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 went on a little way further and came to the turtle enclosure where the park had three of the four endangered Madagascar turtles.  I’d seen the radial turtle at other sites, but the great thing here is that there were some really small babies.  We watched for a while as a baby who’d fallen into tiny basin of water worked to get out.  The poor thing would get about 49.9% out but fall back in every time with its legs waving.  Solof was for an immediate extraction, but the guide told us to wait.  Sure enough, it got out on its own.

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.

When we got to the Musée, I discovered that it wasn’t what I expected but what I should have expected.  There was a kinda cool whale skeleton outside, and as I went in the door, I was greeted by a friendly woman manning the ever-present ticket counter.  Five bucks.  The museum looks like it might have been a fish-processing location at one point: a large rectangular room with an inner rectangular room outfitted with built-in cement tables covered with white tile.  As part of the museum-ification of the fish abattoir, they had moved in big, hardwood shelves that were filled with specimens in bottles of formaldehyde along with some display case for dry specimens.  Of course, Lou would have swooned at seeing this place.

There were a lot of lumpy, wavy, crusty things in the jars and display cases, and they didn’t mean much to me.  Nor, for that matter, did the signs, which I wouldn’t have understood even if they’d been in English.  The back hall, though, had some stuff I recognized like big, ugly fish and some very specimen-ized birds.

The crown jewel coelacanth was locked in the inner sanctum, and the minder opened the door for me and even let me take some photos in exchange for a tip.  I’d expected the coelacanth to be in formaldehyde, so I was surprised to find that there were not one but several specimens on view there.  In the last few years, researchers have pulled more coelacanths up, freeze-dried them and put them on display, so I saw 3-4 specimens, though I still liked the formaldehyde one the most. 

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.

I had the driver stop at the Paradise Hotel just south of Ifaty since I’d read it was pretty swank and wanted to see it.  Why not lunch there?  And it was swank, for sure.  The road was hot, but when I walked into the hotel, it was immediately cool because of all the thatch and the high roof, so I installed myself on the veranda overlooking the Indian Ocean and watched the boats of fishermen at their work with waves breaking on the reef a ways off-shore.  Talk about an idyllic setting.

Lunch wasn’t bad either.  I felt safe ordering seafood here by the ocean, so I got grilled shrimp.  What feast…and a feast of the eye.  The presentation was immaculate, and the shrimp weren’t half bad either with their slightly grilled taste.  And I’m not much of a dessert hound, but I wanted to linger, so I also ordered an île flottante, a little meringue floating in some custard.  The custard didn’t have the best taste in the world, and I was half done and feeling somewhat iffy about it when I discovered a little roach leg in it.  Oooof!  That was that for the île flottante (which, nevertheless, looked fab).

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.

The forest is absolutely wonderful, though.  The giant cactus trees stretch up toward the sky and lean in the direction of the wind, and the large baobabs just thrust directly up toward the sky.  These two majestic forms create the upper story of the forest and leave the understory to shrubs, euphorbia and dry forest birds.  It was a great experience to be in this environment.

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)

Guide at the Arboretum d'Antsoka

I’m liking this hotel.  Up at a decent hour, and the air is a little fresh.  One of my favorite times of day in a hot climate.  I had my usual big opening sitting out in the garden, and Solof and I headed out for some birding and a visit to the arboretum.  And maybe Saint Augustin, a little fishing village about 20 miles away.

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.

Madagascar Bee-Eater

Just up the road, we made a left and headed down a dirt road along the river to the arboretum.  On the way, there was a striking landscape on the right as brick makers mined clay in a landscape already full of deep, wide brick pits.  These people cut the clay in slabs, hefted the slabs out to colleagues who then molded the clay.  They let it air dry and then stack it in piles 15’ high, leaving hollows at the bottom to later build fires in to cure the bricks.  There are many ethnic groups in southern Madagascar, and these people all looked like they may be in the same group, the men with more African features than many Malagasy and the women with their faces covered with a yellow substance.  It was a visually fantastic thing to see, and I would really like to do a bunch of photos with them the next time I’m there.

We went on past the brick makers to the Arboretum d’Antsokay.  This is my first exposure to spiny forest, and was I impressed; it’s a forest full of things that would be in The Lost World.  Despite my arboretum guide’s best, patient efforts, I retained about none of the scientific vocabulary for these plants, but I can describe them.  One of the most common is something like a cactus tree that is easily 25’-35’ tall.  It has thorns and leaves, and it’s woody – locals even use the wood in houses.  I gather there are many, many species of these, and the arrangements of the thorns evolve for such specific microclimates that the entire range of a species might be one side of a particular mountain that has certain air and moisture conditions since a certain arrangement of thorns might collect more water from the air than another.  That’s intense evolution. 

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

Then there’s the incredible range of succulents in a spiny forest.  Of course, there are lots of aloes here, but there are also plants with big, fat, spiny leaves that turn into small trees the size of dogwoods.  And there are succulent vines.  That was another first for me.  Sometimes the vine is just the succulent, and in other cases, the succulent has a stringy vine stem with succulent leaves. 

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.

Jamestown on the Indian Ocean

I was happy to get to see this spot because it has little to no tourism. It really is a small, spread-out village laid out in family compounds whose main source of income is fishing.  No restaurants (unfortunately), but we watched while some fishermen went out and came in.  It’s pretty much full of mud and wattle huts with thatched enclosures.  An interesting fact about this place is that group of English colonialists landed here about the same time another group landed in Jamestown.  Here – bad luck for the colony – the weather was even worse than in VA, and the locals were definitely not hospitable.  The colony failed resoundingly. 

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)

Tomb with Funerary Posts
and Zebu  Horns

Into every trip, a day of transportation must fall, and this was one.

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.

Tomb Painting of Gemstone Mining

After breakfast, we started south, watching the massifs decline into flat savannah dotted with palms.  Then I started seeing the famous sapphire boom towns.  After all I’d read about them, it was still surprising to see the effect that the discovery of commercial gemstones has had on this area.  After going through the first-established and primary center for sapphires, Ilakaka, we went through several other gem-rush towns until we got to the edge of the rush area, where there was a small village that was only just beginning to see the interest of miners.  Whew, do these look like rough places.  There are terrible sanitation conditions and very rudimentary constructions right beside enormous, concrete gem showrooms.  It’s a cliché, but it’s true – the region looks like the Old West in the 21^st century.  I didn’t stop to buy any saffs, though, because I would probably have ended up paying gemstone prices of purple glass.

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.

Really like the hotel here.  Chez Alain is in most of the guidebooks, but I wasn’t sure about the internet service…and I wanted access to internet to start posting blogs.  It has it!  And it has a good-sized collection of bungalows that are comfortable, a huge restaurant with additional outdoor seating, a performance area and a well-maintained garden full of palms, cacti, aloe, bougainvillea, and various variegated plants.  It’s quiet, cool, comfortable….an unbelievable contrast to what’s happening right outside.

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.”

20 May – The Long March

Zoco,the Guide

Today was one of the best days of the trip so far.  Got up reasonably early and ate the usual hearty breakfast….being the only person in the hotel.  Supposed to do a day-long hike today, so I had the hotel prepare me a sandwich to have at the midpoint. 

It was very foggy this morning, and we got a call from the guide saying we couldn’t start as early as we planned, so I took advantage of the situation to have more coffee.  We finally headed into town and met Zoco, a friendly, knowledgeable, helpful guy who took one look at me and offered to help with my backpack.  I figured there’d be time for that later.  The guy from the visitor center was handling the park entrance tickets and recognized me, so we talked a little before we bought some water and headed to the park.

Spotted a new raptor, the Yellow-billed Kite, at the beginning of the trail and then headed on into the massifs of Isalo.  The area is actually a huge plateau that has canyons eroded into it. Isalo is quite high and very dry, and the people who live in the area, whose name I forget, live at the foot of the Isalo plateau.  The road runs right to the base of the plateau, which is where Solof left us.  Our plan was to walk into the canyon, climb onto the plateau, hike over part of the dry plateau and to exit via another canyon.  Solof was to meet us some four or five miles up the road when we exited the plateau from that second canyon.

Tomb in Cliff

This is one of the best hikes I think I’ve ever done with its amazing variety of ecosystems, wildlife and cultural elements.  The first part was somewhat open, brushy, small-tree terrain as we headed into the valley and began to ascend to the plateau in a landscape of open rock faces that reminded me of the West.  Zoco pointed out tombs in openings in the cliffs as we went up.  This Bara hold the Isalo Massif sacred and do their burials here.  The burial is two-part.  First, they put the deceased in a sort of rough tomb in the cliff, and you can see that those pre-tombs are quite rough.  After several years, they take out the deceased’s bones and hold a proper funeral -- traditionally a huge, expensive party – and they move the bones to the final tomb, which is much more finished.  We could see both as we hiked up the canyon.  The tombs are apparently in cliffs to prevent grave robbers from disturbing the graves.

Along the way, I noticed cairns, which apparently mark various trails, again a traditional element.  And Zoco pointed out things about the natural history of the area, like some walking sticks making little walking sticks (matches?) and some geological features.  I understand the geology a little better now if still not perfectly.  One thing I noticed were the many rounded, polished pebbles lying on the surface of the ground, and Zoco explained that the area was once the bottom of a river and that the stones had been polished by the action of the water.  Sure enough, there are many layers visible with the rounded pebbles imbedded.  Not a product of wind for sure.  In addition to the sedimentary layers, there are also sharp intrusions into the rock where cracks formed during quakes and then filled with dust, which compacted more tightly that the sand in most of the area.  Somehow, this is related to the 3D veiny look of much of the area, but I just didn’t understand that part.  A lot of the landscape, the part you see and the part I was walking on, had a vaguely organic quality like you might see in HR Giger’s work.  Totally unique.

We climbed quite a ways, and I was happy that the fog had kept things somewhat cool.  It burned off quickly though, and we came to a prominence from which we could see a lot of the rest of the hike.  From there, it was clear that we weren’t out West anymore – it was Cappadocia, Turkey.  Lots of deep erosion through the sandstone leaving prominences with little hard caps(!) on the top.  Zoco assured me that there weren’t caves for people to live in, though.  Breathtaking view.  And I could see much of our route, first to left to a natural pool in another valley and then straight across the hot, flat plateau top.

It was a fairly short hike down to the first canyon, and we passed a metal coffin setting by a cave on the way.  This had been a temporary burial; the deceased’s bones had been removed and placed in the permanent burial, and the family had left this temporary site since it was no longer needed.  We also passed some silkworm cocoons, which Zoco explained only yielded 40% of the silk of Chinese silkworms.  And we passed a sunbird nest with some noisy sunbirds nearby.

Out of the dry, rocky heights, we descended into a totally other world—a lush, wet, fertile fern glade.  In ten minutes of walking.  A stream of fresh, clear water poured over and around rocks, descending into a natural pool and then running on off the plateau to the land below.  Big ferns mixed with different types of palms and even a desertic-looking plant.  It was hard to believe that this verdant place existed in the harsh dryness of the plateau.

It was even harder to believe three minutes later when we emerged from the glen and started our march straight across the flat frying pan of the plateau.  This was very hot walk of a little over two hours across an area of bare rock, dried grass and some dry-environment plants I wasn’t familiar with.  The most interesting of these was the pachypodium, a succulent that grows on bare rock outcrops or cliffs, sending its roots into any little opening or crevice it can find.  It’s a weird little plant that looks sorta like a bonsai baobab.  The bulb-like trunk of the plant has a spongy material that, Zoco told me, holds water through the dry season.  I read later that there are 25 species of this plant and that 20 of them exist in Madagascar.  Visually interesting plants. We also passed a lot of plants with white leaves, a marker of toxicity according to Zoco.  He cautioned me not to even break a leaf off since the “latex” juice could burn.

Long after I decided we weren’t ever going to make it off the plateau (or have lunch), we finally took a left and began an enormous, steep descent down the side of a cliff with the sun shining directly on us from the side.  I keep getting confused here because I still expect the sun to be in the south, but here it’s in the north.  I was sure we were lost and walking south, but no. 

As we started down the precipitous decline, we passed a couple of intrepid Dutch women (with no packs!) who were red-faced and sweating as much as I was if not more.  We commiserated briefly about the lack of helicopters, and I carried on leaving them to their water.  It was an absolutely beautiful descent, looking down on trees in the distance while perched on a little path barely a foot wide.  Of course, I had to stop when I wanted to look up from my feet or take pics because I didn’t want to fall off the edge, and the Dutch women and I kept doubling each other as they carried on down.  Looking up, it was Canyon de Chelly, and I expected Anasazi ruins rather than Bara tombs; looking down, it was the treetops of Piedmont Park. 

We descended into the trees, and to my surprise, emerged into a group of picnic tables beside a large stream.  This point was only 20 minutes from the nearest road access, and many visitors just walk up this canyon to the picnic area before they continue on up into the canyon to another natural pool and several waterfalls.  Even more surprising, everyone but me had arranged a catered lunch there with fresh fruit, salad, cheeses, brochettes (grilled sur place), veggies and even dessert.  And cold sparkling water.  I was totally on the low end of this crowd as I pulled out my two mushed-up sandwiches (the hotel thought one wouldn’t do me) and some (surprise!) bananas.  Several people offered me part of their bounty, but in all honesty, I was so tired and hot that didn’t even want both my sandwiches.

Lemurs, too, had apparently caught on to the lunch gig, and there were troops of two different kinds hanging around for scraps.  Well, I should say that the Ring-Tailed Lemurs were waiting for scraps.  The more adventurous Brown Lemurs were making the scraps happen, and one of the Dutch women had to stand guard with a stick while the other ate.  The Browns have perfected the snatch-and-run technique and scored at least one little loaf of bread that I saw.  I guarded my camera and glasses.

The break wasn’t ample – I’d still be there if it were – but we pulled ourselves together, and Zoco and I headed further into the canyon to a waterfalls and a natural pool.  It was an astonishingly beautiful walk with the large stream flowing under and around big boulders lying the canyon bottom and with large trees tilted downstream, apparently shoved that way by large, intermittent water flows.  It seemed like every streamlet, fern, plant and rock had been put in place by a landscape designer for maximum aesthetic effect, and I dallied along the whole hour walk.

We finally got to pretty, natural pool with a cave, and I rested there to take it in and talk with some of my fellow lunchers who arrived behind me.  It was cool, moist and verdant.  The contrast with the climate just above was striking.

We stopped at two different pools like this one, but I decided to forgo the 35-minute climb to another waterfall (with its attendant 35-minute descent out).  It was already 4 pm, it gets dark at 5:30, and I was very tired.  Zoco called Solof to tell him were heading out, and we started back toward the picnic area and, after, to the car park at the end of the valley and at the edge of the park. 

Gave a lift back to the village to the park comptroller, dropped Zoco off, and got to the hotel.  Ate a huge Zebu dinner with a huge beer and slept like a rock.