Tenrecs, dogs and walking adventures

Today I found a tenrec. What the hell is that, you might ask. It's just like a little hedgehog. In fact this little guy is named, funnily enough, a hedgehog tenrec. Poor thing, it was curled up on the grass, in the sun, after the hotel's dog brought it over. It really didn't look very healthy. Neither would you if you were normally sleeping all day. I went and hid him in the bushes, hoping he'd escape the clutches of those curious canines for a while.

One of them turned out to be a very good travelling companion (well mostly, when she wasn't hassling the island's other canine inhabitants) for our walk around the island. The three of us set off reasonably early this morning, headed north and then out across the island toward the east coast. We'd walked for 2 1/2 hours and attempted a bit of tyre rolling before feeling a bit like we had no idea where we were ... which was actually true. So we tried to find someone to point us in the right direction - how the hell do we actually get to the east coast?! We could see it but we were skirting it, and knew there was a lagoon to negotiate if we wanted to swim...

I fortunately came across a lovely old gentleman who was a headmaster at the local school, and could speak both French and English, so we got along fine. He suggested that further down the road was the Paradis d'Ampanihy, where we found some great hospitality and the 'specialite du Chef': Poisson avec Saus Coco. WIN.

Enroute to the mangroves after lunch, we discovered what a vanilla plant looks like. It's actually a liana, a rainforest plant that's classified as an orchid, but looks like a vine; the locals boil the pods up and then set them in the sun for three weeks to dry out and blacken. All I wanted to know was who discovered that then?! Unfortunately vanilla season isn't til September. boo. But vanilla is one of Madagascar's biggest exports, and while every mug on the street wants to sell you some, it's hard to know what's fresh and the best value. We keep asking different people to find out! And in fact, I don't even know if I can bring it into Australia or not. Quarantine is really strict on the importation of any type of plant material. But I like the idea of making my own rhum arrange - vanilla flavour - and knocking the socks off my housemates in Sydney.

Random holiday reading...

Ahhh, I got around to spot (or ten) or reading on Ile Saint-Marie, and having read all the books that we both brought with us, I did find myself a big fat book by an author I would normally baulk at - Marian Keyes and her self-obsessed, girly, relationship-focussed rubbish - but to her credit the book seems fun so far, and I must admit I enjoyed it in the end.

But what treasures a hotel's bookshelf can hold. I came across a rather interesting book called "Les Apparitions d'Humanoids: 202 recontres du 3eme type, 26 Portraits-Robots". RANDOM! Its full of kids'-style drawings of UFOs, aliens, maps of alien sightings in France and other strange bits of information. Eric Zurcher, author, must be an interesting fellow, and possibly a man-child, given his drawings.

The cover even says "COLLECTION Connaissance de l'etrange."

Something for all you UFO-obsessed strange people out there.

Six days in beautiful Ile Saint-Marie

Our final Madagascan destination, Ile Saint-Marie, and the hotel in which we planted ourselves, did not disappoint. The island is a beautiful place, wit ha small population, green, lush vegetation and beautiful palm-fringed beaches. I'm sitting here by the bay sheltering Hotel La Crique, the sound of the calm ocean lapping at the shore, birds singing in the trees, four gay French and Malagasy men frolicking in the shallows (ooh delete that part, it's ruining my description!), the sun slowly making its way down to the horizon. A short swim out to the various rocks scattered in the bay revealed sea urchins on the sea floor and some beauitful, small, neighbouring bays to explore by snorkel tomorrow. Aaaahhh, paradise found. And we still have five more days of it. I might need to find another book to read.

 

 We've never been at a loss for things to do in our little slice of paradise. Lots of swimming and snorkelling in the beautiful bay on which La Crique is situated. On the northern end of the bay there are many huge slabs of rock underwater, harbouring the hardy corals that grow on it; and between the rocks protruding out near the shore, beautiful black and white sea stars wave their arms in hope of catching some passing food at low tide. The southern end, and around into the next gorgeous bay (from where the sunset is even more beautiful) the snorkelling is the most amazing.

I think in the past it would have been a lot more so, as it seems that the marine life is in recovery mode, with quite a lot of dead coral scattered around the sea bed. The typhoons - especially the major ones in 08-09 - probably did quite a lot of damage. Still, there are many beautiful coral communities growing here on the large rocks that seem to have been planted randomly in the bay by a giant hand. Quite a few beautiful fish inhabit this underwater world, including some peculiar lobster-like creatures, mostly green with a piercing stare as they glare up at you with their Chinese-New-Year-dragon faces and try to wave their 'swimmers' at you - har har, no claws! Yeah, you better run, you little bugger, you'd taste good.

We hired a couple of mountain bikes one morning and rode the 15km to the main town, Ambodifotatra, for a look around. the town has a nice feel to it, well spread out around the harbour, and more to it than you realise. I also got the feeling that it - and the island generally - are quite wealthy compared to many other parts of Madagascar. I guess its not surpirsing given a lot of wealth flows here from the main economic activity - us spending money! But in the interior are apparently a lot of rice and cassava farms, and I think for those on the land (or fishermen, for that matter), life is still pretty difficult.

We spent the afternoon cruising round on our bikes, across the causeway which provides access over Baie des Forbans, the check out the now defunct and terribly small (and possibly quite inadquate in its time) lighthouse. Gold. Why not hang your washing out on the lighthouse.

Then we went on to our #1 destination.

 

Ile Sainte-Marie is part of Madagascar's 'Pirate Coast' (also known better as the Vanilla Coast) and it is said that there was much pirate activity here in the past, with many buried here in this picturesque location. Despite the stories of our guide, who was quite indignant at having to be our guide after we turned up, paid for a guide but none materialised!, there is no evidence that any of the stories are true, nor that any of the graves actually did belong to pirates.

I was happy to believe that they do, though. Especially the grave with the skull and crossbones on it, the grave apparently belonging to William Kidd, and the female pirate's grave, my favourite. Not only were the pirates Malagasy, but French and English pirates also got in on the act, and some of them even pilfered local people to sell as slaves, or to take as wives (though the latter never did the former crime!).

 

Funnily enough there was a long, steel 'gangplank' whose rusted, narrow length had to be navigated before reaching the actual cemetery, from where we could also see the 'pirate island' where they used to hide out after docking their boats. Arrrr!

We also checked out the cemetery for normal people, at the rear of the Catholic church, with its interesting Muslim and chinese sections (where evyerone is named Chang Khan) before heading off on a long, bumpy, circuitous ride across to hte eastern side of the island, passing through small villages, stopping off for yummy cold yoghurt to cool us down. This road definitely wasn't cut out for bicycles. Luckily - and first time for everything - our bikes were good quality, with working brakes AND gears. Woah! It made it easy to conquer the hilly ride home, which was tough after a long day's riding, but even tougher in the dark with no lights... neither on the bikes themselves or on the street. We managed to make it back without riding into any ditches. Nice one.

The countryside of Ile Saint-Marie

Ile Saint-Marie's countryside is quite similar to the rest of Madagascar; most of - actually no pretty much all - of its native forests are gone, and are now replaced by introduced trees. Interestingly the eucalypt and pine plantations of the 'mainland' are nowhere to be seen. Instead, three other trees dominate the hillsides:

1. the symbolic Ravinala, the travellers' palm, which seems to grow incredibly quickly after the forest has been decimated.

2. a silver-green feathery tree that looks very much like a silky oak or grevillea, apparently with white flowers - its everywhere, and I don't know if it was planted for firewood, but it sure has taken over the joint.

3. Again, interestingly, another Australian import: the paperbark. This tree is grown for its medicinal properties, and I was very surpirsed to recognise it here.

I'm finding it increasingly distrubing that so many foreign species have been introduced here, at the expense of replanting native forest. In many places on the mainland there have been no attempts to reforest at all, the bare hillsides glaring down at you as you chug along in your taxi brousse. The zebu may like it, but I rarely saw any of them up there. I just don't understand it. The results are spectacularly destructive in other ways ... oh the landslides! The gully erosion! It's like the earth has opened up raw wounds as a cry for help. It really makes me feel sad.

But here on our sheltered little piece of paradise its easy to leave all that behind. 

 

Traipsing around Tamatave ... and escape to Mahambo

After running the gauntlet of pousse-pousse drivers on arrival and jumping through muddy puddles to reach our hotel in Tamatave, we set off to explore the port town, heading straight for the beach; and it was indeed the port that we found first! It was pretty hard to miss. The beautiful beachfront promenade was packed with Sunday afternoon revellers, playing soccer, drinking beers under the tents erected for the weekend, riding the merry-go-round, playing sideshow games and ordering food from the wandering women and children balancing trays carefully aloft. It was a great atmosphere to enjoy a few THB beers as the sun went down and the ever-looming port slowly illuminated the shoreline with its bright lights.

Dinner at a nearby restaurant immediately alerted us to the fact that Tamatave, like Morondava and Toliara, was home to a number of ageing French men with white hair, beer guts and inappropriate clothing, either already together with, or trying to pick up, beautiful Malagasy women - many of them over twice their age. Sadly many Malagasy women attempt to take advantage of this fact, wearing extremely tight and revealing clothing in order to attract their attention. Most of htem can pull it off, but the odd one ... no. sorry love. We were consoled by the fact that the food was really good and for once, cholocalte mousse was both on the menu and available!

The next day we booked our onward travel to Ile Saint Marie via the little beachside hamlet of Mahambo. I was more than happy to be getting out of there, as while this large, seaside town provided us with the opportunity to use banks, develop photos and book flights back to Tana, it was just another city. Insert Paul Kelly quote HERE. Still, getting ourselves organised involved wandering around and getting lost (oops I mean seeing the sights), and its central, wide, palm-lined boulevards and most facilities left me with the feeling that it wouldn't be too bad a place to live - provided you could put up with the seediness of the place and the regular influx of lusty sailors!

... some of the fabulous street art advertising in Tamatave

I was even happier to have left Tamatave when we eventually set foot on the golden sands of Mahambo Beach. It had taken a few hours by taxi-brousse and a 2km walk from the main road with heavy packs - but it was definitely worth it. The only word I could think of was ... SCORE! The village was small and quiet, and while it obviously attracted a number of visitors, judging by the hotels and restuarants scattered along the dirt road, it was not yet high season in Madagascar (and since the political problems and typhoons in 08-09 led to a dearth of visitors) and we were two of a total of around ten vazaha in the place, most of whom stayed in their fancy pants hotel at the other end of the beach.

Our bunglaow was (almost) right on the beach, and we spent our time in Mahambo lounging around, swimming, enjoying local delicious seafood, nice long beach walks, reading books and hanging out with  local tourists. I love being able to order barbeque fish, have it delivered to your door, and eat it by candlelight. Why is it that we only do these things on holidays?! We tried to perfect our time in Mahambo even further by throwing in a G&T at said fancy-pants hotel - but our expensive taste in gin (well, in our defence, they for once had Blue Sapphire!) did leave a sour taste in our mouths when we received the bill (almost the same price as our bungalow for the night! d'oh!). At least we had the absurd-sound-making black and white-ruffed lemurs to keep us entertained; the hotel had two pet ones that leapt around in the palm trees. They're rather big 'cats'!

But lounging around on the beautiful beach had to end ... mainly because we wanted to go and lounge around on another beautiful beach. So we set off to meet the Cap St. Marie bus that would whisk us to the ferry landing at Sanoeira-Ivongo. Ater two police checks (in case our ferry sank, I guess) we boarded the boat and glided over to the beautiful Ile Saint-Marie, aka Nosy Boraha.

Indri-spotting in Andasibe-Mantadia

Our reason for coming to Andasibe village was simple: we wanted to see Madagascar's largest lemur, the Indri. Parc National d'Andasibe-Mantadia is the last remaining park in Madagascar that is home to this beautiful creature. The reserve that we could easily visit, Reserve Speciale d'Analamazaotra (what the?!) is only small, at 810 hectares, and is a pocked of forest separated from the Park which is 13km away but almost 13,000ha in size. But a four hour walk through the reserve's secondary forest (the only primary rainforest left in the east of the island is in the National Park) gave us the opportunity to see the large and very beautiful black and white Indri leaping around up in the trees, sometimes coming down lower, allowing us to see them at a reasonably close distance. The most hauntingly beautiful and incredible sound that I have heard in a long time came in the form o the Indris calling across the treetops to other family groups, both identifying their locations and warning the other Indris to keep out of their territory. The calling went on for about ten minutes, the males with their lower pitched calls and the higher pitched calls of the females.

During our misty early morning walk, we also saw other lemur species; the beautiful golden, white and brown Diademed Sifaka, with its black face and bright eyes, not to mention a snow-white tail (interestingly, the Indri have no tails, only a patch of triangular-shaped fur and a patch where it seems someone has removed it!); and the Eastern Woolly Lemur, a nocturnal species, three individuals huddled together, the baby and its mother peering down at us with their big brown eyes, while they tried to sleep (stupid noisy tourists!). We also came across numerous bird, insect and interesting medicinal plant species on our walk, as well as some chameleons - including the largest one I've seen here - right at the park entrance!

A night walk also provided us with the opporutnity to see two other nocturnal lemur species - the elusive mouse lemurs, their tiny eyes glowing red at us in the torchlight as they peered out at us from the roadside vegetation. No night walks are allowed in National Parks since a 2008 directive from Madagascar National Parks, stating that they were too disruptive to the flora and fauna. I couldn't agree more... and therefore night walks are always along the road, on the park boundaries. The Hotel Feoriny Ala - "Song of the forest" - was also set up on the park's boundary and in the morning you can hear the Indri calling across the forest to each other. Nice.

We wanted to go walking in Parc Natinal d'Andasibe-Mantadia, but its quite a distance from Andasibe and there is no public tranpsort to the Park; you need your own vehicle. Plus the Park closes at 4pm each day, apparently meaning that there are no multi-day hikes permitted at this stage. This is a real pity, as its the largest and least touristed area of remnant forest in this area, and it would have been a beatiful place to visit. The relatively new parks system in Madagascar still has a long way to go - but it's off to a good start.

Still, we had our eyes on Ile Saint Marie - a beautiful island resembling a mildly pregnat woman sleeping! - to spend the last few days of our time on this island, preferably lying on the beach, cocktail in hand. First though, we had to make our way to Toamasina, or Tamatave as its also known, on the est coast.

Lemurs in Ranomafana and missionaries in Ambositra

Another lovely name to try and pronounce. We reached Ranomafana ("hot water") by early afternoon, and there isn't much to this little town, but its in a beautiful forested setting - a huge change from what we'd seen on the journey.

So much of the contryside between Manakara and Ranomafana was completely devastated. All of the forest has been completely cleared and burned, with many hills left purely as grassland - not one tree gracing most of the hillsides. It was like driving through a green-tinged desert. We just couldn't believe how much devastation there was. The areas of slumping and landslides were common some areas had vegetatio ncover, but it was only where colonising species had begun to grow back. It amazes me that so much forest has been cleared - whether to create grassland for grazing zebu, for firewood, or wood for construction or selling charcoal - but not only that, but that nothing has been replanted or reforested in so many places. In some areas there are now ecualypt of pine plantations, or travellers' palms have grown back, but on the whole it seems that there is little effort to replant anything. And the results - gully erosion, slumping, landslides - are all so common, but the clearing continues. It just doesn't make sense.

But we consoled ourselves by staying at a beautiful hotel tucked away up on a hillside, surrounded by forest and with beautiful views over the town and surrounding countryside, most of which still has much of the forest cover intact; and the fact that tomorrow we would visit Parc National de Ranomafana, which preserves 48,000ha of the beautiful rainforest of this part of the country.

We cruised around town for the day, checking out a women's weaving co-op located in the now defunct Hotel Station Thermal, behind which still exists the thermal baths for which the town is known. The following morning we headed off to the Parc with two new American friends, who kindly offered us a ride in their 4WD. We took a four hour water through the beautiful secondary rainforest, looking for lemurs as we wandered. the rainforest here is very different from any of the landscapes we'd seen so far; for a start, it's rainforest (!) so its a lot wetter, which means the vegetation is much more lush. Because we're now right over on the eastern side of the island, the cimate is also cooler, with more frequent rain, and the elevation is up to 1200m.

Walking througg Ranomafana reminded me a lot of the rainforest in Indonesia but with a lot less mature trees. In fact we spent all of our four hours in secondary rainforest, only skirting laong the primary rainforest; because the park was only opened 20 years ago, and prior to this the community could cut the mature trees and also farm the land, the natural heritage hasn't ben protected in its original, natural form - ie, with many mature trees dominating hte forest. In fact one of the most mature trees that we did see was a eucalypt, at the site of a former village, now overgrown with saplings and vines!

For me, besides wandering through beautiful rainforest, the highlight was definitely seeing a few different types of lemurs. First we spotted a mother and her juvenile Greater Bamboo lemur, one of two species for whom the park was created to protect. Soon afterwards we were able to see three beautiful Milne-Edwards' sifaka, the second largest lemur in Madagascar, with their beautiful black and white coats. Watching them spring from tree to tree was certainly something special. and lastly we also spotted two 'huddles' of Red-bellied Brown lemurs, perched high above us having a nap, every now and then peering out at us with their beautiful white-ringed eyes. It was refreshing to see some different lemur species, as so far the most common ones we have seen are the maki catta, which are the dominant species in the south and west of the country. And whie Parc National du Ranomafana may be expensive to visit, and not so easy to visit on multi-day hikes, wlking through the rainforest today was a lovely refreshing experience.

It was also a nice walk back to our hotel along the beautiful winding road between the park and Ranomafana town, stopping for lunch at a river viewpoint, interacting with the school kids wandering home, greeting local villages as we passed, all the while surrounded by (mostly!) forested hillsides. Ranomafana certainly is a beautiful part of the country.

But its also one we had to leave to carry on with our travels. And in this we were aided by two lovely Americans, Joshua and Andy, who also stayed at our hotel. Joshua was a 'travelling doctor' and Andy worked on the National Geographic Explorer ship, both of them travelling the world and making a lot of money while doing it. They offered us a ride to Ambositra in their 4WD, which was very posh by our usual taxi-brousse standards; of course we accepted a free ride in comfort and with speed! It was also nie to watch the passing scenery in the compan yof two very amusing and interesting guys who loved a chat - and of course it was someone new to talk to.

So we arrived in Ambositra a lot more quickly (and comfortably!) than we expected, and spent the rest of our afternon wandering around the twon. Of first and utmost importance was finding the somewhat unexpected Benedictine Monastery and buying a wheel of their delicious cheese - we were definitely craving it, and it made a nice change from La Vache qui rit, which isn't real cheese at all! I can't say I've ever eaten cheese made by Benedictine nuns. It was so good ... and will continue to be for as long (short?) as it lasts!

But then we discovered the ultimate 30th birthday present. A Chess board atop a wooden box, containing pull-out drawers with more games on them - Backgammon, Checkers, Go and a special Malagasy game called Fanorona - as well as the Chess board opening up to reveal the beautifully hand-carved wooden Chess figures. There were many different ones on sale with varying levels of qualit yand size, but nothing could match the one I had my heart set on to buy for my sister Ange; it was big, it had the most games and it was beautiufl designed with marqueterie scenes on all four sides. It was perfect except for one thing = the saleswoman wanted 950,000Ar for it ($475) and we could only bargain her down to 800,000. No way. She was stubborn, too. So, after visiting all of the other gift shps in town and finding none as good qualit yas this one, we decided t ogo back the following day and try again before heading off to Tana. Being the woodworking capital and also the entre of woodworking in Madagascar, it seemed this would be the cheapes and best place to spend m oney on such an investment.

The next morning while hunting around for breakfast, we happened t omeet a Soth African woman and her eight year old daughter shopping in the main street. On nearly jumping out of her skin in surprise at fellow English speakers, she promptly invited us to her house for breakfast and also offered to help us bargain down the price of the chess set. Sold! And so we met aileen and her daughter Nikki, who had lived in Ambositra for three years, the family of a missionary working ofr ADRA. Sadly, Aileen was paranoid about the food and water, didin't work and was therefore very bored, apart from the fact that she was supposed to have home-schooled Nikki (who, at age eight, couldn't read or write properly). She hadn't bothered to learn much French or Malagasy and therefore was extremely lonely, as she couldn't really communicate with anyone except her best friend and housemaid. We felt a mixture of scorn and pity for them. But a lack of visitors also meant tey were extremely hospitable, and after hosting us for brekky they joined us at the wood carving shop, unsuccessfully attempted to bargain the price of the chess set, drove us to the other souvernir shops in town to find an equivalent product, and then dropped us off at the taxi brousse station. Funnily enough it turned out that they also knew the English missionaries that we had met in Mangily.

So we headed back to Tana, staying briefly overnight after a long taxi-brousse ride before passing through to the east. Destination: Andasibe.