Day 9 - Friday 11/09/2015: Anja Lemur Reserve
Flying around the hotel early in the morning we saw our only Madagascar Black Swifts of the trip. On departing from the hotel after breakfast we ran the gauntlet of locals, mainly children, trying to sell us things in the short hop across the pavement from the hotel door to the bus. The children had been taught to say “My teacher told us it was wrong to ask for money but to make something for you to buy instead”. One of them, James, who had had a brief conversation with me while I was watching the swifts, succeeded in selling me one of his cards. An older man actually stepped into the bus with some fairly good quality tablecloths and matching napkins, which both Phil and Alison purchased.
We drove south for about two hours before reaching the Anja Ring-tailed Lemur reserve. The roads were generally straighter with fewer pot-holes on this section and further south. The landscape was still largely given over to paddy fields, but there was an increasing mix of other (unidentified) crops and grassland. The lemur reserve itself was in a rocky area with a lake and mixed native and secondary vegetation around and between the rocks. We did a 2 hour circuit around the reserve which involved some significant rock climbing, that some members of the group found difficult, but most of us thought was great fun. Needless to say we added Ring-tailed Lemur to our mammals list.
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Gallery of Ring-tailed Lemur images. Click here for Video of Ring-tailed Lemur
After a pleasant lunch at the reserve restaurant, we continued on our long drive south. The landscape became entirely grassland and the roads almost entirely straight, so progress was much more rapid, although we still had to slow at regular intervals to traverse large deep pot-holes. This part of Madagascar probably is naturally grassland, but the habit of burning the grass adopted by generations of Madagascan people has resulted in a near monoculture of fire-resistant grass, rather than what would almost certainly have been a more varied native flora. The burning is done to provide fresh green shoots for the zebu that graze this area.
After 3 or 4 hours we paused in an area of this grassland known as the Plateau l’Horombe to look for birds. We quickly succeeded with Madagascar Lark, of which we ended up seeing about 20, and managed to flush a Madagascar Buttonquail. In the past this was the area to see Madagascar Harrier, but the aforementioned grassland management affords no protection for this species which has now disappeared from the area and has a nationally plummeting population.
Continuing on our journey south we eventually arrived in the Isalo national park and our hotel for the night, Relais de la Reine, just off route N7, which passes through the national park. The Isalo NP is an area of rocky canyons and pinnacles which looked spectacular as we arrived and the sun set.
I enjoyed a swim in the hotel pool in the dark before dinner and bed.
I enjoyed a swim in the hotel pool in the dark before dinner and bed.