Real Animals, Not Just Cartoons in Madagascar

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Martin with the Kids in Andasibe

We are loving Madagascar.  The people here are fantastic, so warm and friendly.  Genuinely happy to see you, with huge smiles and puzzled curiosity.  Such a refreshing change from Morocco, where everyone seems to have a motive to sell you something and you always have your guard up.  Or South Africa, where we are warned that everywhere is dangerous, and be careful.
This is the way we like to travel, with lots of interaction with the locals.  Often people ask for their photos to be taken, but not for money, just the excitement of seeing themselves on the screen.   And excited would be an understatement, as the kids go crazy when they see the pictures!!  We've had entire villages of kids jumping around and dancing with us - what fun!  The people seem to be a mix of both African and SE Asian descent, and many of the faces are truly beautiful.
And that is just the start.  The scenery here in Madagascar is at times, breathtaking.  Granted that probably 80-90% of the rain forest and dry forest has been logged and destroyed.  An absolute tragedy for both the land and wildlife, but the countryside, and villages still have a beauty, and lushness to them that inspires awe.   From terraced rice paddies, to mud brick houses, to rolling hillsides, and rivers and waterfalls aplenty.
We started our journey in picturesque Antananarivo (every person and town have extremely long names), and met up with a trio of wildlife junkies from Australia who had rented a driver and car for their trip,  We decided to join them for the first portion and were taken around by Hasina (short for Rasolofonjatovo Fenohasina).  What a fabulous man, who had a smile to light up the room, and a very contagious laugh/giggle.  We had some great laughs with the whole group.

Michelle with some Brown Lemurs that were not SHY

The journey took us to Andasibe/Mantadia, which is home to 2 National Parks or reserves.  We stayed at some lovely huts skirting the parks, and had guided walks both day and night to find some of Madagascar's wildlife.  Wildlife that is only found on the worlds 4th largest island!!  And surprisingly, we managed to spot many a strange creature.  There are 70+ types of lemur here, and we found all different types from the wailing Indri (that looks like a child dressed in a panda suit), to the tiny mouse lemur, and the colourful white and beige sifaka.  And plenty of wild chameleons around, although obviously, they are hard to spot.  So many different colours, and we even fed them crickets, to see their enormously long tongues the length of their body and tail combined, shoot out and retrieve the bug.   Odd shaped giraffe weavels, that really look like miniature giraffes.  And a lucky spotting of the rare comet moth, just resting for the day.  The most beautiful moth I have ever seen with yellow and orange colour, and two sweeping long tails!!  This is to name just a few.
To finish, we spent some time at a reserve, where they are trying to introduce some injured lemurs back to the wild.  We were so close, we were able to feed sifakas, and bamboo lemurs, with their gentle paws/hands reaching out to hold ours, and gently taking the banana.  The brown lemurs were less shy, jumping on our shoulders and scurrying around, licking our sweat stained clothing!!  Fantastic!!

Home made land luge

One of my strange highlights of our journey was watching a family of 6, ride down a long hill on what I can only describe as a homemade, makeshift, rickety land luge.  They must haul stuff up hill on this cart, and then use gravity to get themselves and other things home.  I would have loved a ride on one of these!   *Stub