animals left over from when it broke free from Gondwana, the great
southern super-continent, millions of years ago. They're like monkeys
but more primitive looking and with bigger eyes and they live only on
Madagascar. Unfortunately since 90% of the country has been
deforested, it's difficult to find there critters unless you travel to
one of the isolated patches of remaining forest, which we did. We
stayed in comfortable bamboo huts at the aptly named Fean'ny Ala,
'Voices of the Forest'. It sounded like one of those funky new age
rainforest soundtracks, with all the bugs and birds chirping, frogs
croaking, and lemurs calling. This served as our base camp for several
lemur expeditions. On our night walk Luc surprised our guide by
spotting the rare nocturnal mouse lemur, the smallest and cutest of
the lemur species. We trapped him with our flashlights and called
everyone else in the park to come and see. During the day we ventured
deep into the primary forest where groups rarely go so the lemurs are
still scared of people and hide, so we didn't see many animals. We did
see huge trees covered in vines and epiphytes and swam in a chilly
waterfall. The next day we had much better luck with the animals in
the special reserve where the lemurs have become habituated to people
and go about their daily routines. We also had the best guide in the
park, Desi. He knew all the tricks for finding lemurs including
several grunts and calls. We saw golden diademed sifaka, wooly lemur,
rough tailed lemur and most impressive, a family of indri, the largest
and loudest lemur. Their siren-like chorus served as the grand finale
for our visit. We also had a chance to get up-close and personal with
lemurs at a semi free-range zoo near Tamatave where Janet had a photo
op with a particularly adventurous little lemur. Although lemurs were
definately the focus of our sojourn, we also saw several species of
cameleons, the elusive leaf-tailed gecko, tree frogs, and snakes.
This is the Indri family we saw doing its ear-splitting siren-like daily call. You might not be able to actually see the lemurs, it's more about hearing them.
Here's a good shot of the Indri taken by Janet's mom:
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