15 May – 257

Gecko that Slurped up Banana Bloom Sap for
Two Days at Ranomafana

Yea!  My first day in the rainforest.

After being waked up by hundreds of bird calls about 6 am, I managed to go back to sleep and get out a little on the late side.  I keep having to deal with the politeness factor here, as when I ask when the best time is for animals and Solofo says it’s when I’m ready.  It doesn’t work that way.

In any case, I finally got out the door and had a big breakfast on the veranda looking over the huge, green mountains covered with the most amazing variety of trees.  I was excited to be heading out into that, but not so excited I didn’t finish breakfast.  While I was sitting there with Solofo, several big blue birds landed in the tree just across the yard and proceeded to tuck into the fruit in the tree.  I didn’t need a book to identify the Madagascar Blue Pigeon, but I confirmed it there.  If our pigeons looked like these, I’d stop trying to kick them in the street.  This is a big pigeon that is a strong blue with red around the eyes, and they are, honestly, beautiful to look at.  These sat in the tree until we left, happily gobbling the fruit there and trying to get warm in the spatters of sunlight.

Yep, it was overcast, threatening rain and cold.

Headed to the car and spotted a Madagascar Bulbul in a tree beside the garden.  Another endemic species.  Somewhat larger than I remember bulbuls as being, this friendly guy had a dark crest and bright orange beak.  He and his buds were chowing down on some fruit in a tree, too.

Got to the gate of Ranomafana park finally, and I must say it was disappointing.  Little signage and lots of hungry guides.  I didn’t much care for the smug, evasive guy at the ticket office either, where there were no routes posted and no guide prices.  I’ll go on record as saying the good service here in Madagascar is fantastic and rare; this was the more common type.    We eventually settled on far-too-high a fee for a scruffy guy, Alphonse, who (honestly) needed a bath and was missing more than a few teeth.  However, I’ve long since learned not to judge a guide by his cover, and several of my best park experiences have been with guides who looked like this, so I went along.

Poor Alphonse, though, was not really up to snuff, and I’d have to put him as probably the second worst guide I’ve ever tried to keep up with.  He was full of information like, “That’s a mushroom,” and “That’s a fungus.  People don’t eat that but lemurs do.”  At least he had a kid with him who he sent ahead to find out where everyone else was looking at wildlife.

Bamboo Forest: Why these Lemurs are Here

Alphonse aside, it’s really hard to beat the Ranomafana Rain Forest for wildlife; I kept having flashbacks to the hike to find gorillas in Uganda. We’d only gone about 20 minutes into the forest here when we found a group of walkers who were watching a troop of Golden Bamboo lemurs.  These are really rare and were only discovered in 1986; in fact, the Ranomafana Park was initially established to protect these lemurs.  They are the size of monkeys and act a bit like them, but this little troop of 5-6 were sitting there placidly chewing on bamboo while 8-10 tourists walked around under them with cameras.  More than a few descended to eye level, too, which isn’t hard for a lemur to do; the mountains are so steep that the animal would still be high in the tree but at eye level if it’s 10 yards away down the slope. 

I stayed awhile watching them until we went off in search of other animals.  The sun had begun to peak out a bit, which I thought was a good thing given how dense the forest it.  And it is really dense, denser than any other rainforest I recall having seen.  And did I mention how steep it was…

Greater Bamboo Lemur Eating Bamboo

After the sun came out, I was drenched in sweat in about five minutes and panting so much that even Alphonse thought we should take a break.  Soon, his scout whistled, and we went up ahead to find an even more rare animal, the Greater Bamboo Lemur.  This was a very small group, we were off the beaten trail, and there were only two other tourists there.  I think the mother lemur must have been grazing when the first couple of tourists stopped, because she called to her offspring as we approached.  I was amused to watch the little one try to pee on the French tourist who was trying to take its photo, and the photographer laughed as much as everyone else.  The baby headed out away from us, but mama pulled off a piece of bamboo as big around as my arm and took it to a perch to tear apart and eat.  She sounded like she was eating through the whole forest as she peeled off big bites full and then chewed them.  The French couple left, and we were there alone for 30 minutes or so with the Greater Bamboo Lemurs.

We then went up and down 1,000 incredibly steep hills (it might have only been 500) before we heard another whistle and soon found a troop of huge, black and white lemurs….but they weren’t lemurs.  They were Sifakas (don’t ask me the difference).  These big guys were a little shyer than the other two troops, but after they got used to us hanging around under them, then settled into their berry crunching.  These Milne-Edwards Sifakas were so big that they they lept from tree trunk to tree truck rather than branch to branch.  And at that, some of the trees swayed like they were going to bend double.

Epiphyte that looked like a Succulent

It was getting quite hot by this time, and Alphonse decided to walk over two more mountains to get to the river and a reasonably flat trail…..at least, I think that’s what he was doing.  One of the peaks had an overlook, and we paused there.  I noticed a sign that said that 257 Americans had visited the park in 2009, which made me feel special.  We headed out again, and at the bottom of one of the mountains, we saw a group of Red-Fronted Brown Lemurs settling in for their afternoon siesta.  At first, they just looked like a very large clump in a tree with a very cute head sticking out of it.  Then three tails dropped out of the clump, leading us to think there were at least three lemurs there.  We watched awhile, but there was no other activity.

So we headed to the river and the gate, spotting another endemic bird on the way – the Common Newtonia.  These little guys are usually high in the trees, but this one had apparently spotted a tasty moth and come down for it.  He was working his way back up the canopy when we saw him, his bright, white eye gleaming.

When we finally struggled out of the forest, I could tell by the expression on the faces of a French couple in the clearing that I didn’t look too healthy.  However they paid me an immense compliment when they asked me where I was from.  With my accent, that pretty much never happens, but I think that there are so few Americans in Madagascar –- and even fewer that speak French -- that they just weren’t expecting it.  Turns out they live only a few blocks from where I used to live in the 18^th arrondissemen of Paris; they use the same Metro as I did, Jules Joffrin.  We had a great little talk.

The rest of the day was super-relax.  Had a hearty lunch and slept a little for my midday siesta.  We decided to drive along the road that runs partly through the park to see what we could find in the way of birds, and I did, in fact, identify a couple.  It soon got dark, though, and we headed back to the hotel, passing by the park entrance.  I talked with a guy there who does a night walk, but I wasn’t terribly engaged by the idea of seeing some chameleons at night and opted out of it.  The guide, Bertrine, seemed pretty on the ball though, so we made a plan to visit the park with him tomorrow.

I relaxed for a while and went down to a dining room full of French retirees having the time of their lives.  I can’t imagine how they spend their days here, but I know it’s not running up and down the mountains.  They didn’t care anyway, dressed in their vacation clothes and being emphatic about everything.