November 27, 2010
I spent two days in Finiarantsoa: just enough time to catch up on Internet and send the convoluted international fax that I needed to get my favored ATM card working here. I was not able to send the wood carving home on account that the only international shipping available in Finiar is fast and expensive. What I need is slow and cheap. I deferred in hopes of finding a town on the coast that believes in sea mail.
But I had another park to explore before I reached the East side of the island. I spent six nights and four days in the actual park of Ranomafana. It is montane rain forest, much like Andisibe but this time I was better prepared for the expenditure and didn't have to leave early. Like Andisibe, it is surprisingly chilly and unsurprisingly wet.
It dumped rain from mid-day onward of the first two days. While it is expected that a rain forest would be wet, this level of deluge is a bit excessive for what is supposed to be a dry period.
Without real intention, I rotated guides over my stay. On the first day, I had to get my ticket first and that meant a Malagasy style 7:30am start. For the three hour walk, Dauphin was OK. We found a Golden Bamboo Lemur as well as Red Fronted Brown Lemurs and some smaller things. I was a little perturbed when he pointed out a “lizard”. I'm just a tourist but even I can distinguish geckos, skinks, plated lizards, chameleons, and iguanas. For the next, longer hike starting just past 5:30am, I chose Stephan. He was recommended to me by a volunteer who can come here a year before.
With a better guide and a better start time, I made better progress. Giant Bamboo Lemurs, more Golden Bamboo Lemurs, Milne-Edwards Sifaka and a most unusual individual: a Red Bellied Lemur with blue eyes. Also a few birds, lizards, and frogs which I'm sure were identified but which I failed to properly note. Conditions where difficult. Limited light due to overcast skys and fog. Still, I managed some decent photos. At the very end, I even saw my first daytime chameleon: Two, actually: a male and a female. Chameleons are easy to find at night but to really see their colors, you need daylight.
Not that an immediate comparison was available. It started raining in mid afternoon and did not let up until late. The second aborted night walk.
The first two outings were rather expensive since I had to pay the full cost of the mandatory guide. Rian'ala, vastly more convenient to the park than another form of accommodating was never more than half full and there was none of the other residents representing guide sharing possibility. Some weren't even tourists. The next day, I hiked down the village, in hopes of finding some sort of watering hole where con-conspirators could be found.
I didn't find one. Tourist lodges in the village area seem to be nearly as isolated from each other as they are from the park and Rian'ala. Non-hotel restaurants are basic Malagasy affairs of limited appeal to tourists, even ones as travel worn as myself. I did, however, run into Andre. He's a middle aged Dutch traveler taking a diversion from his self driven overland adventure through Africa to explore an island otherwise missed. I have run into him at Kirindy and Finiarantsoa. So, I someone to share a early morning five hour hike.
Stephan was not available so he gave us to Loret. Not as good. Whereas Stephan would occasionally call up other guides to inform them of what he had found, Loret seemed to only find wildlife by calling his buddies to learn what they had found. It was a march from one crowd of people around a lemur to another. While I was not as ticked off as Andre, who hates crowds and would rather see nothing than see it in a crowd, I was still very disappointed. The small creatures and birds were completely ignored. I saw no new species of anything though I did manage better photos of Golden Bamboo Lemurs due to clearer, brighter conditions.
Setting up the last hike was frustrating. The four day pass I purchased doesn't work quite the same as a the shorter ones. The guide book and park office at Maroantsetra say it is really a 4-7 day pass. The main office in the village of Ranomafana said it was strictly four days but can be non-consecutive. Others, including Stephan, are reluctant to believe that it is anything but four consecutive days. I think the issue just doesn't come up often enough for them to be sure. Like most of Madasgascar, Ranomafana caters to tourists arriving in expensive hired vehicles with limited time. Spending more than a a couple of nights in the area with one day in the park is unusual. More than four days is crazy talk.
Due to Stephan's reluctance to acknowledge that my five day old ticket was still valid, and his difficulty in getting a taxi-brousse up the hill from the village, the hike started late. Still, the hike was on and I thought it was possible to reach the primary forest before the animals hid themselves away from the mid day sun.
But, despite the effort, we didn't see a whole lot: Some interesting birds that I mostly failed to photograph, one snap of a Red Forest Rat's behind. Some interesting photos of ever present Red Fronted Brown Lemurs. The trees of the primary forest are big, but not big enough to be original growth. I begin to wonder if Madagascar even has any old growth rain forest. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any. I just don't buy the argument that the trees are naturally smaller and shorter here.
I found the hike into the village photogenic in an an artsy, depressing, sort of way. Madagascar's forests continue to burn in the time honored tradition of tsavy. Amongst the green of terraces, banana plants, and ride paddies, charred hillsides were not difficult to find. I called the taxi-brousse company from the village, to reserve my seat the for the next day's trip to Manakara.
No tourists came on my last day in the forest. No more either on the day my reserved morning ride drove by the hotel without stopping. When late afternoon came and I finally caught a taxi-brousse to Manakara, Rian'ala became empty. Well, mostly empty. Robyn is still sleeping in a borrowed tent at the campground and eating her meals at Rian'ala. This college junior on an extension of a semester abroad reminds me a great deal of another Robyn I used to work with some nine years ago. Until someone new arrives, I guess she will have to be content with talking with Malagasy and the Finnish students now occupying the research center.
As for me, I arrived in Manakara at around 8:30pm: uncomfortably late and my chosen hotel was full. But they found me a bungalow by the beach. A little more expensive and remote than I would have preferred but I wasn't going to turn it down given my arrival time and it's too messy to change now. I came here to determine the viability of the road to Taoagnaro. As always, information is sketchy and not terribly reliable but it doesn't look good. It looks like I may be taking that train back to Finiarantsoa. Since I am loath to fly or backtrack, I'm not sure how I am going to get to Taoagnaro. The emerging candidate seems to be via Ihosy and another bad road known as RN13.