in his niche at the Centre; he creates incredibly detailed and accurate representations of the local flora and fauna for use in educational projects, as well as purely artistic work of considerable talent.  And yes, we bought a little something!

Immediately after the visit to the centre, we went on a night walk, even though it wasn’t night yet.  We met Dauphin for the final time and walked slowly along the road at the perimeter of the National Park, looking for, well, things, you know?  It was actually quite good that we started early, while it was still light, because the first thing we saw was a Blue-Legged Chameleon.

Chameleons are more interesting by day, because their true colours appear; after dark, they become much paler and less interesting.

The most engaging thing we saw on the walk was a Rufous Mouse Lemur, which is very cute.

We weren’t the only ones trying to see it, though; there was one of those feeding frenzies that one finds on these walks.

We walked very slowly along, finding the odd occasional Big-nosed chameleon

though it takes skill to spot them because, while their noses may be big, they are tiny!

We did get one puzzle. There’s a chameleon in this picture. Can you spot it?

There it is, a Side-Stripe chameleon.

but that was about it.  The drivers for the various groups stood around, presumably trying not to laugh at us

and then it was time to return to the hotel for dinner.

So, that was Ranomafana; we hit what seems to be the normal strike rate for seeing things, which is about one and a half species per hour of walking about; but it was fantastic to see the Golden Bamboo Lemurs, and the Sifakas were an added bonus.

On the morrow, we continue our southward journey; some driving, some walking about in a forest, although it will be a dry forest, not a rain forest.  We’ve been very lucky with the weather today; who knows what it will be like tomorrow? Stay tuned to find out.

 

 

Mitsinjo reserve and the journey back to Antananarivo

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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.