Tana to Ranomafana National Park

Sunday we had a wonderful day visiting Robyn's friend Daniella, whom Robyn met in the Peace Corp here, and her husband Sisy and their son Adam. We spent most of the day visiting in their apartment visiting. Later in the afternoon they took us on a drive around the city, stopping at a viewpoint and pointing out places of interest in the city. Robyn learned from Sisy, whoworks in public health here, that recent studies suggest that overall HIV infection rates here in Madagascar may be much lower than once feared. This was very exciting news for Robyn who spent much of her Peace Corp service doing AIDs education.

Monday we headed south in a taxi brousse, in the direction of Ranomafana National Park, Mad's "flagship" park. The ride was beautiful. Soon after leaving the capitol the land was empty. The earth is red, the rice paddies plentiful , as are the cattle or "zebu", walking along the road. Some villages lack electricity. Some have "pousse pousse's" , or man pulled cqarts that people ride in ! We stopped at several vege stands along the way, before stopping in Ambositra for the night.

Ambositra is where Robyn did her first Peace Corp training. It is also in the heart of cattle country and is the center of wood carving in the country. We enjoyed the singing in the restaurant at night, sampled the street food and wood carving in the morning and set off further south.

Given the lack of transport from where we were, (a real town), to where we were going, 5a national park!), Robyn had to negotiate a fair price for a private ride for us! It was another beautiful ride, this time passing many barefoot Malagasy people walking to market. Robyn enjoyed lunch, featuring a particular bean she loves and had missed. I was, once again, overwhelmed by the large amounts of rice , and rice water, I received. Passing through numerous seemingly pointless police checkpoints and after at least an hour on a challenging dirt road, we arrived at the park. Our hotel was right next to the park entrance. Save for a tiny gift shop, the park is totally uncommercialized. It is a rainforest.

We woke at 7 am the next day to meet our guide for a four hour hike in the park. We set off excitedly, having brought our money and passports with for safekeeping. It began to rain. The rain continued most of the morning. At times it POURED. We were totally drenched.

It had to be conceded that we would see no lemurs in these conditions. But we persisted, and during the brief dry spells, and by roaming off the trails a bit, we actually did manage to see 5 species of lemur, many at close range: the sportive, red fronted brown, common, bamboo and sifaka (indri) lemurs. Well worth the price, effort and wetness.

We spent the rest of the day drying our clothes, (abnd our money!), warming up and enjoying visitng with our friendly hotel hosts and reading and watching tehmany moths on the hotel deck.