17/02/19 We landed on time in Antananarivo. A
driver from the hostel picked me up and drove me to Madagascar Underground, a
friendly hostel in the city. I met Liva the tour guide who comes often at the
hostel to find customers and decided to join an Italian guy for a trip to the
lemurs park tomorrow, which seems to be the only sunny day of the week.
I also took the phone number of Laura and Franja, 2 German girls that I might
meet later on for an excursion.
18/02/19 We left at 8am as we have 3.5h drive to the park. We stopped at a
local restaurant for breakfast and bought some bananas at a nice view point.
Mantadia national park is located in Andasibe forest. A guide took us on a 2h
observation walk. Only 2 families of 10 lemurs live here in the wild. Lemurs
are very territorials and take care of their own.
We spotted 2 groups of 3 black and white lemurs (Inri Inri) which was quite
nice and a group of 3 cute wooly lemurs hidden in a tree that we would never
have found on our own. One Chameleon, a few spiders and 2 types of tenrecs
(cute mini hedgehog).
We also walked to the orchid garden nearby where we saw a brown ibis. I learned
that vanilla is a type of orchid!
Our next stop is a luxury hotel 1/2h drive from the park, in hotel Vakona
reserve where we can approach lemurs really close. On the way, Andrea the
italian guy took his pants off as he was too hot and put his feet outside the
window next to my nose as I was sitting at the front. How considerate…
At the reserve, a guide (William) took us on a mini canoe trip to reach the
island where the lemurs live. We had a few bananas and as soon as we arrived on
the island, a group of lemurs rushed to us and did not hesitate to climb on out
shoulders to catch the bananas. It was very cute and I didn’t expect them to be
so friendly. Their fur is really soft and they grip everything without using
their nails so it was an awesome experience. One of them even licked my face as
we were smelling bananas ?. A
French family joined us later on and the kids were scared of the lemurs but
they still handled them on their shoulders (well the lemurs didn’t give them
much choice ?).
They were jumping around, on our arms, shoulders and heads. Highly recommended
experience! In the reserve we saw 4 types of lemurs: the brown lemur, black and
white lemur (the biggest), the bamboo lemur and the red one that looks like the
red panda.
We stopped at another restaurant for late lunch where I had a creole Tilapia
with rice then it was already time to drive back to the hostel.
19/02/19 A day to chill at the hostel. It is supposed to rain in Tana for the
next few days so I will wait for someone else to be interested in the baobab
trip.
