Ranomafana National Park
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Ranomafana, Madagascar
Day 7: Friday 30 Sept
Leaving Andasibe NP, the next port of call would be Ranomafana NP further south. However, it was quite a long way away and people didn't like driving after dark because headlights appeared to be optional and the danger of bandits. Therefore, we'd split the journey up into two and stay overnight in a town called Ambrosita on the way.
After heading back towards the capital Tana, we turned south along the country's main road, the RN7, linking Tana with some of the major National Parks all the way to the southwest coastal town of Tulear where I planned to eventually end up. Madagascar has only a handful of major roads, the quality of which varies from good to massively potholed. The other minor roads may be passable in a 4WD vehicle, but more often not even then. As we headed south, the weather changed into what I was expecting of Madagascar from the start - blue skies and a scorching hot sun burning my skin. The scenery comprised rice paddies and low hills. Farmers worked their fields or tended zebu. Houses were built of red earth with wooden shutters for windows. The side of the road was busy with people walking between villages, transporting goods on their heads. With the distances between some villages, some would take hours. Traffic comprised mainly trucks and taxi-brousses. Driving was a dangerous business, with overtaking on blind corners acceptable practice and no speed limits, even in towns and villages. Drivers would honk their horn as a warning to anything or anyone they approached to get out of their way. Vehicle checkpoints littered the route at the entry to every town or village, manned by police or sometimes by army personnel with automatic weapons. We were only stopped a couple of times, Potsy's vehicle documents checked and then waved on our way.
We stopped in a small town called Ambatolampy for lunch. I decided to have the coq au vin. Unfortunately, the chicken legs appeared to have come from a dwarf chicken. This was the second time when I'd had chicken in Madagascar that I'd encountered dwarf chickens. Potsy asked me to pay for his meal too, stating his meal budget didn't cover the cost. It wasn't a lot extra and I did pay, but (a) the day rate I was paying included his food, I didn't feel I should be paying twice, and (b) if his budget didn't include tourist hotel / restaurant prices, then maybe he should be eating somewhere cheaper or have a word with his manager about increasing his budget. Maybe he had eaten at the same place as me to save time, but his English wasn't very good so he couldn't explain.
We drove onto Antsirabe where I had to queue for the bank to open at 2pm. As the hour drew nearer, the crowd outside grew larger and edged towards the gates, with a resultant mad rush when they opened. I just about maintained my position at the front. Good old-fashioned British queuing didn't seem to cut it in Madagascar. Antsirabe has a thriving handicrafts sector and Potsy arranged a visit to a mineral workshop, where they sculpted minerals and precious stones into various items of tourist tat. They also had some petrified wood artefacts which they said were 10 million years old. Disappointingly for them, I didn't find anything particularly interesting in their end-of-tour shop but I did get a free polished calcite egg (before I decided not to buy anything in their shop)!
Onto Ambositra, where we overnighted at the Hotel Mania, complete with noisy dog which barked until midnight and then started again at about 4.30am when the roosters started their morning wake-up call. Ambositra is the centre of Madagascar's woodcarving industry and Potsy stopped at a store so I could look round the handicrafts. Again, nothing really captured my imagination so no presents for anyone back home yet!
Day 8: Saturday 1 Oct
On Saturday, we drove the relatively short distance to Ranomafana National Park. This involved a detour off the main RN7 road, the road winding through forest-covered hills before eventually reaching the rainforest of Ranomafana NP. Potsy recommended the Hotel Manja, where I booked into a double en-suite bungalow for a cheap 45kAr/night ($22.50). I had a delicious lunch comprising zebu kebabs and chips but Potsy asked me to pay for his lunch again. Hmmmm. I had a meeting with a guide to plan my itinerary for next 2 days in the National Park. Dinner in the hotel restaurant was a lonely affair as I was the only one there! One hand holding a bottle of beer, the other swatting mosquitoes away. The menu in the hotel restaurants I'd stayed in had comprised a very limited selection, usually there was zebu or chicken cooked in a couple of styles with chips or vegetables (you had to pay extra for both). I did like the zebu kebabs and zebu steak though. My food and drink bill had been coming to about $15-$20 a day for generally a small breakfast (I usually stuck to just an omelette), lunch and dinner with the odd beer or two. Pretty cheap considering I was paying tourist hotel prices.
Day 9: Sunday 2 Oct
Looking at the forest-covered hills the previous day on the way to Ranomafana, I'd hoped that the National Park was in an area of flat forest somewhere else. Unfortunately, I was wrong. The rainforest of the National Park is a haven for wildlife and contains 7 diurnal and 5 nocturnal species of lemur along with numerous species of birds, reptiles and insects. However, as my guidebook stated "On the downside, the trails are steep and arduous, it often rains and there are leeches".
I'd arranged a 4 hour trek (the Vatoharanana circuit) in the forest in the morning, and had been advised to be ready to start at 7am to avoid the main throng of tourists. The trail wound through the rainforest, largely steeply uphill to start off with. The guides used animal spotters who would run off ahead to find the wildlife, then phone through to the guide via mobile. Since lemurs obviously didn't stick to the marked trails through the forest, this seemed like a good idea although it did mean that various stupid mobile ringtones would be going off spoiling the tranquility of the rainforest. Once the location of a group of lemurs had been determined, we'd leave the trail and scramble through steep, thickly-forested slopes using tree trunks, bamboo and saplings for leverage to reach said lemurs. I was very excited to see my first groups of lemurs, comprising Golden Bamboo Lemurs and Red-fronted Bamboo Lemurs. After a few minutes watching them, a handful of other tourists had turned up. A little while later, the place was packed with raucous largely French tourists who ignored all attempts by the guides to make them keep quiet. Not quite the "being one with nature" experience. Later on during the walk, we also saw a few groups of Red-bellied Lemurs, including a 2 month old baby and a group of Milne-Edwards' Sifaka lemurs. I was trying to take a few quick photos of any lemurs we found and carry on with the walk before the number of loud tourists congregating around us became too excessive. However, this meant I couldn't enjoy just watching the behaviour of the lemurs for too long as they went about their business, grooming, eating, playing, fighting. At one point, I ended up saying loudly to my guide "Let's get out of here, there are too many loud French people here" which did turn a few heads. Was it the fact they were French that made them so annoying or would any other nationality behaving in the same manner have had the same affect on me? The trek ended with a long knee-jarring downhill section. Incidentally, my guide had said the previous day that the fee for this trek was 40kAr. When I was paying for my NP permit in the morning, I asked him what circuit we were doing and then noticed the list of guide fees as posted on the permit office wall stated 35kAr for that circuit, which I duly pointed out to him. Unfortunately, the 5kAr saving would be added to my night-walk later that evening, the fee for which went up from the stated 20kAr the day before to 25kAr after I'd done the walk. No tip for him then.
That evening, I headed for for my guided night-walk to look for nocturnal lemurs, chameleons and frogs, the latter two of which were much easier to see at night. As in Andasibe NP previously, these night-walks were now banned in National Parks and were conducted along the side of the road looking into the bushes and trees. We first saw a Brown Mouse Lemur, but only because the guides left food at a certain same spot every night. By the time the Mouse Lemur had turned up, an increasingly large crowd was gathering at the side of the road. Fortunately, my guide spotted the lemur first and I got into a very good spot at the front of the crowd. Since the Mouse Lemur was nocturnal, I figured it wouldn't really appreciate a camera flash going off in its face, so was taking photos without using my flash. However, a few minutes later when the other tourists arrived, they didn't seem to have any such qualms and a crescendo of camera flashes was soon going off. I thought "sod it" and joined in with a few quick flash shots before peeling away from the group to continue looking for chameleons and frogs without the crowds. The guides were good at finding chameleons, but in actuality, anyone could have done the walk without a guide. The Mouse Lemur could be found by just driving up to find the large group of people waiting by the roadside as the sun was setting. Whereas in Andasibe NP, the walk took place along a stretch of road a few kilometres long and people were spread out, this walk only involved walking a few hundred metres. With so many people in such a short distance, the chameleons and frogs could be found by simply walking up and down the road following the congregated flashlights and camera flashes when anything was found. The night-walk also highlighted another pet hate of mine - people who don't know how to take a photo from distance and insist on sticking their cameras right in the subject's face, making everyone else wait until they've finished. Or maybe they've just got crap cameras.
Day 10: Monday 3 Oct
The next morning, I'd arranged with the top bird guide at the National Park to go on a 5 hour birdwatching walk along the Vohiparara trail - this would obviously cost more than using a normal guide. Most professional bird guides are able to mimic the calls of most if not all local birds to attract them closer to themselves but unusually, my guide had them all on his mobile phone and played these instead. Of course, he still had to know the habitat and territory of each bird and recognise the bird of a far-off call to be able to select the correct bird call to play back, but if you weren't very good at making bird calls, this represented a novel way of attracting birds. More times than not, it didn't work, or we weren't patient enough or didn't have enough time to wait around, but many times it did work and we got some sightings of a handful of birds that would have been very difficult to see otherwise.
The rest of the day was free to do some washing, blogging, and down a few beers with my zebu kebab in the evening as we had a relatively late start the next morning.
Day 11: Tuesday 4 Oct
We headed off this morning at 10am to Isalo National Park, with an overnight stopover on the way in Ambalavao, a pretty non-descript small town in itself, but the site of the country's biggest zebu market, which since it would be held on the day we were there, I planned to pay a visit to.
I'd really enjoyed the wildlife I'd seen at Ranomafana National Park. There were perhaps too many people congregating around the wildlife to truly enjoy it as I wanted but this was true in many places around the world, eg. tiger tracking in India, or safaris in Africa. The trekking was very difficult but rewarding, and with so many species of wildlife in the park and a number of other trekking circuits available which I hadn't done, I could have happily spent a few more days there.
Expenses (excluding food, shopping and tips): $429 ($1 = ~2,000 Ar)
Day 7: Hotel Mania, Ambrosita @ 32kAr ($16) double en-suite room
Petrol 90kAr ($45)
Day 8-10: Hotel Manja 3 nights @ 45kAr/night ($22.50) Total $67.50
Day 9: 2d NP permit 37kAr ($18.50), Vatoharanana trail 4h 35kAr ($17.50), night-walk 25kAr ($12.50) Total $48.50
Day 10: Birding trip 70kAr ($35)
4 days car/driver fees €40 = $54 (€1 = $1.35), total $216
Links:
http://www.parcs-madagascar.com/fiche-aire-protegee_en.php?Ap=26
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2025-02-17