I had noticed someone having a very nice looking zebu steak with peppercorn sauce yesterday for tea, so I went for that, and it turned out to be a great choice!
Unfortunately I had a miserable night, especially the first half. I had an upset stomach, and had to get up every 15 minutes or so. Thankfully it seemed to go off as the night went on, as we had 5 hours in the coach the next day to look forward to.
I was rudely awoken just before my alarm by a single knock on my door. It was about 6am, so who the hell would be knocking at this time?! I threw on a tshirt, and rushed out, ready to tell someone to leave me the hell alone at 6am. And instead of a person found a huge moth/butterfly lying on it's back, wiggling it's legs at me. I flipped it over, took a photo, and went back to bed for 15 minutes.
The drive to Ranomafana was only 150km, but would take us 5 hours, thanks to us having to go along a "bad" road. What started out as a delightfully crisp morning had progressed, and now the sun was like the blazing eye of sauron, searing everything with it's baleful gaze. What few clouds there had been could not survive for long. My chicken skin was in danger, and it was only 7am!
The road was surprisingly good at the start. I guess we were probably averaging 50kmph, meaning the later roads must be really dicey! Also, trees had started to grow more densely; the lemurs were closing in. Some people wanted to stop to buy Sharon fruit from children by the roadside from some children. The sweet fools, Sharon fruit is just like a tomato wearing a jacket!
Mamy dropped some pearls of knowledge on us on the ride. There is very little hunger in Madagascar because in the countryside the poor people generally tend to work for food, and a little money, as opposed to other places where they might work just for money, which might not ensure them a good diet when prices fluctuate. Indeed, whilst there have been poor looking people, there seem to be very few beggars, presumably because working in the fields is a stable source of food that is accessible to most.
The time when people get into trouble tends to be when they try to move to the cities for a "better life". Whilst it is true that you can earn more there, it also comes with a higher cost of living, and the jobs are not necessarily easy to find.
We had often seen moderately large patches of undergrowth that had been burned, so as we were having a Madagascar Q&A, I asked whether these were natural, in a similar manner to the wildfires in America, which clear the undergrowth for giant redwood saplings to grow. They are not; it is zebu famers, trying to stimulate the new growth of zebu food (some sort of grass, I think). Naughty zebu farmers!
Partway there, we stopped to take a little walk through a village. This was much better then yesterday; the people offered friendly greetings, but didn't swarm us begging for things. We basically just wandered through, looking at the sort of things they were selling, and I thought it was quite a nice look into their every day life. Some old woman found us hilarious too, as she passed us, she started laughing and couldn't stop. Maybe she saw my toe shoes; some people have no sense of style!
Whilst there were more trees, they never really took over like I was expecting until we within 20km or so of Ranomafana. Otherwise every inch of valley basin was farmed within an inch of it's life! The "bad" road never really materialised either; at worst it was as bad as the "good" road yesterday. A bit disappointing really.
After a brief stop to look at some blacksmiths (which wasn't super exciting, basically just some men hitting metal with other metal), we were into the national park itself. This, finally, was the Madagascar I had been expecting! Orchids lined a cliff next to the road, and there was rainforest everywhere. We stopped to have a look at a lovely waterfall, and saw a couple of ginormous butterflies, before driving on to our hotel.
My room is large to say the least, 2 four poster beds, though one is only a single, and both are basically just four posters to hang mosquito netting off. I am glad for this though; one of my windows does not close properly and so I bet they will be all coming at me come night time!
Lunch was crayfish. This proved to be a mistake. The blighters were still in their shells entirely, with only a tiny bit of meat in their claws and tails. You got nutcrackers and everything! Me and Matthew persevered, but Fiona and Sue gave up and just had rice/chips with the sauce. Then after that there was the option of a 3pm walk through the village to a swimming pool. I decided to decline this, as it was open air and I was sure to get sunburned, plus at this point I was damn tired thanks to not sleeping well last night, so I went for a solid 3 hour nap, before our evening wildlife walk.
The night walk was fantastic! If I'm honest, to this point I'd been a bit disappointed, what with the mediocre Tana, and English like walking, but this was exactly what I'd expected, and couldn't really have gone much better.
We were looking for 3 things in particular: Mouse Lemurs, which are nocturnal, tree frogs, and chameleons, which go to sleep at night and so can't activate their camouflage.
The Lemurs we cheated on a bit; our local guide Rudy, who will also be accompanying us on our daytime walk tomorrow, smeared some banana mush on a tree branch, and within 5 minutes the lemurs were out. They are about 4/5 inches long not including their long tails, and have very big, cute black eyes. My iPhone camera was definitely not up to the task; they were too fast, and even when they did stay still they were too small, and getting closer might've sacred them, but I'm sure one of the many members of my party with a serious business camera got some great shots. They were around for ages, and after a while I gave up on photos, and just watched them.
Next up Rudy, who I swear is part amphibian, spotted a white tree frog whose body was about an inch in each dimension. The photo I took of this guy cracks me up for some reason, and he did us a little frog song, as well as puffing up his throat like they do.
Next up a side striped chameleon. How Rudy spotted this was beyond me. It was around 2 inches long including the tail, green, and on a green branch about 10 feet up in the air. It started signing to us with it's tail, but I don't speak chameleon. Another small chameleon (a short nosed chameleon) soon followed, and this was Rudy's best spot. Even smaller than the other, and with it's tail curled up, grey on a grey branch, and a similar height to the other. My photos of it are dreadful.
Back to frogs again, and this time we saw some sort of water frog, whose name I forget. It is an endangered species, because people like to eat them! Next was probably the star of the show. A chameleon with a funny name I can't recall, but it was a good 6 inches long (not including it's tail, which was curled up), and fatter than the others. It was also quite low down and so we could get right up and look at it. Finally there was a blue legged chameleon, which didn't have blue legs because it had turned brown before going to sleep, to sit on it's brown branch. I'm not going to bother with a photo, as it was a long way away and well camouflaged enough that those photos I did get make it look like a brown lump. A rather unimpressive brown lump. It was 4 inches long sans tail though, so the second biggest we'd seen.
Since we had driven away from the village for this walk, the stars were out in force, and even the Milky Way made an appearance!
There was one downside to the hotel: it HAD wifi, just nobody, the hotel staff included, could manage to get on it! So that is why this post was a day late.
Until this post I thought 'zebu' was a funny word you came up with for zebra. Now I see a photo of one I've realised they have fat zebras in Madagascar
ReplyDelete