Andasibe (June12-13) by Lucas
Andasibe was a great place to end our time in Madagascar. There was a national park there where we saw quite a few lemurs and an amazing, fabulous, awesome, extraordinary, unforgettable, and mind blowing place called the Lemur Islands, but I'll start from the top. On our arrival at Andasibe we checked into our hotel called Feony'ny ala ( the voice of the forest in Malagasy - we would find out why it was called this the next morning). Maya and I liked it a lot. It had a pool table, ping pong, and foosball. It also had very nice bungalows. Ours had a loft that Maya and I slept in. After we got settled in and a warm drink we walked 2 km down the road to the entrance of the park. Here there was a visitor information center. We learned about the Indri Lemur ( the biggest living lemur - see photo of Maya below), the giant lemur ( the biggest ever lemur about as tall as a fully grown gorilla but it's not alive anymore) and other lemurs.
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| Maya "Indri" Nowotny |
The only place in the world that lemurs are found, other than in zoos, is Madagascar. The Indri, from what we had read, was about 3 feet tall with no tail. They are called the phantoms of the forest because their cries are so loud you can hear them from up to 3 kilometres away. There are also many other kinds of lemurs in the national park!
We also read that lemurs evolved on Madagascar from the same ancestors as monkeys but they evolved in a different direction
That night, we walked down the road with lights hoping to see mouse lemurs, exotic frogs, or chameleons. Without a guide's highly trained eye though, it was nearly impossible and so we didn't see anything.
The next morning we were woken up by "the voice of the forest" at about 6:30. These were the Indri "singing". It was unbelievable how loud they were and how their voices echoed through the trees.
The next morning we were woken up by "the voice of the forest" at about 6:30. These were the Indri "singing". It was unbelievable how loud they were and how their voices echoed through the trees.
You can see and hear them way better in this public YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNaxOfbkwNs. They start calling a lot at 1:20 of the video.
Anyways, after a quick breakfast of bread, we walked back to the visitor center to start our walk through the forest. We picked the three hour route in hopes of seeing chameleons, frogs, and lots of lemurs. Unfortunately, we only saw one chameleon
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| Short-horned Chameleon |
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| Here's lookin' at you kid!! |
1 frog,
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| This is called a 'Madagascar Frog' because its only found in... Madagascar and they spend their whole lives in a certain type of plant |
and 2 geckos
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| Gecko |
but we saw lots of lemurs. The four indri that we saw were very cool because we saw them sing and they didn't have tails (the only lemurs that don't have them I think), plus, they are the biggest ones.
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We also saw lots of golden sifakas.
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| golden sifaka with a tracking collar |
They were neat, but from the distance we were looking at them from, they looked pretty similar to the other sifakas we had seen so I'm not sure how different they were. After getting soaked by rain and trudging through random paths for not three, but four hours, we arrived back at the visitor center. We went back to the hotel to eat some lunch before going to Lemur Island. We had a dessert that I had never heard of called banana flambé. It was sooo delicious.
Anyways, it took half an hour to get to lemur island. Lemur island is a private project that takes illegally domesticated lemurs and puts them on the islands so that they are in the wild, but away from anything dangerouse, they have plenty of space and plenty of food. At first when we got there, there was a river with canoes that went across a 3 meter gap to the other side. We thought it was silly and that they should just build a bridge, but later we realised that a bridge would let the lemurs into the wild wild. The moment I stepped of the walkway, a lemur jumped on me. Not even kidding. A brown lemur jumped onto my shoulder and sat there waiting for me to give it a banana.
Our guide handed me a piece of one and immediately the lemur ate it.
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| brown lemurs and us |
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| 3 brown lemurs on Maya at once |
This one was much bigger and let you pet it! They also sat on you shoulder.
They even licked our hands clean.
Closer to the end. Little cute lemurs called bamboo lemurs came and waited on branches for bananas.
They did not come onto you, but they still ate the bananas. Next we went to the second island. Here there were also brown lemurs, but the real treat was the sifakas.
They were much more shy and despite their size, seemed to be scared of the smaller brown lemurs, but they were beautiful.
They were amazing. Finally we went to the fourth island were we could see Ring-tailed lemurs.
These are the classic lemurs that are in the movie, Madagascar.
I was very exited to see them jumping toward us when our boat landed on the island. They immediately jumped onto the canoe for bananas.
Over all, this was as I said above an amazing fabulous awesome, extraordinary, unforgettable, and mind blowing place. I would go back there every day of my life if I could, alas, it's on Madagascar.
On our way back to 'Tana', we arrived at a bit of a dilemma. They were pulling a truck out of the river and having no success.
Everything they tried didn't seem to work. After waiting for 3 hours, they tried something different that looked like it might work, but it didn't, and they gave up and let all the vehicles pass. We counted one hundred and twenty five on the other side as we drove away. It was now dark and late. By the time we got back to Tana it was 10:00 PM, Farah still made us vegetable soup! It was delicious. Finally we went to bed.
Andasibe was definitely one of the better times in Madagascar and I'm very glad we went. Actually, now that I think about it, lemur island was my favorite activity of the whole trip!!
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