It’s nearly pitch black out, but only 6 pm.  Two steps behind me is the wet, curvy mountain road still quite busy with swift driving semi-trucks and local traffic.  Two feet in front of me is the vaguely blurry forest entrance (although the blurry is likely because I forgot my glasses…again…)  There are 7 of us standing there in the pouring rain staring at the branch which has been primed with banana pieces…for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, a full 15 minutes later we all stand, mostly silent waiting the imminent arrival of the tiny mouse lemur…who never actually appeared. [Ed. note: it was pouring down rain, and the lemurs didn’t want any banana apparently.]

We’re on another night walk, and unlike the gentle stroll with Morris in his flip flops, finding a lemur every 3 minutes, this one did not appear likely to return similar results. For one, we weren’t actually in the forest and then there was the lashing rain. [Ed. note: they closed the national park at night a few years ago…] But our new guide was persistent, so we started to actually walk…up the busy, wet, dark mountain road pointing flashlights at the trees hoping to see something move.   Or perhaps just hoping something would reflect the light?

Apparently that worked because our guide started spotting chameleons.  The first one was about a foot long, but the second was only about 3 inches and the third didn’t even clear an inch!  How he spotted that last creature will remain a mystery to me because almost as soon as we turned back around to the car, the Boy exhibited his night walk expertise once more and found a mouse lemur (clear on the opposite side from where we left the yummy banana…[Ed. note: I am an excellent night lemur spotter. This one was tiny with a long lemur tail though!]) and I deemed that “mission accomplished” and booked it back to the warm, dry car as fast as I could dodge then on coming motorcycle careening towards us at top speed…

So a funny thing about the rain forest I didn’t actually know: it rains here…a lot.  Now, before you get all smirky, I have been to many rain forests around the globe in many different seasons, AND I have been to 2 rainforests in Africa already on this trip; never a drop of rain.   So our surprise was legitimate was we drove into Ranomafana with intermittent rain fall and heavy cloud cover.  [Ed. note: not going to lie, we’ve gotten super lucky when it comes to rainforests. Muddy? Sure. Raining? Nope.]

No big deal, there was a late afternoon mist which would of course clear by morning, so we bundled up under 5 blankets in our slightly rustic lodge room [Ed. note: “slightly rustic”], turned on the sketchy portable space heater, and took a nap…only to wake up to the not-so-soothing sounds of a monsoon.   Have you ever heard a monsoon?  To be fair, I’ve never been in a monsoon because I at least put enough research into the Boy’s bad ideas to veto traveling anywhere during monsoon season, but I imagine it is something like the absolute deluge of rain pour we awoke to…The fog made the visibility about 4 steep, wet steps outside of our door and the prospect of getting down all 30 steps to the lobby/restaurant for some very stringy zebu meat unappealing.  [Ed. note: it was a downpour that wasn’t stopping that night.] This was the first of 3 days we started sustaining on our emergency stash of granola bars and cashew 100 calorie packs…

Fortunately, the rain took pause for a few hours the next morning so we could go on our first Ranomafana hike.  Unfortunately, this hike was guided by the worst guide in Madagascar, Stefan.  Stefan was the anti-Morris…he ignored us, he took 30 minute cell phone calls, he pushed us out of the way while taking a photo to put a random French tourist he just encountered on the trail in between us and the extremely rare cool bird.   And all this happened before we found our first lemur.  [Ed. note: we get along with most everyone, and are pretty good about rolling with the punches. Stefan literally stood in front of my camera, pushed me aside, and called this random person up to see the cool bird. And then got on his phone and walked away.]

Finding this lemur only occurred because Stefan worked with a young tracker who ran ahead in the forest and texted Stefan where to take us once he found something.   The tracker would wait on the side of the trail until we arrived, then point down the side of the cliff and Stefan would “lead” us to where to find the furry friend…and the tracker would run off again to find another group. [Ed. note: tracker dude was excellent at his job, and nice too. I still don’t know how he found some of them.]

The day was becoming frustrating, as the forest was becoming very crowded, the first time we’d actually encountered any other tourists on our hikes since flying south, and Stefan seemed more interested in chatting with other guides and groups rather than talking to us, helping us, or even leading us on actual trails (in fact at one point 3 other groups took a very straight forward path up and down to some lemurs and we had to literally climb a small tree while chasing after Stefan to get out of the middle of the muddy rain forest…

We gave up.  I hate to be a quitter, but at that point we literally turned to our main guide and said “we’re done, this is not any fun, take us out of here” and left the forest.   Stefan seemed genuinely shocked by this turn of events…and the lack of tip as we loaded into the car as the rain started to pour once more, just the icing on the cake of our terrible day…

[Ed. note: After the round-about way we took for an hour to catch up with the tracker, trying to keep up with a cell-phone-chatting guide out of view, I literally stopped and said I’m not hiking for a bit. And we stood there, in silence, in the rainforest, for about 10 minutes.  He tried to say the lemurs might move – I told him we’d find them.  And we did, but man oh man, he made us miss Morris.  And then the rain started again. Yay for lemurs, but boo on the guide.]

 

Inside the Canyon floor was a mysterious place which left me with many questions…the first being, why didn’t I get to ride a donkey down here?  Everyone knows that the only way to visit the Grand Canyon floor is a multi-day hiking trip atop donkeys.  [Ed. note: it’s on the to-do list.] So when they told us we would be spending a day in the Isalo Canyon, I was relieved to have a day of riding, not hiking.   I was even willing to sustain some discomfort if the saddle was more rustic like a camel instead of a horse because I was very over hiking by this point of our trip!  Unfortunately, the Malagasy canyons proved once more to be quite unlike its Arizona cousin and instead of a gentle ride down, we were hopscotching over streams and crossing through waterfall pools on slippery stepping stones. [Ed. note: definitely a fun experience. It was shaded, lush greenery, water…]

The main attraction of this canyon were the piscine naturelle, or natural swimming holes deep in the canyon where we were going to take a break and refresh from the heat.  And before heading out at 7 am this idea sounded ideal; the canyon rim had been so sunny the day before, so we donned our swimsuits under all the hiking gear and got ready for a new adventure!  But unlike the rim, the canyon was completely shaded.   And damp.  We found ourselves chilly as we walked along, suddenly realizing it is in fact winter on this hemisphere and there is a reason our guides laughed when we asked if they too wore swim suits…We went as far as dipping a hand into the pool and nearly suffered frostbite from that brief encounter.  I guess this is how the locals get their entertainment? [Ed. note: I was hot from the hike, but not too hot. It wasn’t “chilly”, but definitely shaded and a bit cool, and the water was very, very cold. Then I thought about hiking out, wet and cold, and decided no thank you. It was pretty though!]

As we headed back down the trail to the car, thankful dry still instead of shivering along each step, we were told it was time for lemur sighting!  The highlight of each day for the Boy…but these lemurs were a bit different than those we had seen previously.   These were the Yogi Bear lemurs…parading down the path past us to the picnic area where they went daily to distract the tourists and steal their food!  The ringtails and one lonely sifaka curled up in the tree luring you away from your seats and the delicious smelling barbecue to take photos while the bold red fronted brown lemurs did the actual dirty work!  [Ed. note: the lonely sifaka had been adopted by the ring-tailed lemur family. All 100% cuddly.]

The strangest part of the canyon floor came as we were only steps from leaving, however.  We stepped to the side on the narrow path to allow a local man to walk past us…and he was followed by 10 boys and girls ranging in age, with the oldest at the rear, carrying a guitar on their outing for the day.  I was too confused to turn quickly enough to confirm, but I’m almost certain they were in matching outfits made from leftover Atlanta Falcon’s SuperBowl champion shirts…[Ed. note: too soon.]

Last year (during our boring year of no travel as we claim…), we visited the Grand Canyon.  Both had been before, but never together so we spent a long weekend around Arizona and did some hikes and some poorly thought out climbs for photo ops along the South Rim and Grand Canyon West. [Ed. note: they were not poorly thought out.  They were calculated risks, knowing that one false step would end my life. I have an entire book about it to help understand the risks! I was careful!]  It was completely beautiful and reminded us both of what a desert canyon is all about…

When we arrived at Isalo National Park very early this morning to combat the desert heat, I was ready. It had been almost one year exactly since my last walk along a canyon rim so finally I knew what to expect of the day and the surroundings in Madagascar.  We were even told it would be a non-lemur day since they live deep in the canyon, not on top.  [Ed. note: I did agree to another non-lemur day of hiking.  Gotta mix it up at bit. But not too much – lemurs are important.] It was going to be just like last year minus the bus tours from Vegas Casinos, so all the better!

Spoiler alert: it was not just like last year…

First, we started from below and hiked up to the top.  Tomorrow, I’ll get more into the lies about inside the canyon floor, but suffice to say that at the Grand Canyon you can drive and park along each view point and walk a relatively flat path to your photo spot. We all know at this point that I love some flat walking, but every trip without fail involves uphill…both ways…(and occasionally in the snow, but only in Antarctica and thankfully never since!)  The steep uphill trek was thankfully dry verses the rainforests of last week, but it was also unshaded by those towering bamboo shoots we had come to both love and hate. [Ed. note: No shade. We’re pale. It was toasty.]

Since we were not going to see the funny lemurs, our guide took his time to find other friends for us to ooh and ahh about…but as we learned with dear Morris, the Boy’s mentality in Madagascar was “lemurs or bust”.   Ok, new tactic.  If we didn’t want to photograph the birds and the bugs, we couldn’t stand too long in the unshaded heat and admire the view (which was farmland and not colorful crevasses as far as the eye could see). [Ed. note: There were some spectacular views across the mesas…]  I really wanted to be engaged in this hike, however the words canyon rim set me up for some grander expectations…

And then the Boy’s newly discovered super skill appeared again-he spotted lemurs!  Be it pouring rain, pitch black, or in the area they aren’t even supposed to live, somehow the Boy manages to spot lemurs no matter what the obstacle!  [Ed. note: Oh yeah. That’s right.] Finally the hike was looking up.   We had our first encounter with the ringtail lemurs!

A family of six were grazing along the side of  a cliff face just past beyond us.  They were playful, jumping on the rocks, leaping through the grass, doing almost everything we expected the ring tailed lemurs to do EXCEPT wear grass skirts and serenade us with “I like to move it, move it…” but that was a long shot anyway.

The day was redeemed, our hike had excitement, we didn’t have to go another whole day sans lemur (which had been a point of depression for the Boy [Ed. note: only slightly…]). Our guide even let me pounce through the grass after the lemurs to grab some photo ops…which in hindsight seems like a terrible idea trekking willy nilly through tall wild grass as the mention of snakes was a daily occurrence…but look:

 

We’re currently on a 7 day, 1,000 kilometer  road trip from the Southern coast back to the capital city and I have determined that this middle section of the country is like West World.   All the charm and grime of the wild west with some modern conveniences peppered in along the way. [Ed note: vast mesas, large stretches of plains, small villages…]  Our guide has explained the cultural hierarchy still in place: your wealth is determined by the number of zebus you own and guys must present sufficient zebu to a family to marry a daughter.  The roads cannot be traveled at night due to the fear of bandits (no, I did not mishear, although there could be some issue in translation, but the number of times the word “bandit” was used over the past 3 days makes me feel he is confident in the meaning…)  There are frequently cattle rustlers who steal herds of zebu along the route too, so each town has police-but-not-police checkpoints set up to search the buses for fleeing bandits and rustlers en route to plague a new town or village. [Ed. note: I also noticed the constant use of the word bandit. He 100% means bandit. I envision a hat and a kerchief across the face.]

The upside of being in the Old West?  Mining.  Yes, the midlands of Madagascar is rich with gem mines, sapphires to be exact.  And all along this route there are pop up towns built surrounding a new mine to trade gems and export them.  Luckily, they also have a few spots that have set the stones and will sell the Boy a sparkle or two to bribe this girl into a few more long, lemur finding hikes.   [Ed. note: Sri Lankans and Pakistani’s set up shop and buy/sell gems for far cheaper than the might go for on the world market…] Now let’s just hope I can keep them hidden from the bandits for the rest of this drive…

We got to our beach resort and had hours ahead of us to enjoy before the evening walk to find funny looking baobab trees.  The Boy thought this late departure was due to the heat, however I had a little surprise cooked up instead.  First, I had to distract him for several hours.  That should be easy, we were on a near deserted beach on the Indian Ocean, we’ll just go for a walk…nope, the sun on the Indian Ocean at noon is no match for our shiny, white skin.  We dipped our toes in the ocean and retreated back up towards our hut.  No problem, we can find some shade to rest in, but first the Boy just wanted to feel the water of the pool.  One foot on the step, then a second, and suddenly then the entire 6’4” of Boy is underwater.  Apparently he was warmer than I thought out here!   In reality, it was just chalking one more item up on the list of “maybe we’re too old for this now…” because on top of the injured back, he had a bruised hip from the gorilla, a twisted knee from some unknown portion of the week prior, and now a whole slew of aches from slipping into a pool and hitting each step on the way down. [Ed. note: seriously. I put one foot on the top step of this pool, slipped, and tumbled down the pool stairs under water. It was the slipperiest pool step I’ve ever touched. And it hurt falling in.]  Let’s hope the rest of the trip was easy…

Luckily, the planned evening activity was a 45 minute, flat walk among a forest reserve. [Ed. note: no lemurs today, just giant awesome old baobab trees! In a spiny forest!!] We arrived just before dusk and our local guide wound us through the paths of the spiny forest, or a forest where everything is the pokey, angry cousin of a cactus, even the tree limbs have spikes longer than you finger!  We learned about the baobab and tried to climb a couple.  But as the sun was finally setting, we reached the highlight of the reserve, a 1,200 year old “teapot” baobab. [Ed. note: definitely one of the coolest trees I’ve ever encountered.] This massive trunk is as wide as seven people around holding hands…perfect for hiding a little surprise on the other side!

Unfortunately, the Boy was not picking up on the giddy hints of the guide and me as he kept slowly creeping along one side of the tree looking up and around and then when he was almost to the front, doubling back around to view the other side…Fed up of waiting and the sun almost setting, I gave up on subtle and just started pushing the Boy around the tree until he finally noticed the table set up for two! [Ed. note: I was distracted by the giant tree…]

It’s a Baobab Party!  For some ridiculously cheap amount of money, you can hire out the reserve at sunset and be served a private dinner under the massive teapot baobab…so of course I had to do this!   Now, the 8 or 10 locals who were in charge of brining in the table, linens, food, drinks, lights, etc and prepared it all just on the other side of the spiny forest wall sounded like they were having a much livelier party than we were, but I think that’s just because the Boy was rendered speechless from his surprise…or still in shock from the cold dip in the pool…

Traveling in the places less traveled occasionally means you have to rely on some modes of transportation that might not be acceptable to your standard Western traveler…aka my mother.  She is anti-prop plane, so much that she will take alternate routes to avoid such an option.  Unfortunately, when in Madagascar there are not alternate routes.  The roads washed away in cyclones and the dirt airstrips are not long enough to allow a jet to take off or land, so if we wanted to make it from the lemur filled rain forest of the northwest to the spiny desert of the southern coast where the funny baobab trees live, we had to trust our fate to this guy…

He looks okay…if you don’t compare the size with the golf cart towing it…or think about how you are boarding from the back as the “cargo hold” for checked luggage is surrounding the cockpit up front. [Ed. note: He was sturdy. Small overhead bins, but hey, it was bigger than both of our flights in Belize, and it looked newer-ish than our North Korean plane.]  But this little guy was our bus, taking us and ~40 companions on an adventure, with a layover even!  Yes, it was literally a bus, stopping in 3 cities and unloading and reboarding passengers at each stop along the way since there is not enough travel in Madagascar to have direct flights.   We were lucky to be stop number two on the route, so our gamble in the skies on an airline the EU only last year removed from their list of banned airlines (add this to the list of things I don’t tell my mother until this blog goes live…).  And, we even managed to snag an exit row for our journey…

Another long day in the car getting back to Tana and when we’re just a kilometer away from the hotel the famous Tana traffic reared its ugly head.  We sat with the car turned off for 10 minutes at a time, restarting it only to move 3 car lengths and shut it off once more.  This pattern continued for a solid hour before we finally arrived at the hotel for our brief rest (the flight to the coast was leaving at 6:20 am…) [Ed. note: we hiked all morning. Then drove all afternoon. And 6:20am really means “whenever Madagascar Air decides it wants to leave…] So this is how we once again stumbled into Monaco, travel weary, dirty, and overloaded with massive front and back packs.  No, we did not get lost or learn how to teleport, but we somehow got booked into the 4 room guesthouse attached to the Embassy of Monaco.

This guesthouse was basically the private residence of the ambassador with a few rooms they let to make some money for aid.  How do we know it was the private residence?  When we went upstairs for dinner, we started poking around into the living room and the staff member came running and told us not to go onto the second floor as it was private.   Then as we sat at the massive table, eating our Michelin star rated dinner on personalized, silver plated china, a couple appeared and sat in the living room.   The flourish of staff appearing from all levels approximately 30 seconds later created a small parade with a bucket of Champagne, platters of fruit, and once decadent looking serving tray of caviar.   [Ed. note: it was surreal watching what was happening, knowing that the real Tana was just outside the window.] Suddenly our melt in your mouth chicken felt like peasant food and we were put in our place once again by the country of Monaco…

 

Around 6 years ago, in the early life of Boy and Girl, I received a package at work one day.   It was shipped from a nursery in Vermont and contained what appeared to be a dead potted plant.   The only clue was a small florist card written in very loopy script that read “If you touch it, it’s supposed to move on its own!  -Man”.  As mentioned, Boy’s name is a nickname, and also a version of his middle name, so early on it was easy to forget his given name was Man and things purchased on a credit card would opt to that formal version.    

So my office mates and I are perplexed, and mildly creeped out, for this mystery dead plant that appeared out of the blue.   It took a few minutes to notice Boy’s cell phone number on the shipping invoice and figure out that this was intended as a gift.   So the next step was to nurture it back to whatever version of flora it was intended to be.   I have a bit of a black thumb (no seriously, I have killed an aloe plant, the only other plant the boy has given me.  Now I get cut flowers as they are beautiful, but expected to die so there’s no disappointment when the inevitable occurs…) so my instincts were not natural here. With some coaching, I drown it in water and relocated it from my cubicle to the nearest window.  I probably should have told my coworker I was using his office to Frankenstein a dead weed, but time was of the essence and the story afterwards is always better, right?   Anyway, when this gift finally perked up, it was mimosa pudica, a very sensitive plant which is ticklish..if you run your finger over a leaf it curls up into itself for several minutes.   It is one of the most entertaining plants to have on your desk and you can just mess with it to pass the time during a boring conference call. [Ed. note: I thought it was a very unique and awesome plant – it moved when you mess with it! I didn’t know it’d be hard to find a florist that had one, or that it would arrive looking so sad…]

So, how does this flashback relate to our current African Island adventure?  Today we found ourselves in the Andasibe forest, walking through the evergreen rainforest once again to find the Indri lemur this time.  Our incredible local guide Morris likes to point out birds and bugs and plants along the way, I think because most people who take these kind of trips have interest in all the flora and fauna, not just the funny looking primates we were seeking, but also probably to keep up the conversation as most are not as lucky as we have been in finding so many lemur.   So Morris points down to the edge of the trail and says “this is a shy plant, Mim…” and I drop to the ground in shock!  It’s my plant!  In the wild!   Morris seems confused, the Boy and I can’t stop laughing and petting the leaves.   Did the Boy know all those years ago that we would come find it in its home?  He claims not, so I suspect it was fate.   The name does contain one of my favorite drinks after all…

All the Boy wanted out of this trip was to sit on the ground and have the lemurs flock around him and snuggle.   After the wild kangaroo hunt of Australia, I had little doubt he would find a way to make that a reality…and then we started our lemur hikes.  Lemurs live very high up in trees.   And very far away from “civilization”.  We were already 2 kilometers into the rainforest before we spotted any friends.   And the rainforest is wet, and full of steep hills that have mudslides.   It wasn’t looking hot.   The Boy persisted however, cooing away at the Dancing Sifakas and Black and White Raffia to entice them down lower.   He may have even hidden away a banana from his picnic lunch to use as a future bribe.  [Ed. note: they really do live far up in the trees – at least the rainforest versions do.] But then our local guide Morris started imparting some wisdom on us…the big lemurs we are finding are basically tree camels.  They don’t drink water, which means they never need to come down from the trees – they get water from eating lots of leaves.   They can jump 10 meters from branch to branch to travel along the evergreens and find more leaves and fruit to eat.   Short of climbing a tree himself, it might be a lost dream…and the rainforest trees are skinnier than my leg, I’m not sure if they would make for a pleasant climb… [Ed. note: I did scope out a few trees that would’ve been good candidates…]

Enter Lemur Island.   Yes, it sounds like a tourist trap, and yes, it probably is, but we are tourists after all so we have to embrace some parts of it!  [Ed. note: They are wild lemurs, just human-habituated. Some were captured to be pets, then confiscated by the government (lemurs sadly cannot be pets). It’s the only place in Madagascar that lets you interact with the lemurs!]

We were lucky enough to be the first there and our guide filled his pockets with bananas and plopped us in the canoe.   About 30 seconds later we got out of the canoe on shore of the first island…and the guide started to whistle.  Three brown lemur came scurrying down the tree and one leapt onto the boy’s shoulder.   The initial photo shows a look of uncertainty and discomfort, but they both quickly warmed up to one another (and the guide put some banana in the Boy’s hands) bringing on the next 30 minutes of bucket list joy.  [Ed. note: they love being cuddly! They are so soft!!!]

I was taking photos as fast as my finger could click the shutter and just prayed they were in focus while a second and third lemur climbed up on his head…and then I screamed. There was a lemur on my back…my shoulder…oh, now my head!   Nobody warned me that the cuddly lemurs Boy dreamed of wouldn’t be able to distinguish between a willing participant or otherwise.  Suddenly the guide is putting banana on my hat…my irreplaceable hat from Port Lockroy in Antarctica is now a serving dish for some muddy primates.  And not just a serving platter, but a table and chair and what have you, they are going to town with their feast.  

It was a general win for the trip, as the Boy has once more a photo of himself cuddling an animal with a look of pure adoration I have never seen directed toward me, but I once saw with a tiger cub he was bottle feeding.   I will, however, shed a tear or two when I have to go home and burn my priceless hat…