Thursday, June 2, 2011
30 May -- The Road Down (Andasibe - Tamatave: pics to follow)
Andasibe/Mantadia is a forest in the highlands, and my next destination was on the east coast, Tamatave. Getting there mean descending from the central highland plateau to sea level at the coast.
And this road descends a lot. Packed out of the bungalow in no great hurry, stopping to admire a huge moth, called a Comet, that had landed on the frame of the bungalow beside mine. What a beautiful thing it was -- decorated with shiny spots, about the size of my two hands put together and having two very long trailing parts to its lower wing. It was something like you see in book illustrations but never in real life. And just sitting there on the bungalow.
I had no idea we were at such a high elevation, but as we left, we stayed high (and cool) for a while before starting a fairly precipitous descent. We went past several villages on the long way down, though the one thing I noticed that impressed me more than anything was a guy carrying two large containers of water up the steep side of a mountain. There was some construction on a microwave tower at the top of the mountain, and his job was apparently to get water to the men working up there. It looked like hard work.
When we got to sea level, we still went over several small mountains as we headed north toward the port of Tamatave through small towns with markets selling charcoal and fruit. Looked like lychees were in season. As always, there were great numbers of people walking along the road, though it seemed to me that these towns were much cleaner than the ones I’d seen in the south part of the country.
And the road followed a railroad track along most of the way. I’d read that the railroad had fallen into disrepair during one of Madagascar’s experiments with nationalizing industries, but I also heard another story here: that some in the government had invested in trucking and subsequently closed the railroad as a way to boost their new business. I wouldn’t totally discount that later theory, either. In any case, with petroleum prices on the upswing, the railroad is coming back a little, especially this segment. Tamatave is the major port of entry in Madagascar for sea cargo, and it would make sense to send goods to Tana by train instead of having inefficient trucks lumber up this steep couple of hundred miles of narrow road.
We got to Tamatave shortly after lunch in blazing heat, and Solofo took me to a very inexpensive hotel, apparently run by some of his family, just on the edge of town. Mine was a little stand-alone cottage in a compound of cottages, and I almost had the sense of being in the family rather than in a hotel. Even though it was nice, I wasn’t super happy in it because it was pretty far from the center of town, and workers were building another cottage just next door. And there was the privacy issue that you’d expect from being in such a communal situation; it annoyed my introvert, solitaire nature a little to be under the constant surveillance of the kids of the South African workers living there. Turns out, these workers were the same ones doing the microwave tower we’d passed, and the hotel compound was also full of microwave tower parts. In any case, I decided to stay there the night though I didn’t like that I could only get out and do anything if Solofo was around because I had to have the car. It was, however, really cheap.
From the hotel, we headed into town to get some lunch. Solofo suggested a restaurant on the beach, so we drove to the end of town, navigating streets packed with rickshaws, bikes, pedestrians and a few cars. And trucks. We got to Tamatave’s beachfront and settled under a big, thatched roof to have lunch and a cold drink and to watch the cranes at the dock unloading cargo. We were there awhile, the service being typically slow, but it was surprising how much cooler it was under the roof than out in sun.
After we finished lunch, we drove back to the hotel, and I dug out my books to look for a hotel closer into town; I wanted more privacy, and I didn’t like the idea of having to have Solofo around every time I wanted to do anything. I ID’d the tourist hotel part of town, laid out a plan for the afternoon, and took a nap.
After nap time, we drove into town so I could check out a couple of hotels and see what was there. This little part of old Tamatave was cool with big trees; lots of sagging, mildewed buildings with old architectural touches; and some small shops and cafes with character. The whole area was only two blocks, but that was something, and I liked the feeling. Unfortunately, all the hotels were full (as I’d been told at Andasibe) because of some UN agency conference. That was pretty disappointing, but I checked out a café, browsed a few stores and spent some time at an internet joint, all with Solofo in tow. I was finding the constant company trying, so I decided to do a little more visiting tomorrow and to then head back to Andasibe to sleep tomorrow night. And that way, the final leg of the trip back to Tana would only be a half day.
So I posted a few blog entries and went for a beer in the cooling evening. I’m finding I don’t have a big appetite here; I don’t know if it’s the combination of fatigue and heat or just having interesting things to do other than eat, but there are meal times when I just don’t want to eat. This was one such evening, so Solofo and I headed back to the area where we’d had lunch. Just next door was sort of nightclub, and we went in to have a beer and sit near the ocean.
With the economy in tatters here, the sex industry is pretty conspicuous. Everywhere. I saw it in restaurants in Tana, in the artisan market in Tulear and here in the nicer area of Tamatave. It’s not hard to spot: particularly well-dressed women hanging around a park or bus stop or, in this case, somewhat over-the-hill, grey-headed white guys sitting at tables with very attractive younger women. And if you were a lonely guy, there was a good deal of attractive company hanging around outside, too. I’m guessing these middle-aged guys were here for the conference.
We sat outside in the back by the ocean, and I had an order of fries and a beer and listened to the jazz sax player up under the roof improvise in a Kenny G-ish way. It wasn’t a bad way to spend an hour or so, fresh fries and a big bottle of the very tasty THB (Three Horses Beer). Then back to the commune.
29 May -- Ups and Downs of Virgin Rain Forest (Andasibe/Mantadia: pics to follow)
My philosophical question for the day is why virgin rain forest always has to be on perpendicular peaks. Just a question.
We were out early again today with the same mixture of lotions all over me. We met Pascal in the village and drove for an hour to get to the Mantadia Forest, the part of the park that is virgin forest. The rough access here makes the park much less visited, and I think we were one party of only three in the forest.
We stopped along the way to look at the occasional bird, but nothing exciting happened til we got to the parking area for the route I was taking. There, sitting in the tops of the trees, were three of the largest damn parrots I’ve ever seen. They were easily a foot in length and black. And they hung around so we could get a good view. Giant, very black, some of the most unusual parrots I’ve seen. And Pascal said this was the smaller of the two parrots in Madagascar. The book says that one species is big and the other bigger, so I guess that meant that this one was just the big one.
Solofo stayed with the car, and Pascal and I started into the forest. We’d gone about two steps when Pascal stopped me to point out a very orange kingfisher – orange back, beak and feet, white breast. It was a Madagascar Pygmy Kingfisher, a forest bird that, in fact, eats insects rather than fish, albeit insects it catches over water.
As we entered, I couldn’t help thinking that this, finally, really was the rainforest I’d been expecting. It was far denser than most rainforests I’ve been in, and there was an incredible diversity of species in every direction. Different types of epiphytes covered every branch of every tree, bamboo either spread across trails like vines or arched overhead to create a tunnel. It was hard to tell the difference between plants that touched earth and those that lived on the ones that did. It was an amazing, diverse, rich, complicated environment.
We walked around some bottom land looking for a roller we didn’t find (though we did find a group of lemurs), and Pascal soon started leading me up a 90 degree incline. So I sweated and huffed my way up for a very long time until we got to a point with a great overlook. There it was, miles and miles and miles of virgin rainforest. I love seeing rainforest from such a vantage point with the occasional tree shooting up above the others with a clump of leaves on it and the occasional white trunk stretching above the hills of dark green. And echoing through these mountains were Indri calls, too far away for us to follow but another element of the majesty of the setting.
And we ran into a troop of Diademed Lemurs as we started down. The guys here were not as used to people as the ones in Andasibe, and they moved away a little more quickly. Well, except one juvenile, who I think was curious. He too moved off, though, after some sharp cries from the parents, and the steep slope and dense vegetation made it pretty much impractical to follow them. Would have been a cinch, though, if I’d been jumping from tree trunk to tree trunk like he was.
We went back down to the bottom land and walked around in more of the now-dry pool areas looking for the elusive roller, which my book says is findable here but not in the month of May. Three cheers for Pascal’s persistence, though. After a while of this, I thought we’d started upwards again; I soon became sure as our assent went from 45 degrees to 90. And through thick brush with the occasional thorned vine placed to catch a primate arm. Thank god I had on long pants -- they were ripped in several places by the time we got finished, and I’d rather have them ripped than me.
This climb went on and on and on. The vegetation even changed, the woods becoming more open, evergreen and vined. And also hotter. I finally had to stop Pascal and ask why we were heading up so vertically, and he told me we might have a chance at another type of lemur. I was so tired that my legs were sore, and I was thirsty and covered with sweat, so I said that it wasn't really necessary to spot more lemurs at that point and suggested we head down. Unless I completely missed my guess, it was close to midday, and this life-infused forest was completely asleep. In fact, the silence was striking: not a sound from a bird, gecko, insect or brook. Total silence except for the sweat that occasionally dropped off my chin and splattered on my camera. And my huffing.
When we got back to the bottom, I finished my water and asked which way the car was. Pascal pointed toward a three-hour route, but I didn’t want to endure the humiliation of having to be carried out and asked if there was a shorter way. Of course there was, and Pascal reluctantly led us out of the forest along that route instead of by his intended route (along which we would have seen more birds, he assured me). Alas, it wasn’t that much shorter. We came out on the road eventually, and my heart lept tiredly with joy…until Pascal walked across the road and into the forest again! There was a small pond across the way, he assured me, where there were usually some Madagascar Little Grebes.
Although I felt like I was about to drop, you don’t see Madagascar Little Grebes every day, so I perked up some and we walked another 20 minutes to a small pond with two of the grebes on it. Cool. And we spotted a Forest Rock Thrush there, too. I rested in the shade a little and enjoyed the break. My legs trembled some when I stood up again, but we got mobile and back-tracked to the road. Just as I was coming to the road, I spotted my first vulture in Madagascar sitting in the top of a tree. The size and the thick, hooked beak was unmistakable, but I couldn’t make out much detail in the overhead light. It just looked dark. Since he’s so good with birds, I asked Pascal about it, and he said it was the bigger parrot. With my fancy, new binoculars, I was sure he was wrong, but by god he wasn’t. It was a parrot the size of a vulture. No wonder the early naturalists to land here thought they'd stumbled on the lost world. How much fruit would a bird like that have to consume daily?
From here, we walked along the road another 20 minutes or so, and Pascal told me that he’d had a stroke about 5 months ago and had been paralyzed in bed for four months. I was shocked; he’d only just begun to be able to guide again a few weeks ago. Healthcare is so bad in this country and people have so little money that the pharmacies even have a homeopathy department that has treatments that are cheaper than Western medicine and rely on traditional remedies. For Pascal, the treatment for his stroke had been with homeopathic remedies and massage until he’d recovered the ability to speak and move his right side. And he’d had to be taken to Tana for the massage twice a week for four months. It certainly looked to me like he’d had a complete recovery.
Healthy me, though, was rapidly running out of steam at this point, and I think one of the happiest moments of my recent life was when Solofo popped up with his camera as we walked around a curve in the road. We all walked together over to the car and, ever chipper, he and Pascal set upon a passion fruit tree there with abandon to get some fruit to take back to their kids while I leaned on the car to remain upright. And the hour drive to get back to Andasibe seemed at least twice that long.
Though I was beyond thirsty at that point, we stopped in Andasibe village to drop Pascal off, and I paid him with a substantial tip. What a great help he’d been, and what an amazing person. I certainly hope things go alright for him.
Back at the hotel, I walked quickly to my bungalow before I dropped, stopping only to pick up a big bottle of cold water at the restaurant. I drank about half of it in the room and fell right into bed, still dressed. Woke up two hours later, showered off, finished the water, and dropped back into bed for another two hours. And woke up at sunset in time to head to the restaurant for a beer, vegetable soup, and pasta.
Then dropped back into bed. And slept very well.
Monday, May 30, 2011
28 May – Whales of the Forest (Andasibe: pics to follow)
Started into the Andasibe Forest at the ungodly hour of 7 am with the understanding that the wildlife is more active at that time. I was ready for anything, doused in DEET and even bringing along a rain poncho.
It was overcast this morning and humidity was dropping off the leaves….along with leeches. God I hate those things, skinny little inch-worms that land on your collar and then go for your neck. Leeches may be as close as I get to having a phobia. If I translate the French name they use for them here, it’s “blood suckers.” The only thing that moderated my dislike was that we were walking through what was virtually a glade of some species camellia.
We walked for a while through several groups of birds, stopping to ID some I’d already seen. My guide here, Pascal, will soon get a bead on what I’m interested in, but for the time being, I went along in pausing for birds I wasn’t overly interested in. We followed a path along a small river and eventually came to a little bundle of lemurs tucked in fork in a tree. Turns out they’re a nocturnal species, Wooly Lemurs, and all I saw were three little heads pop up and blink a few times. I left them alone. Pascal told me that lemurs are highly territorial, but the diurnal and nocturnal species’ territories overlap. The day shift will forage quite happily, then when they go to sleep, the night shift moves in. There’s no real contest between them.
This second-growth forest is quite thick, and I especially like the tree ferns and the huge, agave-looking plants peppered throughout. Those plants lend the forest a very unique feeling, especially when coupled with the epiphytes and orchids throughout. It’s only here that I found out that the bird’s nest fern is an epiphyte; they’re huge here. And I find this forest noteworthy for the large about of fruit in it and for the lack of thorny things.
After we went on for some time, we came on a group of Diadem Sifakas in the top of some especially tall trees. I couldn’t make out much about them except the fact that they’re a light golden color and, like all lemurians (it’s a real French term), they are as cute as buttons. These sifakas were grazing away, their golden butts glowing against a now-blue sky, occasionally jumping from one tree trunk to another. Nothing small about these guys. I stayed with them awhile.
We ran into yet another family shortly, and we stayed with them a bit, too. The light was better on them, but I still couldn’t get a photo to do their beautiful color and cute faces justice. They’re quite happy hanging around munching on fruit in the tree tops while humans pad around below.
We soon came upon the stars of Andasibe, the Indri. There are many fascinating things about this animal, the first being its looks. Indri are about 3’ tall, the biggest lemurian, and they’re light-colored, like their cousins, the Diademed Sifaka. They hang out in family groups of 4-5, with the older ones striking out on their own after a few years, and they only give birth every couple of years. Also, they eat the leaves, fruit and flowers of a variety of trees, but they only browse indigenous ones. They’re an endangered animal with the 60 or so troops here in Andasibe being the only population in the world. Indri can’t be kept in captivity; they quit eating and die when taken out of the forest or confined.
As if that weren’t enough, the call of the Indri is one of the eeriest sounds in any rainforest anywhere. They have a call that resembles the human voice in tone, but it’s high and seems to have some harmonic element to it. It’s terribly loud and can carry for over a mile. When they call, it sounds almost like a whale song. And the group I was watching decided to call. The sound was deafening as these guys clung to their trees and opened their little red mouths to emit their piercing wail. What an experience to be right in the middle of that.
We walked a few more hours in the agave-accented rainforest, checking out a Madagascar Jumping Rat hiding in a hole in a tree and spotting a group of Brown Lemurs. Several flocks of parrots flew by, but we didn’t get a good look at them. We saw, however, several Madagascar Mannikins snipping the seeds off some tall, sunny weeds, looking for all the world like what must be their close relative, the sparrow. And as we turned onto the path that led to the ranger station, we saw a tight little France’s Sparrowhawk sitting on a wire over the path, waiting for a chance to pounce on a grasshopper or mouse. Another endemic.
We made our plans for tomorrow with Pascal, and Solofo and I headed to the fancy Andasibe hotel for lunch. I’d hoped for some Malagash cuisine, but they didn’t have it! Alas, it was zebu and frites again….and the zebu was so undercooked that I sent it back to the kitchen. Driving past a field on the way back, we stopped to watch a Common Stonechat doing a flycatcher move by snatching bugs out of the air and returning to its perch.
The rest of the day was playing around the hotel, sitting on the porch of my bungalow and looking into the forest on the other side. Looking forward to a long walk tomorrow in the primary forest. I will have to get Pascal to pick up the pace some, though.
27 May – Eastward Ho! (Tana - Andasibe: a pic to follow)
On the road again. Solofo came by the hotel after breakfast, we filled up the car, and we headed east out of the city to the rainforest and, eventually, the coast. It was a pleasant drive, one that I’ve gotten used to here in Madagascar, of rice fields and three-story mud houses. We eventually started down the rather high escarpment that I hadn’t realized we were on, and I could feel the temperature rise as the elevation declined. Apparently, the central plateau rises rather sharply from the coastal areas.
Something about the area reminded me of the crinum lilies I’d seen but neglected to photograph near Ranomafana, and I mentioned that to Solofo. He didn’t remember them but promptly pointed one out on the roadside, asking me if I meant that one. Of course I had, so he pulled off to the side, and I got out to take a pic (and squirrel away some seeds). We then drove on along the railroad to Andasibe National Park.
Solofo suggested a hotel run by an ethnic Chinese family, and I liked it. My little bungalow was far at the end of the compound, staring into the side of a mountain just across a river. Of course, there was practically no one there, and I loved it. No internet, but electricity with hot water and a toilet. My quarters here reminded me a lot of the bungalow/tents we stayed in in Kenya.
I had a good lunch in the cavernous restaurant and took a nap. After I roused about 3:30, we went to the park visitor center to check out the displays and meet tomorrow’s guide – a friend of Solof’s named Pascal. He seemed pretty on-the-ball, so we planned to meet at the awful hour of 7 am tomorrow.
26 May – Leapin’ Lemurs (Tana: pics to follow when I have faster internet)
I had Solof come by today so I could get out of town and see a few of the sights. We didn’t start early, but our first stop was just in town, the zoo and botanical garden (Tsimbazaza). This city has many great features that would be world class if they had just a little maintenance, and I’d put this at the top of the list.
I didn’t expect much of the zoo itself since I’ve seen zoos in developing countries before, and I wasn’t far off the mark. Some of the cages were very well-maintained, but most weren’t. Custodians were chasing a rat around one of the bird cages, and all the vitrine displays at the herp house badly needed washing. That notwithstanding, the zoo is probably the only chance I’ll have to see a fosa, and I’m glad I did. I think I was told that the fosa is the only carnivore on the island, and it’s an interesting creature. It’s the size of a medium dog but somewhat catlike in shape, long, sleek and muscular. One fosa was ok in its cage, but another was pacing up and down the side with a worrisome dementia intensity.
The other interesting animal was the mouse lemur. In a day with a certain amount of cute in it for me, this little creature was near the top of the list. How did George Lucas miss this when he was coming up with cute little animals for Star Wars? I saw this little guy in the night house (they’re nocturnal) ambling up a stick. The mouse lemur is a true lemur, somewhat similar to a monkey…but it would easily fit in the palm of your hand. It really is the size of a field mouse, but it has four legs, the legs have hands with fingers at the end of them, there’s a tail, and it has the cutest little lemur face with big eyes. I didn’t take a picture because I didn’t want too blind it, but it has to be one of the neatest little animals going.
From there, I strolled around the other caged lemurs before heading over to a lake with big, open islands in it that had lemur troops on them. Lemurs can’t swim, so the island lets them wander, climb and play without risk of escape. It’s a fine alternative to the cages.
Which calls to mind the overall park plan. I was constantly thinking of the big botanical garden at Entebbe, Uganda while I was here because this park has several large lakes and some constructed habitats that maintain the appropriate animals. In the center of the park, for example, there’s a heronry that has several species of day and night herons happily roosting. As you walk through the big area, you see big bamboo stands, big papyrus stands, huge elephant ear plants up to 15’ tall and even a little pine forest. Tsimbazaza is really a beautiful getaway from the congestion and fumes of Tana. I wish it could be maintained a bit better – it’s a jewel in the rough.
From here, we drove out of town to visit another site, the Lemurs Park. And again, my expectations were exceeded. This is a smallish private park that has an educational function as well as one of rehabilitating rescued lemurs. The park has ten different types of lemurs, and each lives in an area designed for its needs. I had a long view of a mongoose lemur, an animal I’m unlikely to see in the wild, and there were lots of views of other types. Of all these, though, it was the Verreaux’s Sifaka that got my attention.
One of the distinctive aspects of a sifaka is that it can’t walk – something to do with the hip. So if a sifaka is on the ground and not jumping from tree to tree, it has to jump instead of walk. This has given them the name of “dancing lemur,” and that seems very appropriate. One of the first sifakas I saw leapt to the ground and jumped off to another tree.
The one that got me, though, was a bored one-year-old who was just dying to play with someone, and when I walked up, he decided it was going to be me. I was taking advantage of the very tired parents to get a good sifaka photo when the little one came jumping at me and almost scared me to death. I was having flashbacks to monkey assaults in Zambia and India and to gorilla completion in Uganda. Of course I jumped, and when I did so, we bonded. Every time I tried to get a picture of the active little guy, he’d run at the camera or he’d run up and grab my pants leg. The park guide was about to hit the ground laughing. She was supposed to keep me from playing with the juvenile, but it was just too funny watching him tag me and expect me to chase him and then to watch him do the same thing again. And he didn’t want to play with Solof or the guide; it was me. What a cute and funny animal.
We then headed back into Tana, where Solof invited me to stop by his place. I went, and I had a fine visit with his wife. They make banana chips when Solof isn’t doing the tour thing, so we had some of their chips and some beer. DELICIOUS! I’m bringing a big bag home.
Walked to the Sakamanga afterwards though the Av de la Independence and caved for the night.
25 May—Vanilla Day (Tana)
Took a down day today to just hang around, read, and watch CNN International on my TV. My room is spacious, tasteful and comfortable. I met Solofo (who got to town about the same time I did) to talk about the next part of the trip, but that was about all the vacation-y stuff I did.
Well, except for dinner. Decided to live dangerously and try chicken breast with vanilla sauce since Madagascar produces so much vanilla. I learned somewhere here that vanilla actually comes from an orchid and isn’t native here but thrives. In any case, I thought I’d see what it does to chicken sauce.
The answer is that it makes chicken taste like meat dessert. And the taste infects everything. I had a dry white wine with the meal, and though there might have been other elements in its bouquet, I certainly couldn’t taste them; it tasted like vanilla. I even ordered my fav dessert – crème brule – and IT tasted like vanilla. Lesson learned.
24 May – Monsters (Tuléar)
This is such a great country full of one-of-a-kind stuff. I had a late, slow, big breakfast in the garden of Chez Alain and then went to see more uniquity.I have to thank Totsie for this one because she and Winn were in town the weekend I left and she asked me to take a photo of a coelacanth for her while I was here. A coelacanth is a really primitive, mostly fish animal presumed extinct and known only from fossils until some fishermen off the coast of Madagascar pulled one up several years ago. Turns out that one’s here in Tuléar, so I got in the littlest Renault an American could fit into and crossed town to the Musée de la Mer to see it.
In fact, the ride itself was fun with a perky little driver playing reggae and afrobeat music though an mp3 player hanging out of the cigarette lighter while shifting gears every 5-15 seconds because of all the pousse-pousses (hand-pulled rickshaws). He didn’t speak a lot of French, but what he lacked in grammar and vocabulary he made up for in personality and volume.
And I learned several cool things about them. For one, they have primitive lungs. For another, though they use egg reproduction like fish, they carry their young. And if you don’t believe this, you can see a couple of coelacanth babies in formaldehyde right there, babies that were removed from a pregnant female who was caught.Thanks for putting me on to this, Totsie!
The rest of the day was just travel details. Hung around the hotel til the reggae Renault guy picked me up and dropped me off at the airport for the flight to Tana. Wow! Where did all those tourists come from?
The flight was, er, unusual. For one, there are no seat reservations, a fact that some of the German visitors didn’t seem to be able to understand. I didn’t get it either until I got to the back of the plane (my boarding pass listed the last row as my seat) and the flight attendant told me to sit wherever. So I sat down beside something I’d never seen before: a stretcher set across the window seats of three rows with a very ill man on it and a very distraught wife beside. We soon found the intercom didn’t work, so for the safety instructions, a steward walked up and down the aisle waving the paper from the seat back with the emergency and safety procedures. The flight went just fine, but I was a little surprised that the seat belt sign didn’t come on when we hit some pretty substantial turbulence; I had visions of the pilot struggling to control the aircraft and so not being able to alert us in the back. I was also glad that the ill gentleman had been secured to his stretcher.
Arrival was fine, and I was back at the Sakamanga pretty quickly.
23 May – Lunch at Paradise (Tuléar - Ifaty)
This was the day that Solof headed back to Tana and I dealt with details and learned to vacation with no car. Our first stop was the bank, where I was quickly served and changed more $$$, and then I went over to Air Mad to reconfirm tomorrow’s flight. That took two minutes. Why aren’t things always this simple? We then had to extend Solof’s car insurance as the owner of the car hadn’t done it and Solof had to buy his way out of the roadblock that caught that. I watched some children dancing in front of a little music shop while Solof did the insurance thing.I had the hotel hire me a 4WD car for a trip to Ifaty and the Reniala Preserve which is just north of it. I had a friendly, toothy driver who showed up promptly, and we headed up the state road. Not much of a road. In fact, it was so bad that most vehicles drove beside it in the dust when they could because the dust was softer than negotiating all the potholes and kicked up rocks.
So much for luxury. I headed back out into the heat with the sound of the poor cook being fried in the background and profuse apologies from the staff, who offered to comp my whole meal. Next stop was the Reniala Preserve – another spiny forest, but a real forest that had been protected as opposed to one that had been reconstructed for the specific purpose of collecting species like the arboretum had been.
And this visit was very worth the effort, too. In this preserve, there were the same 25’-30’ cacti I’d seen earlier, but they were even bigger here. And in this environment, they were in the context of the huge trees that develop big water-storage trunks: the baobab, a type of flame tree, and another tree. My helpful guide here gave me a lot of details.For example, I had no idea that there were some eight species of baobab – I thought there was only one. But I guess I can be forgiven because, of the eight, six are only found here in Madagascar. And my erstwhile guide tried to get me to learn the difference between the three main, large-trunk trees here, but I kept flunking the test. It seems that one tapers at the bottom like a carrot….and I have no idea about the other two. Honestly, they mostly all look like baobabs to me.
As it was starting to get dark and people don’t travel the roads at night in this part of the country, my driver wanted to head back to Tuléar, so I packed it in, and we started back. People everywhere were doing the same, including the fishermen who were coming back to shore after their afternoon efforts. And it was then back to Chez Alain and the great garden.
22 May—Spiny Forest (Tuléar)
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| Guide at the Arboretum d'Antsoka |
We were barely out of town and not even to the airport when we spotted some water birds and pulled over to check them out. Great light! Sun was low on the horizon and at our backs as we looked at the highlit birds. There were three firsts for me: a Black-Winged Stilt, with long red legs and a graphic black-and-white plumage; a Madagascar Kingfisher, with a brilliant blue back and orange front; and a Madagascar Bee-Eater, which looked like most bee-eaters with its generally green coloration and a black mask. Great fun. I got a lot of pleasure out of watching the kingfisher make several stabs at minnows and the bee-eater chow down on more than a couple of grasshoppers.
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| Madagascar Bee-Eater |
These forests also have trees that evolve in certain ways to conserve water. Antsokay isn’t big on baobabs since it started as the plant collection of a Swiss botanist and was put together on cleared land, but baobabs aren’t the only trees to evolve this way. One tree here looked like a big carrot with a tree on top….amazing. A tubular palm. I think I like the euphorbias the most of all. They’re highly toxic (my favorite queen, Ranavalona I, had her enemies drink euphorbia concoctions when she wasn’t tossing them off cliffs), and the sap can even burn the skin and cause blindness. The guide showed us a plant that bled red, though, that had sap that could counteract euphorbia toxin. And I seem to remember Zoco telling me something about a grasshopper that ate euphorbia and was red; birds avoided it because it was toxic.  |
| Succulent Leaves on a Vine |
The whole environment was out of a sci fi setting. Individual plants really make no sense at all, but taken as a whole in these conditions, this is a simply amazing forest. I’m surprised no Hollywood producer has yet appropriated this environment for a movie. It would certainly work.
As we started to leave, I finally came face to face with the Madagascar animal I’d been hoping not to see – the famed Madagascar cockroach. I don’t remember where I first saw these monsters – it might have been the Atlanta Botanical Garden – but wherever it was, they made a huge impression. These things are 6” long and, well, they’re cockroaches. The one I saw was being attacked by a group of ants and both Solofo and my guide were sympathizing with the poor roach! Solof lamented that the roach couldn’t fly, and when the guide tried to rescue the roach, Solof said it wouldn’t help. Good, I thought, but I didn’t say it.
We left here and decided to ride out into second growth spiny forest to have lunch on the ocean. The further out we rode, the more we realized that the road, contrary to what we’d been told, was passable by Solof’s car. So we rode and rode until we came to the small fishing village of Saint Augustin.
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| Jamestown on the Indian Ocean |
Solof bought some fruit for his kids and some manioc here, and we drove back over the mountain we came over to get here, going through valley after valley of succulents and euphorbia. When we got back to the hotel, I just relaxed the rest of the day, eventually heading to the garden restaurant for dinner. Talked with a cig-smoking Swiss couple a bit and ran into the French couple from the 18eme again. Then lights out!
21 May – To the Coast (Tuléar)
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| Tomb with Funerary Posts and Zebu Horns |
My little hotel was empty except for me, so I had the whole restaurant to myself for my favorite meal. It’s an interesting little assembly of bungalows. It began life as some tents and a restaurant set up for the total eclipse that occurred here in 2001, and since the owner managed to keep getting clients, he upgraded (a little) and set up buildings that were more permanent. The rooms are a far cry from comfortable, but there’s a modicum of garden, a pool, and some quiet just outside town.
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| Tomb Painting of Gemstone Mining |
The ride to Tuléar was flat, boring, hot and monotonous, but there were a lot of interesting tombs. Tomb tradition here is linked to small tribal groups, and each group uses different iconography and has different traditions.
I checked out a few of the tombs and was really impressed. They usually consist of a walled enclosure into which the deceased’s bones are put (second burial). The enclosure is then filled with stones and commemorative posts related to deceased’s life or likes are put in the rock along with the horns of however many zebu were sacrificed for the funeral. Some groups used to sacrifice all the deceased’s zebu, but that’s eroding and people now use wooden statues to indicate the number. Or write the number on the tomb wall. The point is for the deceased to have prestige. And most of the enclosures are for families, so there are multiple people buried there.I also found paintings on the tomb walls, and god knows what they mean. I saw images of old guys sitting around listening to a radio or reading, and others of younger guys panning for gem stones. There were also portraits of women, one with a girl dancing. Those I understand.
But then there are the ones of ninjas, vamps, and satyrs carrying wounded women. And there’s an image from Titanic on one tomb. Perhaps these were things a deceased liked in their life….
After a couple of those stops, we got on in to Tuléar, a small, worn out, rundown little place, but with a certain grungy charm. It reminds me a lot of other hot little port cities I’ve seen…..people moving around sorta slow, limited civic resources to keep things up, people generally smiling and standing around talking. Oh….and there’s more music here than anyplace else I’ve been – reggae and afropop.
Though it was hot, I settled in for a bowl of soup, knowing it would be freshly made, and some Cantonese rice. Maybe because of the heat, I didn’t have much appetite for meat. I do like the soups here, too….always fresh and served in double the quantity we get at home. Soup and rice are a hearty meal here.
Didn’t tarry over lunch though; hurried right to take a nap.
Solof never sleeps, so he was alert and waiting when I woke up. I had been unimpressed by the carving in Tana (slick, polished, predictable tourist stuff) and shut out of shops in Ambositra because of the council meeting. Since the tombs I saw on the way had certainly showed an active local woodcarving tradition, I was excited to see what might be available in town.
I wasn’t totally disappointed, either. There wasn’t a lot, but a place in back of the shops with their shells, tin sconces and naughty little erotic statues, I found a lady with some stuff that looked real. Her tourist stuff was $100-$200, but crude stuff in the back was a small fraction of that; so little, in fact, that I bought a couple figuring that, if I couldn’t get them on a plane, I wouldn’t be out any money. Based on what I’d seen in museums and online, these were authentic and, therefore, wouldn’t have much tourist appeal since we don’t bury our dead in stone-filled enclosures and put these posts on them.I wish I had longer here so I could track down whoever did the funerary posts for the tombs I’d seen coming in. I enjoyed planning them for some of my friends – me between an Eiffel Tower and a Taj Mahal, Pete and Nancy as blonde white soccer players (lots of wives on the funerary markers), Lou with a white panel truck marked “PLD” – I had it all planned out. But I didn’t have time to track an artisan down. Next trip…so start planning your funerary post order now!
I got back to the hotel to the bad/good news that there was a band (Saturday night) and a big shindig; bad because I really wanted to sleep and knew that wasn’t happening, good because I got to hear some local stuff without seeking out some sleazy club where I’d be fending off the ladies all night. Sure enough, a sextet showed up dressed in tight white pants and green/red/yellow shirts. I’d expected afropop dance music, but it was R&B (with some godawful, flat vocals), reggae and afropop. The group just jammed out on the afropop with a ton of intensity and improv, and I don’t understand why they didn’t just stay with it. There was clearly lots more audience interaction with that rhythmic dance music. But everyone had a great time when the band wasn’t trying covers of “Endless Love.”
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