The area of Ranomafana and it's national park was our first prolonged stop after arriving in Madagascar. We had already spent a night in the capital, Antananarivo (Tana for short), and an overnight stop in Antsirabe. We were due to spend 4 nights in Ranomafana to explore the national park and the surrounding area. I had high hopes of seeing a wide variety of rainforest creatures endemic to Madagascar and so different to anywhere else in the world. It didn't disappoint...
On our way from Antsirabe to Ranomafana the landscape changed dramatically. It was clear to see that from Tana to Antsirabe the land was being used for agriculture. The air was thick with smoke from bush fires created for what is known as slash and burn farming. The technique is adopted by just about every local man and woman where they burn the scrub to regenerate the minerals and plant new arable crops. Unfortunately there is no option of crop rotation so, after the land has been farmed the once, the farmer moves on to repeat the process. It is having a devastating effect on the landscape, environment and in turn the wildlife of Madagascar. You can hardly blame the Malagasy people though as they're just trying to scratch out a living in one of the poorest countries in the world.
What was originally dominated with rice paddies, clay fields and other areas carved out for farming from Tana to Antsirabe, as you got closer to Ranomafana the thick rainforest started to take over. We stopped for lunch at what seemed to be the little known reserve of Yalatsara. It is a working farm which has dedicated a large portion of it's land to the environment. The wildlife thrives and attracts visitors doing the same as us and stopping on the way to Ranomafana. The farm owner had already set up a table for us to have lunch which was the one option of Zebu (cattle) steak, rice and vegetables. Given the location of this reserve the owner did a remarkable job and lunch was delicious. We got our first taste of the comparatively basic accommodation of Madagascar with the toilets - they were wooden shacks with bucket of water to flush. You don't travel to Madagascar for luxury, you travel there for the fact that just about everything you see you won't find anywhere else in the world.
We were joined at lunch by 3 Peacock Day Geckos clinging to the wooden buildings of the farm all on the lookout for insects to eat. No sooner had we finished then our guide for the afternoon came to greet us and beckoned us to follow him...
... He had found a pair of Parson's Chameleons; the largest rainforest Chameleon in the world. The female was in a difficult spot to reach so we left her be, but fortunately the male, and the more colourful, was in clear view.
It was at this moment that I experienced my first horse-fly bite. I'd just put my bag down and was setting up an off-camera flash to photograph the male chameleon, when I felt a sharp sting on my leg. It felt, from what I can remember, just like a wasp sting. I shook the fly off and didn't think much more of it. Over the next few days it became apparent that my leg didn't like horse-flies much and swelled up and went the distinct colour of beetroot.
This male Parson's Chameleon was a fantastic introduction to vast variety of amazing endemic animals of Madagascar. It's amazing that around half of the world's species of chameleon are found on the island and nowhere else.
Seeing this chameleon was definitely the highlight for me during our short walk through the forest of Yalatsara Reserve...
I got carried away watching and photographing this chameleon and didn't realise that our guide had gone off in search of other animals for us to see. Shortly after realising he had disappeared he came rushing back beckoning us yet again to follow him.
This time he had come across a troop of Red Bellied Lemurs and as a special treat one had a tiny baby, no more than a week old.
You can tell the males and females apart easily with these lemurs. The male has white patches below the eye whereas the female doesn't. For our first lemur experience in the wild I couldn't believe how tame they were, especially with such a young one. We watched a mother grooming her baby's fur no more than 3 metres away. Soon we were joined by what I assumed was the rest of the troop as we were surrounded by 2 males and 4 females. They didn't seem bothered by us at all and seemed happy enough just to watch us.
It is one of the few lemurs to be recognised as being active both day (diurnal) and night (nocturnal), something known as cathemeral.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species lists Red Bellied Lemurs as vulnerable due to habitat loss from the infamous slash and burn agriculture of Madagascar.
I could have easily spent a lot longer at Yalatsara but we were on our way to Ranomafana. The winding road skirted the edge of one side of the valley that was Ranomafana National Park. The valley and surrounding hills were covered in dense rainforest which I was keen to explore.
Madagascar's geography explains why the east of the island is rich rainforest whereas the west is much drier and in the far south resembles a desert. The country has a spine of mountains running, as you'd expect, down the middle known as the Central Highlands. Rainfall coming in from the Indian Ocean is prevented going any further by this mountainous range and creates the hot, humid and wet conditions necessary for a rainforest in the east. As the west receives a lack of rainfall it forms a much more different landscape. There is a lot more to the geography of Madagascar which I won't go in to, but you get the idea.
On our second full day in Ranomafana we were treated to an amazing sunrise (for those of us that got up to see it that is) over the village. The photos below were taken from the window of my bedroom - I was lucky with where I was staying...
It was really interesting watching the Malagasy people wake up to start their day. Most seemed to be putting washing out to dry and, from what I could tell, cooking breakfast from the small plumes of smoke rising from chimneys of each house. Children came out to play with just about anything they could find - old bike tyres and sticks seemed to be the favourite.
It sounds odd to mention but one thing that stood out to me was that there was very few lights from houses and street lights were non-existent. Malagasy people had to work with what daylight they were given. I admired their resourcefulness and positivity. I'm not entirely sure how people in the UK, or anywhere in the 'western world' for that matter, would take to living in a house with no electricity or running water.
The hotel, Centrest, we were staying at had some resident wildlife which I enjoyed watching in the gardens. The first being another Parson's Chameleon, only much bigger and looking older and wiser than the one seen in Yalatsara. He moved very slowly and was completely unperturbed by me, so I managed to go in close with the macro lens to get a shot of their amazing scale patterning and colouring...