Day 2 overland tour
post by scott
Day 2 brought us to a beautiful national park (whose name eludes me). I had been expecting tropical rainforests for some reason (mainly the Madagascar cartoon movies) but the landscape here was the polar opposite. Dusty plains met heaving rocky mountains with a pickling of incredibly thorny trees guarding the perimeter of these peaks. The sun was blasting us relentlessly and had long ago dried up any traces of moisture in the ground. We set off with our guides prepared for a long and arduous trek into the park to find some lemurs. You’ve got to put in the hard yards to get the payoff and see such amazing endemic fauna… hang on…. there’s one… They’re right here… and there… oh ok it turns out they’re all around us. We had barely started down the track and we were surrounded already by ringtailed lemurs! It was amazing to see King Julian’s followers so close up. They moved through the minefield of spiny branches with remarkable ease and then would sit gracefully with long banded tails hanging down dead straight. Their proximity to humans on a daily basis was evident though – they didn’t bat an eye at us creeping through the spiky trees to get a better look or photo.
Another 50 meters and we spotted another Madagascan icon – the chameleon!! With 12 or so people crowded over him this little green guy (about 15cm long) swivelled his periscope-like eyes around one at a time and jiggled back and forth on two legs, not seeming to be too concerned by the multitude of eyes fixed on him. Being bright green he was relatively easy to spot on the grey branch, unlike his friend further along, who blended seamlessly into the tree he was perched in. Apparently chameleons are the only animals that can move their eyes independently of each other. Which prompts the question – how do they see? Can they focus on two things in different fields of vision at the same time? Is it like watching two TV screens? Or do they just focus on one at a time with the other being like peripheral vision?
Climbing to a rocky outcrop we sat to enjoy spectacular views of the area. On the way down our guide showed us the “Chewing gum” tree, which is apparently used by kids here in lieu of a candy store! When you break a branch a thick white sap comes out slowly, and by pumping the branch back and forth you can exude enough to ball up and chew on. We all had a go and it was surprisingly good! Not particularly tasty but definitely a good chewy consistency. You just need to be careful though because a similar looking tree has a highly lethal white sap which is used to poison fish.
The pictures below are from a pee stop in the middle of nowhere. The closest town was on the horizon but magically a huge hoard of children appeared around the van in less than a minute. Maxine entertained them with some balloons for a while until all of a sudden we were all scared shitless by the sounds of gunfire! Looking around for armed bandits I sheepishly realised it was the kids and their version of a capgun which is a metal clapper with an old spark plug that sets off a firecracker when they smack it against the ground.
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Malagasy dance party
That night was one to remember. Dave had organised an insanely good local band to come and perform for us in the hotel bar, and before they had finished their first song Allana, Ian, Callum, Maxine, Eva and Dave had already broken the shackles and were dancing their asses off. After dinner and fuelling up on 3 horses and whiskey the rest of us joined in to the greatest dance party that south-east central Madagascar has ever seen on a Wednesday night!! The band had a great call to arms for anyone to make them dance that extra bit harder .. “Oh ahh mama, Oh Ahh Mama, Ohhh Geoorgiiee.” Upon which George would have to cut short his pee, run out of the loo and into the middle of the circle to shake it with vigour. (his booty that is, not.. the other thing). [Check the video section to see Dave and Amy called into the circle!] They even sang a song specifically about Eva -you know you are a special person when even people in distant countries are writing about you! After many tiring hours of dancing the band finally packed up and left to a rapturous applause. The night ended with some local version of Malibu and Ian showing us how well he can handstand and breakdance. Pretty good on the handstand, but I’m not convinced about the breakdancing..