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.
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