Southwest coast

To get to our next destination, we needed to catch a speedboat across a large bay. As we drove through town on a Sunday, everybody was dressed in their best. We’re guessing the matching clothes probably signified singing groups?

At the “office” of the boat company, we found that the tide was way out -

I didn’t get a picture of it, but the wheel in the bottom R corner above belonged to a tractor that pulled a large cart in which all of us passengers and our luggage rode out to the speedboat. The zebu carts were used to ferry goods and locals.

As we neared the beach where we were meeting the car to take us to our hotel…

… the water was really shallow, and the boat had to stop short of the beach. Guess how we met our car?

Luckily we were wearing shorts and sandals!

As we drove down the coast to our hotel, we could see we were definitely in desert country, and the housing was much simpler than it had been up north -

The local vehicles were even more packed (I didn’t think that was possible!) -

We arrived at our beachfront hotel to find that we were the only guests! (we didn’t complain)

The next morning we visited a large salt lake (Tsimanampetsotsa) because it is home to a large population of Lesser Flamingos…

… that migrates here to breed and bear young before returning to Tanzania in October, after the rainy season arrives.

We saw the “Grandmother” Baobab, which is said to be 1,600 years old. Here in the desert south, baobabs don’t grow as tall as they do in the north, but they have a mighty girth.

did you notice our guide?

We also visited a massive Banyan tree (from India)…

… that was next to a sinkhole, connecting to a cave system -

We then moved to a different hotel up the coast, where we watched our dinner of tuna brought in…

… from this boat -

We had switched hotels so we could visit Nosy Ve, which is an island about 3 km off the coast and is home to nesting Red-tailed Tropicbirds -

They can nest on the ground because the island is uninhabited and they have no predators here. This ball of fluff was 3 days old -

We enjoyed a grilled fish lunch on the beach, watching the locals sail by -

We took the speedboat back to the other side of the bay the next morning, and it was quite a different look as we came in during high tide -

I will close as I often do -

A very long day...

On the second long day of driving, we needed to be on the road for nearly 12 hours (!) to reach our next resting point. Remember the type of roads I shared with you in the last post? Well, they didn’t get much better; the water crossings continued and we had many miles of bumpy dirt road to contend with. We passed through many traditional villages…

… with house construction varying from brick (rare) to walls of bamboo…

… topped with a thatch roof, that is replaced every 2-3 years.

Some houses were surrounded by bamboo fences -

Kids waved to us all day as we passed…

… and it was very interesting to see the young ladies with dried paste on their faces. This is made from aloe or tamarind and is used as a sunscreen (lighter skin color is desirable) as well as a skin treatment (for acne, etc.) -

The young woman on the left in the picture above has a young child wrapped up against her back, like this -

Most women wear a T-shirt and then a brightly colored cloth tied as a long skirt. I loved the chaos of color in this market scene -

An interesting sight was the braiding of tobacco leaves into ropes:

As I had noted at the end of the last post, we caught the baobabs at sunset, but before we got there, we passed through a village with some massive specimens -

We did have another deep water crossing as we headed south, but this ferry didn’t have a working motor, so the locals made do -

We were leaving the giant baobabs behind…

… and entering the (mostly) desert area of the SW of the country that had many termite mounds -

Then some of the bigger towns showed off the variety of transportation used -

The orange van above is an example of the local buses, where belongings and bags of goods bought at the weekly market are piled on top, and people are crammed inside. The zebu cart was a very common sight throughout our travels. Zebu are the only “beasts of burden” in Madagascar, but they also provide meat, and are sacrificed for village celebrations like funerals and marriages.

Before we stopped for the night, we visited a reserve of a Spiny Forest. No explanation needed -

This is an Ocotillo, or “octopus tree” to the locals -

We also were treated to some special denizens of the forest; a Ground Boa…

… a White-footed Sportive Lemur…

…. a Warty Chameleon…

… a Kung-Fu Cricket..

… and to finish off this long day, with a picture of how we felt… a Madagascar Tenrec -

not a hedgehog; he’s more closely related to shrews and elephants!

Big Tsingy

That’s not a typo. Tsingy is a Malagasy word meaning “the place where one cannot walk barefoot” or “walking on tiptoes”.

That picture was from the top of the hike we did, and those limestone needles and sharp edges are every bit as painful to walk on as you suspect. The full name of the park is Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park and it is located in NW Madagascar, about 2/3 the way up the west side of the island.

To get to that viewpoint above, we first climbed through a dry forest, and found some unique birds. Sorry, you’re just going to have to be patient…

Madagascar Parrot (yes, it’s black)

Malagasy Paradise-Flycatcher

And the neatest to me was a forest Madagascar Pygmy Kingfisher. I thought kingfishers always lived by water -

He’s 5 inches long and weighs less than an ounce. I find his stubby little tail adorable. :)

Before we could climb up to the top, we passed through a cave, walking by tree roots…

… and some beautiful formations on the walls…

… and nearly crawling on all fours, before we reached the ladder and cables section -

Steve enjoys snapping pics of me at work -

Once on top, everywhere we turned we saw “stone forest” interspersed with green trees -

Climbing on down continued to be interesting…

… but the swinging bridge really wasn’t as scary as many others we’ve crossed. ;-)

I really liked the horizontal cuts that made the rocks look like they were floating

Continuing on…

… through the rocks…

… we arrived in the forest again, to find another species of lemur -

Von der Decken’s Sifaka -

(this species doesn’t have the black cap of the other Sifaka we saw)

The next day, we started our two longest days of driving. This first one was “only” 8 hours, on roads like this…

… and this….

… that Steve aptly described as “steeplechase” -

(this was taken from the middle of the shallow but wide stream we were crossing)

There were some water crossings where you couldn’t be sure which was the safest way through, but the sticks were there to guide you (and you paid the guy working in the river, who put them up) -

We made it safely through the steeplechase course to arrive back at the Avenue of the Baobabs in time for sunset…

… and a sundowner of rum punch.

Kirindy Forest

Along the west coast, north of Morondava, is an area of deciduous dry forest that’s loaded with unique bird and animal life. I will try to keep the bird pictures to a minimum, but they are so beautiful! :)

Giant Coua

The afternoon that we arrived, we went on a walk in the woods (when it was about 90 degrees and without any breeze). It was definitely worth it, for all the wildlife we saw. First up were some Red-fronted Brown Lemurs…

… which were quite thirsty (be sure and open the email in your browser to see the videos) -

(apparently it’s ok to give the lemurs water in a snail shell, but not to feed them)

A Verreaux’s Sifaka and her little baby really moved around right in front of us -

A pair of White-browed Owls were just chillin’…

… and a usually nocturnal Gray Mouse Lemur peeked out at us from his den…

… and then got bolder -

He is about 5 inches long and weighs about 2 ounces.

The guide rubbed a twig along the edge of the hole, causing sap to be extruded:

Then just after dark, we went on a night hike, and saw even more lemurs, like the Fork-marked Lemur…

…and the Pygmy Mouse Lemur (which is smaller than the Gray by 1/2 inch & 1/2 oz) to be the smallest lemur in the world -

After staying in a very rustic cabin in the eco-lodge in the private reserve, we got up early for a bird-watching walk, and I definitely won’t bore you with all the unique and beautiful birds we saw. But I just have to show you the White-breasted Mesite that had all the birders with their long lenses agog around us. Apparently these are fairly rare, even in Madagascar, which is the only place in the world that they live -

Anyway… we moved on north from here, and had a very interesting river crossing. First we got to ogle a herd of Zebu, which are the local cattle (both genders have horns, but the males’ are much more impressive)…

… including this gorgeous guy -

We were able to watch as the car ferry loaded…

… and luckily, this didn’t happen to us -

this was on the far side of the river, which we were treated to as we arrived and drove off the car ferry safely

The second river crossing of the afternoon was much smaller, which was good, because the ferries didn’t have working motors:

This was our reward after arriving safely after a long day. G’night!

Madagascar!

On our journey to this island nation off the SE coast of Africa, we spent a night in Johannesburg, South Africa. I mention this because we had a very interesting and delicious dinner there. We sought out the restaurant - Tribes African Grill - because the menu featured all manner of grilled meats. We greatly enjoyed the Mixed Grill that included ostrich, warthog, impala and kudu. Rather than posting a stock photo of a kudu, I urge you to search online and check out this beautiful animal. Of the four meats, we enjoyed ostrich and kudu the most - they were moist, tender and had very pleasing flavors. We don’t know for a fact that these animals are farmed, rather than hunted in the wild, but we strongly suspect that.

Now on to Madagascar…

As we approached the airport, you could see lots of red dirt, agricultural patches and mostly dirt roads. On the ground, we found that the capital of Antananarivo was well into the spring season of planting rice:

Anywhere there was flat land and a way to get a lot of water to it, rice is grown. It is the staple crop of the country -

Our flight to Morondava was cancelled at the last minute due to equipment problems, so we spent an unscheduled extra night in “Tana”. [That’s a much easier way to refer to the capital than its full name.] The next day we arrived safely on the west coast and the home of the “famous” Avenue of the Baobabs -

There are 7 species of baobab in the world and 5 are endemic to Madagascar. A sixth occurs in both Madagascar and Africa, while the seventh is in Australia. When they are young…

… they have a lot of branches. As they grow older and bigger, the branches become so heavy that they break off, giving the trees their distinctive shape -

A baobab is essentially an enormous sponge surrounded by bark. The local people cut into them to reach the stored water, but they are not cut down, as they are protected by law. They also harvest the bark for use as roofing materials. The trees have remarkable regenerative properties, so the bark grows back, somewhat like cork trees.

I repeatedly put Steve up against trees that I was photographing, to show just how massive they are -

Those were the common species, while this next one is frequently referred to as the “Rasta” one (with so many branches hanging down) -

Other famous residents of the island include chameleons…

… and lemurs -

Red-fronted Brown Lemur

I plan to be sharing with you all the different species of lemurs especially that we saw on our travels here. I think my favorite family is the Sifaka, because of their striking coloration. These are Verreaux’s sifakas…

… and the baby was really cute to watch. As usual, to see the video, you’ll need to open this post in your browser by clicking on the link at the end of the post -

I think I’ll wrap up this post, a little on the short side, because I just wanted to give you a quick overview of this very diverse country (and internet is very spotty). As I have before, I try to get a picture of a country’s flag, so here’s Madagascar’s -