14 May—Road to Ranomafana

Another day of great scenery.  We started fairly early, picking up ham and butter baguette sandwiches since Solof thought lunch would find us in the woods somewhere.  There was a great, dynamic sky as we got into taller, steeper mountains.  The houses here are mud, too, and many are three stories tall with little windows and thatched roofs.  A lot of them had balconies, too.

I was excited to get to Ambositra, the city that’s the center of Malagasy wood working.  I don’t see much in the crafts here that I like, but I do like some of the ancestor figures that decorate tombs.  I don’t especially want to buy somebody’s ancestor figure, but I was hoping to find some repros.  I have just the place for one on the side of the garage.

No luck.  Apparently, the regional governor called the union of wood artisans to a meeting today about the deforestation of hardwoods, and the union closed every handicraft place in the city to force attendance.  Solof tried to get a couple of people to let us in anyway, but no go.  Well…..we got in the back door of one place that had terrible carvings, though I found a hat there.  Why couldn’t they meet at night?

We went on down the road toward Ranomafana and did, indeed, stop for lunch by the roadside in the woods.  I identified a nervous, fussy, bright red Madagascar Fody and, as I was doing my little psht-psht thing to bring it out of a bush, I almost got hit in the head by a Madagascar Green Sunbird.  It missed me though, landed on the flower of a tall weed about six feet away, and proceeded to investigate every blossom on the weed with its long, curved beak.

Since my shopping cancelation gave me more free time, I went up a nearby hill to see what was there, secure in the knowledge that there are no poisonous snakes in Madagascar.  I hung around a giant agave in bloom there; I’d seen the bloom stems, which get as tall as trees, from the road.  Solofo told me that they die after blooming, and I can see it’d take a lot of energy to put that bloom stem out.  Apparently, the agave get buds on the main plant afterwards, though, and start anew that way.  I also found heaps of rosemary on the ground and a lot of lantana covered with butterflies.

Then it was back on the road and on to Ranomafana.  It was so nice going further up into the mountains and seeing little villages of three-story mud houses clustered on outcroppings and hills.  It was sort of a Malagasy Switzerland. 

We stopped one more time, just outside the park gate, to walk to an overlook beside a tall waterfall.  It was getting a little darker at this point, but we could hear frogs along the wet cliff side, so we went over to see if we could find them.  No luck – and I could touch the spot the sound was coming from! – but I did notice a sundew growing in a little crevice.  And as I was trying to get a picture of it, a red orchid just to the side caught my eye.  I’m going to like this place.

We went on to the hotel I booked, SETAM, and I got a little bungalow up a hill overlooking the park.  No internet here, but nice service, a group of 40 French tourists, and decent food.  Dinner was pumpkin soup that had more broth than pumpkin and tasted pretty good, with ginger chicken as the main dish.  All the food, again, was clearly local; the chicken was small but very tasty.

Tomorrow, the forest.