[Ed note: this will be it for a while, and there was a lot happening in Madagascar…so be prepared for a lot of photos]

Some quick thoughts before I do a bunch of lemur and other Madagascar pictures – some will be awesome shots, some will be “is that a wet blurry lemur in a tree, or just a smudge?”.  They can’t all be winners, but we saw a bunch of lemurs!

• Lemur species total count: 16
• Total lemur types (ordered by appearance):
  • Red-Bellied Lemur
  • Black and White Ruffed Lemur
  • Diademed Sifaka
  • Indri
  • Goodman’s Mouse Lemur
  • Eastern Wooly Lemur
  • Common Brown Lemur
  • Eastern Grey Bamboo Lemur
  • Red Fronted Brown Lemur
  • Coquerel’s Giant Mouse Lemur
  • Hubbard’s Sportive Lemur
  • Verreaux’s Sifaka
  • Ring-Tailed Lemur
  • Golden Bamboo Lemur
  • Milne-Edward’s Sifaka
  • Red Mouse Lemur
• The best way to describe lemurs is they are a mix of cat, monkey, raccoon, sloth, teddy bear, and large mouse.  That’s a lot to mix, but there were so many different types of lemurs, they mainly fell into a a couple of categories…
  • Small and fuzzy
  • Mouse faces
  • Slothy and big
  • Tree cats
• They took over in Madagascar when it broke from Africa and filled every available niche they could.  There used to be GIANT lemurs wayyyy back in the day, now the largest is the loud-mouthed Indri
• Trekking through the rainforest is really fun, even if you don’t see lemurs (but we did every time we went out!). We’ve been to a bunch of rainforests, and each one reminds me why I love them so much – they are incredibly….alive. Green, lush, with so many different plants and flowers and ferns and trees and crazy vines and giant leaves and yeah.  Every direction you look it’s awesome, and spending hours and hours hiking up and downhill really is fun.  But then you get to see lemurs too? Totally worth it.
• We got incredibly lucky in that in all of the rainforests and all of the hikes we’ve been on over the years, only the final day’s hike was it actually raining. It more than made up for every other dry day with the buckets and buckets of water the sky unleashed.
• The spiny forest desert and dry lowlands were awesome too! I didn’t even know a spiny forest was a thing until I started learning about Madagascar, and they’re awesome.  Octopus trees with their many many branches-things, that all point south.  Giant spikes on every plant. And they’re very much alive, even without the rainfall!
• And Isalo…what a crazy-awesome place that is. Giant mesas and canyons – we only did a small portion of the massive national park.
• All that being said, Madagascar was absolutely the “most third world country” we’ve ever spent a long amount of time in. Infrastructure, villages, everything. Zebu meat and dark stringy chicken is a luxury there, and it really stood out to me.
• It was great to learn about each region’s different tribes and peoples and their various histories and traditions though – all in one Madagascar.
• Visit! Despite the leaches and the roads and drives and traffic and rain and hike and whatever else, it was an awesome place to go. It truly is like an 8th continent (or like a 7.5th) in terms of 90% of the flora and fauna is endemic to only there.  You’ll never see and experience anything like it.

 

And then I have NO photos of a Red Mouse Lemur – it was pouring down rain, in the dark, I spotted him, then by the time I got to enjoy his company for a bit, he scampered off.  Sometimes you just need to say hello to the lemurs and not photograph them – this was one of those times.

 

So that’s the 16 lemur species.  Now for some Madagascar photos – rainforest craziness, BAOBAB TREES!!!, chameleons, etc.  We spent 11 days exploring a crazy world.

Finally, where we explored (and Tana, the capital):

 

Until next time…