Monday, August 16, 2010
Delays
So we were delayed a day due to technichal difficulties with the plane. On the bright side we got to stay another day in Madagascar! Yay! On the dim side it was just the airline putting us up in a hotel near the airport, so no lemurs. Well, as it stands now we'll be at SFO by 4:30 PM Tuesday the 17th (when you're likely to read this anyway). Currently we're in Frankfurt on an 8 hour layover. woo hoo.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Friday, July 30, 2010
South To North
PHWEW! We have been all over the south of Madagascar and now we are exploring the north, this time with a car and driver to get the most out of our remaining time. Ranomafana NP was awesome as was the Barenty Reserve. We checked out Ankarafantsika NP the last two days and we'll be at the Grottes d'Anjohibe tomorrow (2 hours north of Majanga) to see some serious bats! After that we plan to hit Diego Suarez in the extreme north for some more jungle adventures. There are way, WAY too many great pictures we have to share so I'm sorry if I can't go through them all just yet. Hope everyone is well and I thought I would mention for Phil that people have been noticing my VMware shirt and telling me "Hey, I use VMware!" It's generally positive, these remarks.
Some snapshots below
Chameleon and habitat
Chameleon close up
Nocturnal mouse lemur and snack
The ever entertaining ringtail lemurs
Our boat tour escort
The road north to Majanga
A lovely sphinx moth
Some snapshots below
Chameleon and habitat
Chameleon close up
Nocturnal mouse lemur and snack
The ever entertaining ringtail lemurs
Our boat tour escort
The road north to Majanga
A lovely sphinx moth
Monday, July 19, 2010
More good times
Howdy everyone! We are doing well and doing a lot of bushwhacking and country crossing, so unless we happen to stay at a fancy hotel we don't have internet access- just a reality of this country. We miss you all and have more fun adventures to share when we have time, but that may be another while yet!
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Tsingy and Kirindy
So I sat down and made an outline of all that has happened since our last blog and found way too much to talk about, so I'll do my best to cover what I can but in some places I'll have to fill you in later. It's a long read but pictures are at the bottom!
First off, we took a taxi-brousse (inter-city minivan full of people) from Tana to Morondava. We left at 4:30 PM Thursday and arrived the next morning around 8:00 AM. In that time we went through numerous military checkpoints (checking for taxi robbing bandits, basically), rest stops, one pretty ugly looking accident with a couple large trucks and Zebu all over the road, one stop to help another taxi change a tire, and our first glimpses of baobab trees. On our taxi were several friendly people, including one man left stranded when the military police kicked everyone off a taxi for who knows what reason (I didn't ask).
The first day in Morondava we headed straight over to "Les Bougainvilliars" where we booked our first night in a bungalow near the beach. Out in the town we booked our tour to see the Tsingy de Bemaraha and visit Kirindy Forest National Park (not to be confused with Kirindy Mitea to the south, which we later visited). That first night we met our first in-room geckos who chirped at each other and helped eliminate a few bugs from our room, though we still needed a mosquito net of course.
Our 4x4 driver spoke almost no English, so most of the 200 km to the Tsingy was silent or spent chatting with Camellia about the plants, animals, villages, tombs, and baobabs we passed. We ended up taking two river ferries to get to our destination on a road that was rough dirt, sometimes questionably a road, almost the whole way. At the end, a room and dinner was waiting for us at our hotel, the Olympian. It was a very clean, new room, but you had to go outside to another building to use the bathroom or take a cold shower, which, after that much red, dusty road, was a welcome thing.
The next morning we headed over to the park office to hire guide and back to the river for a short boat tour, including an unremarkable cave entrance and a sacred site in the tall river cliffside where bones laid to rest by the ancient Malagsy were visibly stacked.
After our river excursion we headed through our guide's home village to pick up some food. It was at that point that we realized that where tourists pay in thousands of ariari (Malagasy money) locals pay in hundreds. With our food and water we continued our bumpy 4x4 ride for about another hour to what they call "big tsingy" where you find the tall, gray limestone spires popularized by National Geographic. Going in we were handed climbing belts and given a lecture on how to point at things in the park. If that sounds strange, it's because it is. It's a sacred taboo, or "fady" in Malagasy, to point your finger at anything while in the park. The solution is you cock your finger back and point with your index knuckle, or point with all your fingers with your hand flat.
The four hour tour begins and ends on the same path through a dense forest full of ficus, stranglers, insects, big coral and sponge fossils, and lemurs. Yes, we finally got to see some lemurs in the wild: both the white lemur and the red fronted lemur. We were apparently very lucky to see so many together that day. On through the forest our path took us through caves under the tsingy where we donned our headlamps and put on our climbing belts for a tour past stalactites, ficus roots, and a couple sleeping bats. out of the cave we climbed up and out of an absolutely beautiful arboretum between the limestone blades to the tops of the spires for a panoramic view of the area. to get up we followed steep climbing corridor with carved steps and safety cables to clip our belts onto. At the top you're a landing pad for butterflies, and surveyor of a vast landscape of green and grey. because the tsingy is made from ancient seabed, different horizontal layers weather at different rates, giving the impression at some of the spire tops of castles floating on clouds.
Ultimately the photos or words don't convey experiences like standing on the tsingy or seeing these beautiful animals, the lemurs, living in their magnificent forest home. All I can say is that you get the feeling of being very small and unable to see but a tiny thread of all that is going on around you.
That night we were the only tourists in the hotel restaurant, aside from the employees who we sat with and watched "Friends" in French dub. No, we didn't understand what was going on but the jokes seemed just as funny as they do in English, somehow.
The next day we were taken by the same guide to "small tsingy," which was essentially a severely scaled down version (vertically) of big tsingy, with more jungle surrounding it and tight crevices to squeeze through.
That day we loaded into the 4x4 and headed out, picking up a young guy by the name of Franklin who wanted to know if we would take him in our car to Morondava. Our guide asked for him since he spoke only limited English. Franklin was a real pleasure to have on our trip. He spoke a little English so he could assist our driver in requests, he was really upbeat, had good music with him, and definitely cut down on our driver's boredom.
Our next stop was Kirindy Forest, where we arrived after dark but our guide and dinner were waiting for us, along with our bungalow. Before we slept or ate, however, we had a night hike to go on, which we got right to after dropping our bags. Our guide's name was Christian, and he seemed genuinely excited by the life in Kirindy. That night We saw several species of mouse lemur, owls, spiders, nocturnal birds, chameleons and other reptiles, and even a small crocodile. But the one animal that our guide was exceedingly excited about showing us was the giant jumping rat that can only be found in Kirindy forest, and happens to live near camp.
We met up with Christian at 10:30 PM to stalk the jumping rat- a routine that involved a number of laps around the facilities with flashlights, careful listening, and checking for droppings. When we finally spotted it, it was tolerant of our presence and let us get within photographing distances on several occasions. Christian had put rice on the ground in the middle of camp in the hopes that it would feed, which gave us ample opportunity to take pictures and hear its nervous noise (a kind of cartoonish growl that made us giggle). A second jumping rat (a male according to our guide) showed up, but the female already in camp just growled at it and they stayed away from each other for the most part.
It's worth noting that the same night a furry intruder came into our bungalow while we were out and ravaged a banana we left on the table. When we showed our guide he suspected that it was a bushy tailed rat, who are apt to sneak into the bungalows in search of tourist food.
The next morning our guide interrupted our breakfast to show us a fossa that wandered into camp quite confidently to look for water and rub its scent on some tree stumps. The big cat had a collar on for researchers to track it; one of two to have such a collar. A second fossa, sans a collar, would wander in no less confidently in the afternoon.
Our hike that morning featured at least one species of nocturnal lemur sleeping in a tree, a whole lot of white lemurs (a few of which our guide was able to get just a couple feet from with nothing but curious stares from the lemurs in return), a sleeping owl, and many other species of fascinating plants and animals we took pictures of. Through all this, Franklin, our added passenger, was able to point out and demonstrate some wildlife himself, sometimes bringing up the back and finding interesting things our guide hadn't seen.
We left Kirindy and headed back to Morondava, stopping at a few picturesque locations like the Avenue of the Baobabs. Arriving at pur destination with so many pictures, we bid Franklin goodby, and got a couple nights stay at the Renala Hotel just down the street from Les Bougainvilliers where we had previously stayed. This hotel had internet so we were able to check in with life back home; very nice when you're starting to feel a little homesick.
Our first day back we walked around on the beach stalking sand crabs and came back to our hotel to an apparent party of some kind. The group seemed to be a bunch of rowdy South Africans and Europeans enjoying a lot of beer. It turns out, after joining them in a lot of conversation, that they were offshore oil workers enjoying their first night on leave, some off after months on the rig. Four of them were chopper crew in blue jumpsuits, and the rest without uniform. We made particularly good acquaintances with a seismic expert named Mark, and a marine biologist named Stephanie. They invited us to another bar down the street where we enjoyed more drinks, courtesy of the party host who organizes these things each month.
The next morning we met Herman, who at least partially operates the hotel. He set us up with a crew to travel south by pirogue (a traditional proa or outrigger canoe that is handmade with a square sail) to Belo sur Mer, 70 km down the coast, or about 6-7 hours sailing. Belo is about then about three hours sailing further south to a trailhead at Kirindy Mitea National Park, our intended destination. That night Herman took us to eat local BBQ, that was very, very good.
We set sail with about 2/3 of our luggage (the rest stayed at the Renala) before dawn, and arrived at Belo around noon. The trip was beautiful and the wind was relatively cooperative most of the morning. My only complaint was the lack of comfortable seating: there were only wooden planks and the moist wooden floor board to sit on.
The two guys sailing the boat were very skilled, and I found it pretty interesting to watch them rig the sail in a multitude of configurations. In general, one guy would be up front watching forward and managing the sail, while the other was in the back with a rudder and pulling a sheet (rope) attached to the lower outer edge of the sail, influencing its pressure against the wind and therefor the boat's speed. The whole trip they were pretty talkative with each other, but only one of them spoke a little English and would occasionally give us some info about our journey.
Belo sur Mer is a small town, almost just a village, where we stayed in a clean, pleasant bungalow and had our first meal down the Beach at a hotel/restaurant/dive school called Ecolodge du Menabe, run by a French guy who we met our first night in Morondava. We sat and chatted with two young couples from Belgium about good sources of travel information, and ate delicious king mackerel with beans and rice.
Next morning we met with our boat crew and sailed for Kirindy Mitea. This time we also brought along our guide, Toni, who spoke no English whatsoever. When we got there, he led the way far ahead most of the time, and essentially communicated nothing about the park. We immediately headed away from the beach and up some dunes to a wonderful view of the protected forest on the other side. From that spot we could see a large lake and the path we were to take beside it on its western shore. On that trail we saw a variety of interesting plant life and were able to observe many species of bird, including flamingos, on the lake. Camellia also got quite a few pictures of butterflies and other insects.
After a very short break (with orange Fanta and junk food) on some rough stone benches by the ocean we headed back to the boat and sailed to Belo once more. The rest of that day we spent at the market looking for food and drink for the crew on the next day's trip out to a northern island off the coast. We also sat down for some coffee with some friends (or family?) of the crewman who didn't speak English, and later had dinner and drinks with some people who stayed in the neighboring bungalow on the beach. We had a particularly good conversation with a German guy by the name of Mario who interpreted for us pretty much the whole time, and lent us his dive goggles for use at the island the next day. Also, at the table next to us, was a marine biologist from the UK who told us about her work setting up marine sanctuaries off the coast and around the local islands.
The next morning at 6 AM we set sail for a northern island, and had a painfully windless, slow ride for almost four hours. For me the pain was compounded by a particularly bad case of homesickness that lasted until later in the day. The island was populated by a few families of migrant fisherman with their shanty dwellings, many, many kids always shouting "bonjour" and "salaama", and fresh catches of octopus drying in the sun. Camellia and I walked around the white sand island that was absolutely a coral jewel-box. The sound of blue-green waves gently breaking on the shore was like a wind chime as thousands of coral bits washed over each other. We had put our beach towels out and sat down to read, when we were approached by four or five kids under the age of eight who drew fishes and boats in Camellia's journal. They were so curious and playful!
When we got too hot in the sun we took a swim with the kids and practiced our floating. Looking back up on the beach we noticed that one of our crew, the one who spoke some English, was also drawing little octopuses and boats with the kids.
We took off from the island and began with little wind towards Morondava. After about an hour the wind picked up, and about three hours later until the end the pirogue was sailing at top speed with rough water making the ride very exciting. Camellia opted to sleep through most of it to avoid sea sickness, but I was having a really great time. True, water was coming in, I was constantly trying to keep our baggage dry, and the wooden plank under me was really hurting me with every swell, but it was all so novel that I was forgetting how homesick I felt before.
As the sun went down I could tell that the crew were getting nervous- we were behind schedule. Dusk turned to night and we started seeing bioluminescent creatures in the water next to the hull. When I put my hand down into the passing water they lit up in the wake like sparks! We were very nervous as we approached the port. I'm sure the crew had done a nighttime approach before, but they missed the entry behind the sand bar a little and had to back track through some breaking waves (soaking us) before getting us safely behind it.
We made our nighttime arrival in Morandava, with family and friends of the crew waiting nervously on the sandy shoals, and people shaking our hands who I didn't recognize in the dark. This morning Herman told us about how scared he was for our safe return, and said that he would have rather come with us than not know what the delay was. He is kind of a nervous, but friendly guy.
Today we made arrangements to take a taxi-brousse to Fianarantsoa in the East, and then to visit Ranomafana National Park sometime in the following days. The rest of the plan is open at that point and, internet available, I'll keep you all updated.
Pictures
You'll have to pardon some of the generic animal names until we can confirm what they are exactly.
Tsingy bridges
Tsingy landscape
Baobab tree
Bird at Kirindy Forest
White lemur
From our bungalow, Belo sur Mer
Giant jumping rat
Sleepy lemur, small tsingy
Flamingos at Kirindy Mitea
Fossa at Kirindy forest
Lemur
Kirindy Mitea overlook
Mouse lemur
Owl at night in Kirindy forest
Sleepy lemur
Sleeping owl
First off, we took a taxi-brousse (inter-city minivan full of people) from Tana to Morondava. We left at 4:30 PM Thursday and arrived the next morning around 8:00 AM. In that time we went through numerous military checkpoints (checking for taxi robbing bandits, basically), rest stops, one pretty ugly looking accident with a couple large trucks and Zebu all over the road, one stop to help another taxi change a tire, and our first glimpses of baobab trees. On our taxi were several friendly people, including one man left stranded when the military police kicked everyone off a taxi for who knows what reason (I didn't ask).
The first day in Morondava we headed straight over to "Les Bougainvilliars" where we booked our first night in a bungalow near the beach. Out in the town we booked our tour to see the Tsingy de Bemaraha and visit Kirindy Forest National Park (not to be confused with Kirindy Mitea to the south, which we later visited). That first night we met our first in-room geckos who chirped at each other and helped eliminate a few bugs from our room, though we still needed a mosquito net of course.
Our 4x4 driver spoke almost no English, so most of the 200 km to the Tsingy was silent or spent chatting with Camellia about the plants, animals, villages, tombs, and baobabs we passed. We ended up taking two river ferries to get to our destination on a road that was rough dirt, sometimes questionably a road, almost the whole way. At the end, a room and dinner was waiting for us at our hotel, the Olympian. It was a very clean, new room, but you had to go outside to another building to use the bathroom or take a cold shower, which, after that much red, dusty road, was a welcome thing.
The next morning we headed over to the park office to hire guide and back to the river for a short boat tour, including an unremarkable cave entrance and a sacred site in the tall river cliffside where bones laid to rest by the ancient Malagsy were visibly stacked.
After our river excursion we headed through our guide's home village to pick up some food. It was at that point that we realized that where tourists pay in thousands of ariari (Malagasy money) locals pay in hundreds. With our food and water we continued our bumpy 4x4 ride for about another hour to what they call "big tsingy" where you find the tall, gray limestone spires popularized by National Geographic. Going in we were handed climbing belts and given a lecture on how to point at things in the park. If that sounds strange, it's because it is. It's a sacred taboo, or "fady" in Malagasy, to point your finger at anything while in the park. The solution is you cock your finger back and point with your index knuckle, or point with all your fingers with your hand flat.
The four hour tour begins and ends on the same path through a dense forest full of ficus, stranglers, insects, big coral and sponge fossils, and lemurs. Yes, we finally got to see some lemurs in the wild: both the white lemur and the red fronted lemur. We were apparently very lucky to see so many together that day. On through the forest our path took us through caves under the tsingy where we donned our headlamps and put on our climbing belts for a tour past stalactites, ficus roots, and a couple sleeping bats. out of the cave we climbed up and out of an absolutely beautiful arboretum between the limestone blades to the tops of the spires for a panoramic view of the area. to get up we followed steep climbing corridor with carved steps and safety cables to clip our belts onto. At the top you're a landing pad for butterflies, and surveyor of a vast landscape of green and grey. because the tsingy is made from ancient seabed, different horizontal layers weather at different rates, giving the impression at some of the spire tops of castles floating on clouds.
Ultimately the photos or words don't convey experiences like standing on the tsingy or seeing these beautiful animals, the lemurs, living in their magnificent forest home. All I can say is that you get the feeling of being very small and unable to see but a tiny thread of all that is going on around you.
That night we were the only tourists in the hotel restaurant, aside from the employees who we sat with and watched "Friends" in French dub. No, we didn't understand what was going on but the jokes seemed just as funny as they do in English, somehow.
The next day we were taken by the same guide to "small tsingy," which was essentially a severely scaled down version (vertically) of big tsingy, with more jungle surrounding it and tight crevices to squeeze through.
That day we loaded into the 4x4 and headed out, picking up a young guy by the name of Franklin who wanted to know if we would take him in our car to Morondava. Our guide asked for him since he spoke only limited English. Franklin was a real pleasure to have on our trip. He spoke a little English so he could assist our driver in requests, he was really upbeat, had good music with him, and definitely cut down on our driver's boredom.
Our next stop was Kirindy Forest, where we arrived after dark but our guide and dinner were waiting for us, along with our bungalow. Before we slept or ate, however, we had a night hike to go on, which we got right to after dropping our bags. Our guide's name was Christian, and he seemed genuinely excited by the life in Kirindy. That night We saw several species of mouse lemur, owls, spiders, nocturnal birds, chameleons and other reptiles, and even a small crocodile. But the one animal that our guide was exceedingly excited about showing us was the giant jumping rat that can only be found in Kirindy forest, and happens to live near camp.
We met up with Christian at 10:30 PM to stalk the jumping rat- a routine that involved a number of laps around the facilities with flashlights, careful listening, and checking for droppings. When we finally spotted it, it was tolerant of our presence and let us get within photographing distances on several occasions. Christian had put rice on the ground in the middle of camp in the hopes that it would feed, which gave us ample opportunity to take pictures and hear its nervous noise (a kind of cartoonish growl that made us giggle). A second jumping rat (a male according to our guide) showed up, but the female already in camp just growled at it and they stayed away from each other for the most part.
It's worth noting that the same night a furry intruder came into our bungalow while we were out and ravaged a banana we left on the table. When we showed our guide he suspected that it was a bushy tailed rat, who are apt to sneak into the bungalows in search of tourist food.
The next morning our guide interrupted our breakfast to show us a fossa that wandered into camp quite confidently to look for water and rub its scent on some tree stumps. The big cat had a collar on for researchers to track it; one of two to have such a collar. A second fossa, sans a collar, would wander in no less confidently in the afternoon.
Our hike that morning featured at least one species of nocturnal lemur sleeping in a tree, a whole lot of white lemurs (a few of which our guide was able to get just a couple feet from with nothing but curious stares from the lemurs in return), a sleeping owl, and many other species of fascinating plants and animals we took pictures of. Through all this, Franklin, our added passenger, was able to point out and demonstrate some wildlife himself, sometimes bringing up the back and finding interesting things our guide hadn't seen.
We left Kirindy and headed back to Morondava, stopping at a few picturesque locations like the Avenue of the Baobabs. Arriving at pur destination with so many pictures, we bid Franklin goodby, and got a couple nights stay at the Renala Hotel just down the street from Les Bougainvilliers where we had previously stayed. This hotel had internet so we were able to check in with life back home; very nice when you're starting to feel a little homesick.
Our first day back we walked around on the beach stalking sand crabs and came back to our hotel to an apparent party of some kind. The group seemed to be a bunch of rowdy South Africans and Europeans enjoying a lot of beer. It turns out, after joining them in a lot of conversation, that they were offshore oil workers enjoying their first night on leave, some off after months on the rig. Four of them were chopper crew in blue jumpsuits, and the rest without uniform. We made particularly good acquaintances with a seismic expert named Mark, and a marine biologist named Stephanie. They invited us to another bar down the street where we enjoyed more drinks, courtesy of the party host who organizes these things each month.
The next morning we met Herman, who at least partially operates the hotel. He set us up with a crew to travel south by pirogue (a traditional proa or outrigger canoe that is handmade with a square sail) to Belo sur Mer, 70 km down the coast, or about 6-7 hours sailing. Belo is about then about three hours sailing further south to a trailhead at Kirindy Mitea National Park, our intended destination. That night Herman took us to eat local BBQ, that was very, very good.
We set sail with about 2/3 of our luggage (the rest stayed at the Renala) before dawn, and arrived at Belo around noon. The trip was beautiful and the wind was relatively cooperative most of the morning. My only complaint was the lack of comfortable seating: there were only wooden planks and the moist wooden floor board to sit on.
The two guys sailing the boat were very skilled, and I found it pretty interesting to watch them rig the sail in a multitude of configurations. In general, one guy would be up front watching forward and managing the sail, while the other was in the back with a rudder and pulling a sheet (rope) attached to the lower outer edge of the sail, influencing its pressure against the wind and therefor the boat's speed. The whole trip they were pretty talkative with each other, but only one of them spoke a little English and would occasionally give us some info about our journey.
Belo sur Mer is a small town, almost just a village, where we stayed in a clean, pleasant bungalow and had our first meal down the Beach at a hotel/restaurant/dive school called Ecolodge du Menabe, run by a French guy who we met our first night in Morondava. We sat and chatted with two young couples from Belgium about good sources of travel information, and ate delicious king mackerel with beans and rice.
Next morning we met with our boat crew and sailed for Kirindy Mitea. This time we also brought along our guide, Toni, who spoke no English whatsoever. When we got there, he led the way far ahead most of the time, and essentially communicated nothing about the park. We immediately headed away from the beach and up some dunes to a wonderful view of the protected forest on the other side. From that spot we could see a large lake and the path we were to take beside it on its western shore. On that trail we saw a variety of interesting plant life and were able to observe many species of bird, including flamingos, on the lake. Camellia also got quite a few pictures of butterflies and other insects.
After a very short break (with orange Fanta and junk food) on some rough stone benches by the ocean we headed back to the boat and sailed to Belo once more. The rest of that day we spent at the market looking for food and drink for the crew on the next day's trip out to a northern island off the coast. We also sat down for some coffee with some friends (or family?) of the crewman who didn't speak English, and later had dinner and drinks with some people who stayed in the neighboring bungalow on the beach. We had a particularly good conversation with a German guy by the name of Mario who interpreted for us pretty much the whole time, and lent us his dive goggles for use at the island the next day. Also, at the table next to us, was a marine biologist from the UK who told us about her work setting up marine sanctuaries off the coast and around the local islands.
The next morning at 6 AM we set sail for a northern island, and had a painfully windless, slow ride for almost four hours. For me the pain was compounded by a particularly bad case of homesickness that lasted until later in the day. The island was populated by a few families of migrant fisherman with their shanty dwellings, many, many kids always shouting "bonjour" and "salaama", and fresh catches of octopus drying in the sun. Camellia and I walked around the white sand island that was absolutely a coral jewel-box. The sound of blue-green waves gently breaking on the shore was like a wind chime as thousands of coral bits washed over each other. We had put our beach towels out and sat down to read, when we were approached by four or five kids under the age of eight who drew fishes and boats in Camellia's journal. They were so curious and playful!
When we got too hot in the sun we took a swim with the kids and practiced our floating. Looking back up on the beach we noticed that one of our crew, the one who spoke some English, was also drawing little octopuses and boats with the kids.
We took off from the island and began with little wind towards Morondava. After about an hour the wind picked up, and about three hours later until the end the pirogue was sailing at top speed with rough water making the ride very exciting. Camellia opted to sleep through most of it to avoid sea sickness, but I was having a really great time. True, water was coming in, I was constantly trying to keep our baggage dry, and the wooden plank under me was really hurting me with every swell, but it was all so novel that I was forgetting how homesick I felt before.
As the sun went down I could tell that the crew were getting nervous- we were behind schedule. Dusk turned to night and we started seeing bioluminescent creatures in the water next to the hull. When I put my hand down into the passing water they lit up in the wake like sparks! We were very nervous as we approached the port. I'm sure the crew had done a nighttime approach before, but they missed the entry behind the sand bar a little and had to back track through some breaking waves (soaking us) before getting us safely behind it.
We made our nighttime arrival in Morandava, with family and friends of the crew waiting nervously on the sandy shoals, and people shaking our hands who I didn't recognize in the dark. This morning Herman told us about how scared he was for our safe return, and said that he would have rather come with us than not know what the delay was. He is kind of a nervous, but friendly guy.
Today we made arrangements to take a taxi-brousse to Fianarantsoa in the East, and then to visit Ranomafana National Park sometime in the following days. The rest of the plan is open at that point and, internet available, I'll keep you all updated.
Pictures
You'll have to pardon some of the generic animal names until we can confirm what they are exactly.
Tsingy bridges
Tsingy landscape
Baobab tree
Bird at Kirindy Forest
White lemur
From our bungalow, Belo sur Mer
Giant jumping rat
Sleepy lemur, small tsingy
Flamingos at Kirindy Mitea
Fossa at Kirindy forest
Lemur
Kirindy Mitea overlook
Mouse lemur
Owl at night in Kirindy forest
Sleepy lemur
Sleeping owl
Saturday, July 10, 2010
More nothing for now!
AGAIN with the short posts! My apologies, but I will post about our adventure tomorrow. We have set tomorrow aside as a dedicated rest day, so I'll be able to tell you all about the jumping rats, flamingos, offshore oil workers, and a whole lot of pirogue sailing (complete with slight misadventures) at that time.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Good Times
Hey everyone! Just a temporary post to say that we are happy, safe, and very active over the past few days. I'll post a (more) complete update later with a few pictures and a summary of our plans for the next few days. Hope everyone is well at home, and happy birthday Angie and Dad! We wish we were there to celebrate!
-Dan and Camellia (and the Giant Jumping Rat)
-Dan and Camellia (and the Giant Jumping Rat)
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