As I mentioned in an earlier post, our friend Gaia called us on Malagasy Independence Day (June 26th) to see if we wanted to go with her to Ranomafana National Park the next day.
Francesca and I have developed an informal motto/philosophy here: “When someone asks you if you want to do something in Madagascar, don’t think. Don’t ask questions. Just say yes.”
Hence, I’m sure you know what our answer to Gaia was…
Gaia decided that the most convenient way for us to get there, instead of putting ourselves at the whims of the notoriously capricious taxi-brousse schedules (which would have made our drive closer to 3 hours with stops), was to hire a taxi driver for the day (which would cut down driving time to a little over an hour, and no waiting). For 80,000 Ariary (about $40, split between the three of us) we had our driver from the time he picked up Gaia at 7:30am until we got back to Fianar after nightfall, a little after 6pm. Sweet deal, no?
The early morning drive was lovely: misty at first (beautiful and mysterious over the rice paddies), then clearing into what would actually pass for a summer day – we actually took off our jackets and put on SHORTS for the first time since we came to this country!
Ranomafana is a rainforest, and looks like everything you would expect one to be. Stretching over steep hillsides, the greenery is dense and deep, made up of leafy trees and thick bamboo stalks (the diet of several lemur species that inhabit the park). A running stream with waterfalls cuts through the valley.
The little town in Ranomafana is everything you would hope for in a tiny tropical town: small, brightly-colored buildings, hotels with little bungalows for guests, a few little hole-in-the-wall hotelys and gargottes (restaurant/snack bars), a plentiful fruit market, banana trees filled with bright geckos, children playing soccer, butterflies.
We parked the taxi and crossed a rickety bridge over a stream, bright in the sunlight – it felt much later then mid-morning. Gaia wanted to swim in the hot springs. We walked up to a little hut of a kiosk to ask. Turns out you had to pay a bit. Also turns out it’s really just a regular pool that happens to be heated by the thermal springs. Gaia still went for a swim, but Francesca and I took our time to wander and explore a bit…
I marveled at the strange flower-like growth on the end of a bunch of bananas still on the tree, then spent a good amount of time playing with camera lenses and settings trying to stalk the little green geckos sunning themselves on it. We followed a few butterflies, some blue, some black and green, waiting for them to land so we could snap a close-up shot. We came across a little garden with a pond of purple water lilies (nénuphars in French; I’ve always liked that word). I looked up into a tree and saw the BIGGEST spider web I’ve ever seen – literally, it stretched at least four feet from the trees’ foliage to some bushes below. Not only that, it was a double web – picture two webs as parallel planes! A spider that size would have to be…HUGE, and indeed I spotted the eight-legged fellow – he/she put Shelob and Ron Weasley outside our kitchen window [see earlier posts if you don’t know what I’m talking about] to shame. Black and orange legs, sitting there in the middle of this giant web, whose threads actually shimmered gold in the sun (I’ll upload pictures to flickr once I’m back in the States).
Once Gaia was done with her swim, we bought some bananas and drove to where we could hire a guide (English-speaking, for Gaia’s sake) and begin our trek. We chose a 3-hour circuit, which they guaranteed us would include spotting some lemurs (which seemed a little suspect to me).
We set off with our guide (who said he had learned a lot of his English from researchers from Duke and Stonybrook who had come to study the lemurs here), crossing a bridge over some rapids, and continued on along a worn path paved with stone. At that point I felt a little silly – we were just walking along a paved trail in the woods – why did I need a guide for that? Our guide pointed out some plants that were used by tribes for medicinal purposes, then the giant bamboo which the lemurs here survive on, despite the fact that it contains enough cyanide to kill a man (this is what the Duke and Stonybrook researchers wanted to study).
At a certain point our guide made a whistling sound, and someone whistled back. Apparently the lemur-spotter had found some lemurs nearby. We walked off the trail, up through the dense forest, trying to be careful where we stepped…over fallen branches, pushing aside leaves, twigs sometimes snapping in our faces.
Our guide beckoned, then pointed upwards. Wayyy up in the trees you could see two furry forms. I whipped out my camera, already set up with my telephoto lens – this is why I bought it! I zoomed all the way in. Sure enough, there they were: two Golden Bamboo Lemurs – one of the rarer species! We watched them cuddle, and later spotted a third. The guide and spotter sort of provoked them by moving some branches, and they moved a bit more. Then one began to urinate – almost directly on us!
Another group with a guide came along to look at these lemurs, so we moved on, and our lemur-spotter disappeared – for the moment...
We continued on up the hill to a point de belle vue (beautiful view point); there was a wooden deck overlooking a huge portion of the forested valley. Our guide beckoned again – he was tossing little pieces of banana to two mongooses. All I really knew about mongooses (mongeese? What is the plural of ‘mongoose’?) are that they’re in the rodent family and that they can kill snakes, even poisonous ones like cobras. These two had reddish brown fur and looked a lot like ferrets – very cut! [pictures will be on flickr in a few weeks]. There were also more of the little green geckos I had seen earlier on the banana trees – they swarmed around the piece of banana the guide offered them [see photo on previous post], licking the fruit with pink tongues. We relaxed – I ate a banana myself, as I was feeling light-headed – and absorbed some sun.
Soon enough, though, our guide got a call on his cell phone – the spotter had found some more lemurs! I was a little disappointed by the whole spotter and cell phone deal – seems like a very artificial way to see wildlife, and the rapidity with which this spotter seemed to be finding these lemurs almost made me think that he was hiding lemurs in cages in the woods and running and releasing them as we made our way over to see them!
Still, I don’t want to complain too much – they were LEMURS after all!
This next group of lemurs were Brown Red-Ruffed Lemurs, very cute [see photo]. We saw both males and females, with the former actually being the smaller, the latter the larger – not what you would expect in the animal kingdom.
We continued hiking…along the way our guide pointed out and ants’ nest, which looked like a little mud blob suspended on a skinny branch, some berries that forest people used as wild coffee, a species of eucalyptus, and a tiny black and gray bird that I’m pretty sure he called a “micro-robin.”
Once again we traveled off the beaten path partway down a steep hillside with not a few thorny vines…this time, it was to catch a glimpse of the nocturnal Sportif Lemur – we were lucky enough to catch him poking his head out of his nest (a hole in a tree) during the day. I was disappointed that our guide thought it appropriate to shake the tree a bit to make him come out more – leave the poor little guy alone! Still, I got some great shots, thanks to my telephoto lens [coming to a flickr account near you]…
We continued back on the trail, then once again left it, this time entering a different part of the forest more heavily populated with bamboo. The amazing thing about bamboo forests is how architectural they can be – the giant bamboo stalks grow straight up, with no tapering, until the start tipping to the side, still holding straight. This can make for a sort of criss-cross effect in the forest, casting stunning shadows warmed by the soft green light passing through the leaves of the upper canopy. Our guide pointed out a traditional forest people memorial – not a tomb, but an arrangement of rocks set in place to commemorate the dead, where zebus were sometimes slaughtered as sacrifices.
Our guide left us for a bit – he seemed to be having an argument with his lemur-spotter (which is part of what made me so suspicious of their methods and business arrangement). Tired, I sat on the ground and looked up – up through the bamboo stalks and leaves, which filtered the sunlight into a dappled pattern on the ground. We were in the rainforest (forêt humide in French) – that place I had dreamed of as a six-year-old watching “Kratt’s Creatures” every day after school, dreaming of oneday becoming a wildlife biologist…now, over a decade later, pursuing academic interests completely different from those of my six-year-old self, I had somehow found myself here, in the bamboo rainforests of Madagascar. Life is funny like that.
Finally, our guide returned – the spotter had located a final group of lemurs: the Broad-Nosed Lemur [again, wait for photos on flickr]. We retraced our steps a bit, walked down a steep hillside and saw them – so close, too! At least five, all completely undisturbed by our presence. Our guide began throwing them chunks of cut bamboo, which they eagerly devoured. I tried to ask our guide why these lemurs were so excited about the bamboo they were giving them, since the lemurs could surely find plenty of their own bamboo right there in the forest, but either he didn’t understand my question, or he chose to avoid it, because he gave me an answer completely unrelated to my question. Suspicious.
We hiked the rest of the way back – there wasn’t enough time left for us to visit one of the waterfalls and natural pools – another time, perhaps. We gave our guide a lift back into town, then stopped to eat at a little hotely where I ordered a pôtage de legumes (vegetable soup), which took forever because it was made to order, puréed and everything, served with chunks of garlicky croutons. My first real meal of the day; all I had had all day were bananas, a total of four. Nonetheless, even after I was full from my soup and the THB the three of us shared, I couldn’t resist ordering bananes flambées au rhum – two sugary bananas on fire in traditional Malagasy rum. Price? 2,000 Ariary (about $1).
One rainforest on a sunny day, three girls, four species of lemurs spotted, and six bananas eaten (two of them flambeed in rum) - awesome, awesome day.
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