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| Looking for lemurs |
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| Noa feeds a little bamboo lemur |
The Feony’ ala lodge was located deep in the rainforest in the northwestern part of Madagascar and was owned by a Chinese lady from the Xiamen area that was very happy to hear our smattering of Mandarin. “Xi-Xi” and the like. Our hut was located on a small river complete with pungent jungle flowers, geckos, a small loft for Noa, and Mosquito nets. Each night the tree frogs would begin a cacophony of sound starting at dusk that rose and fell like the jungle breathing. Far away we could hear the hoots of the nocturnal lemurs, and all of the sounds blended together like a soup of white noise that I figured must lull the locals to sleep each night.
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| Les and King Julian |
We were assigned a local guide, ours was named Donna (pronounced Donya), and each morning he would meet us at breakfast and tell us his plan for the day. “Today I will find the an-eee-mals for you.” The national park was about 1KM from our lodge, and each morning we walked along the local road up to the entrance to the park. On the way he uncannily point out camafloged animals that we would never have seen. “Have you ever seen the walking stick?” he might ask. Then he would walk ahead 10 meters to a clump of leaves, pull back some branches, and pull out a six-inch long walking stick. After 40 plus years in the forest he was truly tuned in.
The cost to enter the park was about 40,000 AR (about 20 US) and we would begin our 4-5 hour walk through the jungle, Noa following closely behind Donya as he cut this way and that through the trails in search of the an-ee-mals. We felt like Sean Connery in that movie Medicine Man as we saw numerous colorful lizards, birds, flowers (many of which had medicinal uses) and ants, ants, ants. He said that there were 425 types of ants in the world and 25 of them were only in Madagascar. Of course our main objective was to see the Lemurs, which we could hear crying out but were a little tougher to find as they moved through the trees. Many of the trees were Australian eucalyptus, which were brought in by the French hundreds of year ago and were killing off the local trees as well as poisoning the water (the Spanish did this same favor for the Peru rainforests). The lemurs liked to go up high in the morning to get warm in the sunlight, and then came down later in the day to feed. After hiking for several hours, Donya would suggest that we sit and have a drink of water while he searched quickly for the an-ee-mals. That was his polite way of saying that we were like elephants crashing through the jungle and were scaring everything away. Soon he came back and said to follow him quietly –shhh, we are hunting wabbit- and would point into the trees above where low and behold- there they were! A family of the Indri Lemurs. They sat happily munching leaves, and from time to time would launch for about five leaps through the trees to land elsewhere. They were not too concerned with us, and let us watch for quite some time. Throughout the day we saw many other species of lemurs, including Small Wooley, Common Brown, Grey Bamboo and the beautiful golden Sifaka. Our guide even pointed out some of the sleeping nocturnal lemurs hidden in the trees.
One highlight of our stay was a “Nightwalk” in which Donna took us 3 or 4 KM us the tar road and we walked back to the lodge with flashlights. Up above the milky way was glowing like a disk across the heavens, and the Southern Cross and Scorpius were directly above. Donna knew both of these constellations and said that there were old bush stories about them. As we walked along the road he would shine his light at some odd foliage, and show us an Elephant Eared Chameleon or Poison Tree Frog. After a while Susie and Noa got the giggles and were compelled to play shadow charades in the street when our efforts to see the night life were futile.
On our last day we went for a visit to an upscale lodge that featured a “Lemur Island.” Donna said that it was bad for the An-ee-mals because it taught them to eat food from humans. The Vacona Lodge claimed that they were only raising abandoned and injured Lemurs. Either way, we succumbed to the idea of seeing Lemurs up close rather than in the trees. The Lemur Island was enclosed with a small mote about feet deep and 10 feet across, and we were “ferried” over for a $5 fee. Upon landing on shore we were immediately accosted by lemurs hoping that we had banana bites for them. We felt guilty for contributing to the domestication of the lemurs and it was a bit Disneyish, but where else on earth are you going to have King Julian’s friends sitting on your head???? Unbelievable.
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| Golden Sifaka |
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