Ouur last destination in Madagascar was really the icing on the cake. The whole trip has been amazing, our guide Diary, is just exceptional, outstanding and passionate at what he does. The last destination was a rainforest, 5hours from the capital full of wildlife to be spotted. It was also relatively jam packed full of tourists!
The day started with a hike into the rainforests to see Indri. The largest species of lemur and also missing a tail. The main difference between lemurs and monkeys is the later had a prehensile tail and can hang from trees, while lemurs use theirs much like a cat for balance, or just flopping around. The hike was flat until the guides heard an Indri and we were up into the forest bush bashing our way to find them. Their call is very reminiscent of a whale or dolphins as it echoes through the forest. I did record the call so expect that to possibly be my ringtone in future!
There were also a few Lesser bamboo lemurs that we struggled to see through the bamboo and some Golden Sifakas as well in the rainforest. There were no shortage of birds, insects of chameleons though and the sound of the Indri would occasionally echo through the rainforest. At one point a green frog jumped onto out professional photographer Lynn’s camera lens. Before I could tell her it hopped onto her hair, thinking only of the frog I teased it out of her hair, to have the frog sit happily in my hand, long enough for hoards of german tourists to take photos. As fun as the rainforest was our next stop was to Lemur island, which is exactly what you think it is.
The hardest part is the 10m canoe ride to get to Lemur island. Once there its 5 lemur species across the 2 islands. On the main island i could wander around were Lesser bamboo lemurs, black and white ruffes lemurs and common brown lemurs. On a second island we could go on there were golden Sifakas and I also spotted a red ruffed lemur. I think that makes 9 or 10 species total that I’ve seen on this trip. The lemurs seemed to have no issue with getting up close for photos. The Brown lemurs would walk around on the ground between the people. The super cute bamboo lemur just ate its bamboo and thge black and white ruffed lemur just hung upsdie to put on a show 🙂
The fun continued today with a visit to a reptile park that had some resident introduced Coquerel’s Sifakas, to go with the chameleons, frogs, geckos and a couple of snakes. I turned down the offer of holding a ground boa, I’m more a frog person. I did get to feed one of the sifaka’s which was justr another amazing experience to have. Its been a long trip, but oh so amazing trip. I still have 2 weeks to go on other islands, but really think it will be hard to out do the magic of the last 2 weeks.
The reptiles are so colourful and interesting!
Agree the bamboo lemur is very cute, I’d most like to pat your good friend though.
Was the kayak trip really only 10m?