Andasibe

It’s the end of winter here in Andasibe and there is still a chill in the air. It’s warm at midday in the sun but I’ve enjoyed the change of cooler temperature for a few days, even wearing my fleece at points. I had lunch on the hotel’s terrace, overlooking a small lake. When I heard an older couple speaking English I asked them about their travels, it was nice to have some acquaintances to chat with. I had been looking forward to leaving camp and having more quiet, but after a few days alone I was ready for some conversation. Little did I know how often I’d be bumping into my new British friends! 

I had a refreshing nap after lunch, partly because I was exhausted but I think what made the nap especially good was being able to cozy up under the covers for a change. I must have slept for three hours and it was amazing. I had a little jolt of coffee to get me going and then headed off down the road for the night walk at Misinjo. As the sun disappeared behind the trees I realized the challenge of the night walk would be getting back to the hotel afterwards in the dark - the road is narrow and definitely not lit. It turned out that my new British friends had also come to Mitsinjo for the night walk so not only was I swept up into their group for the walk but they offered me a lift back to the hotel after the walk. Score! 

I’m pretty partial to my headlamp but the super strong torches our guide and the British man carried put it to shame. Mine was great for avoiding mishaps on the path but not for blasting the dark forest with light to find wildlife. It was a pretty incredible walk through the forest, surrounded  by the chirps and croaks from dozens of kinds of frogs, passing quietly along the path and coming across a chameleon and two different types of nocturnal lemurs, both the woolly lemur and the dwarf lemur. Over the course of the hike my skills at finding them improved - searching for a flash of their eyes in the dark staring back at us. I felt fortunate to be in a small group: just the three of us and the guide; when we came out onto the road we encountered a few larger groups of German and Italian tourists who simply did not understand the concept of moving quietly. They chattered away non-stop as if they were narrating their every moment, it reminded me of exactly why I didn’t consider traveling here as part of a tour group. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t see a mouse lemur, they were only discovered here in 2005 but they are also incredibly small and therefor difficult to spot.

When I returned to the hotel I inquired about my options for my return to Tana at the front desk. I could hire a car but it was still almost $95US. Fortunately meals at the hotel were even cheaper than my meals had been in Nosy Komba. Chicken in a delicious coconut sauce and a large beer was only $12,000Ar, just under $5US. The tiny shower in my hut put out fantastically hot water and I had the best shower I’ve had since I left the U.S. 

The next morning I woke up to hear the indri wailing and I was so incredibly happy and thankful to be in such a beautiful place. I headed off down the road for a guided hike through Andasibe National Park. I spotted the guide who chatted me up the previous day and he asked if he could bring along a woman who was in training to be a guide. I was happy to comply so we set off into the forest for our trek. It wasn’t long before a light rain started, we were in a rain forest after all. The rain grew heavier and I regretted my decision to bring my fleece instead of my rain jacket. The morning had been chilly but sunny so I thought I was making the better choice. Fortunately even though the rain continued at a steady pace, we were deep in the forest under the trees and didn’t get completely drenched. As long as we kept moving I kept warm - when we stopped for too long the chill started to creep in. It took a lot of time before we found any lemurs - the first we saw was a diademed sifaka. It was curled up in a ball, trying to stay dry in the rain and it looked much cozier than I felt. It seemed all of the guides had a difficult time finding any lemurs so once we found this one, the numbers began to grow as other guides and other tourists arrived. We moved on to search for indri, my guide Roberto imitating their calls sporadically to see if he could tease them out of hiding. He promised that the rain would stop and it would become easier to find lemurs.

We go to the point that we could hear the indri in the distance, two different groups responding to each other’s wails - but they were still not close. I was happy to follow Roberto off the main path onto the smaller trails the guides use throughout the forest. I would never consider myself spry but compared with some of the other tourists we were a quicker and smaller group. I was amazed at some of the huge camera equipment and tripods that people brought for this trek. I had promised myself that while I definitely wanted pictures, I would not get caught up only in getting photos, I wanted to enjoy watching the lemurs and the chance to be so close to them. So much of an experience can be lost through the lens of a camera, not only in the difficulty of capturing the shot, but more in the attention it requires, which takes away from the overall experience, IMHO. 

We finally found a family of indri and I was able to appreciate their size. When they moved through the trees they looked like furry black and white children - their appearance changes so much with their limbs outstretched. They can jump 7 meters in a single jump and are awesome to watch. When they are still it’s hard to gauge their size but the first one we found was a mother and her little baby. Roberto estimated it at about 2-3 months and it peeked out constantly with curious little eyes. It was gush-worthy adorable. I took a ton of pictures of them and promise to edit them down in the gallery. We followed the family for a while as they moved throughout the forest and even had a chance to watch them calling directly overhead, their little mouths open so wide to make those strange noises. It’s crazy loud when you’re underneath, for an idea of how it sounds check out this video.

We lucked out and saw another group of sifakas which were feeling playful now that the rain had stopped. Two wrestled and played in the trees, Roberto said they even come and play on the ground sometimes. We saw a group of brown lemurs which seem to act very much like the black lemurs I encountered on Nosy Komba. They were similar in size and made the same toe of grunts to communicate with each other. We even saw two cute little grey bamboo lemurs as we headed back to the entrance of the park. I feel so very fortunate to have seen so many critters during my trip; I was worried when the day started slowly and with rain, but all in all, I was able to see six types of lemurs over my two day visit, over half of the variety of lemur species here in Andasibe. Some like the indri don’t exist anywhere else in the world, or even in Madagascar. They refuse to eat in captivity and therefor only survive in the wild. It’s not always easy to impress the importance of conservation in the third world, it’s easy for us to say, “Learn from us, take care of what you have before it’s gone.”, especially as say so from our first world lives. The average Malagasy person survives on the equivalent of $2US a day. So it’s a relief to know that despite the poverty of this beautiful country, many native people do appreciate that there is nowhere like this on earth and are supportive of effort to conserve space and resources for the future.