Montagne d’Ambre, Madagascar
The drive to Joffreville, at the foot of Amber Mountain, was lovely, very green again. I’d asked my guide whether we’d see some lemurs at Montagne d’Ambre and he’d said ‘maybe but they are a bit shy in the wild and can be quite high up’, so I’d asked if there was a reserve on the way (a bit like Berenty, the famous one South of the country) but he said not really. However, we could swing by Chez Violette as she owned a restaurant but had some lemurs in a cage in her courtyard to entertain tourists. I kind of frawned upon that as they were kept in a cage and obviously desperate to get out. 4 were in a slightly bigger cage but 2 were in a much smaller one and when one knows that these animals are monkeys that never evolved and that they have back legs design to leap from tree branches to tree branches, it seemed pretty cruel to see them and their leg muscles waste away in a small confined space. I queried this with my guide (‘how come she’s allowed to keep them then ?’ and he said ‘She’s not. It is forbidden by law, so, chances are, she just went into the mountain and took them’). I wouldn’t be surprised if a few policemen had already been in to investigate but there’s nothing a bribe won’t take care of, as we know.
Actually, a bit of trivia: the reason lemurs are called lemurs and not monkeys is because, unlike their close counter-parts, they are unable to ‘copy-cat’. A monkey just has to watch someone draw a sketch with some pencils and if you leave the room unattended it will then grab the pencils and try to replicate what you did – whereas it will never cross a lemur’s mind to even consider doing that.
My driver said that March-April is the mating season, gestation then lasts 125 days and females give birth in October, when it’s possible to see them with their babies on their back, making October a very popular month to visit.
Madagascar has an astonishing 79 species of lemurs.. Last time I checked (probably 10 years ago) they only had like 35... but our guide said that 4 new species were discovered just last year, i.e. the nocturnal types that are very hard to see. The most ‘common’ ones were absolutely discovered first.
Lemurs, as you no doubt know, are 100% endemic to Madagascar... in fact, a staggering 80% of ALL the flora and fauna found here are not to be found anywhere else in the world... This is why it’s been dubbed ‘the African Galapagos’. Islands will always evolve at a different rate than the mainland and when Madagascar broke away a few million years ago, it was no exception to the ‘ecological’ rule.
Some lemurs are more “cuddly” than others and the aye-aye who is unique to Amber Mountain is actually so ugly that it is considered ‘bad luck’ to see one and so it has been hunted down to near extinction due to superstitious beliefs. Poor animals... they can’t win: if they are too beautiful, we want to keep them in cages to admire their beauty any time we want and if they are too ugly, we want to kill them as they insult our sense of aesthetics ! What a sad lot we are really....
We did manage to see 2 very grey lemurs, perfectly camouflaged. Our guide knew the tree trunks they lived in, otherwise you’d never see them basically. They like to stay pretty high up as they feel safer. If they find a hole in a tree that’s not high enough, they won’t make it their home.
Beside the lemurs, Madagascar has also got the highest number of chameleons, from the tiniest to the biggest. The tiniest of all lives in Amber Mountain and our guide was able to find one for us, they usually live on the ground among rotting leaves. It’s probably 1/10th of one of our small fingers in size but the most incredible feature about this little guy is that it has TWO penises. The female has 2 openings on each side of her body to match and so he can use both at the same time -- the idea being that when one penis gets tired, the other one can take over and carry on ! Needless to say that the local joke here is that “all guys who believe in reincarnation want to come back as a chameleon” !
A sadder anecdote re-these intriguing creatures is that the female (in some breeds of chameleons at least) will commit suicide upon giving birth. I’m not sure biologists can understand why yet but once the eggs are safely delivered, she will climb high up on a tree and throw herself off knowing she will die on impact. If, however, she is unable to climb a tree (maybe because she’s in captivity) she will bury its head in the ground until she suffocates. I don’t even know if the male then takes care of raising the young or whether they have to fend for themselves from day 1. Basically it’s always the same story: 99% of the times, the guys have it SO much easier, sigh.
One particular chameleon was so well camouflaged that it looked like he had become the tree branch, the colour imitation was so incredible you could barely see it. I only realised it was there by the shape of its toes. Our guide had bet $5 that we would not see it – most people just can’t though it’s right in front of their eyes. Perfect optical illusion. I put a picture on my F/Book (the brown ‘trunk’ with one large white stripe across his body).
During one of our jungle walks Sylvie tripped on a broken branch, badly injured her toe and soon after passed out (but thankfully could feel it coming so we were there to ‘catch’ her). Our guide, who had no mobile phone (no coverage inside the park) or talkie-walkies, had to run back 4 miles to send a car for her. He did it in about 20 mins when it’d have taken me 4 hours as there are so many trip hazards. We saw lots of leeches too and I was quite pleased I’d brought my wellington boots along specially for this walk. They won’t kill you but they are a nuisance if you can’t stop bleeding for ages (as they inject you with something that stops your blood coagulating so that they can feast on you better). I had brought my 100% DEET mosquitoe repellant and sprayed it all over my hands too as it’s supposed to kill them instantly if they had biten my skin (i.e., yes it was pretty toxic for my skin too). I’ve been ‘done’ in the past (in India) so wanted to avoid a repeat at any cost.
Thankfully, that evening we stayed in the best hotel of Diego Suarez, Le Grand Hotel, super comfy, great pool (no-one in it), hot water, A/C, just bliss. They even had internet access, albeit, very very slowly as they didn’t have broadband and they only had ONE so it was quite hard to actually get on it, but it allowed me to re-connect with the rest of the world and to let people know I was doing great and was loving it so far.
I made a point to go into the pool at moonlight and it was perfect... just cool enough to cool you down. It’s not often I get the chance to swim so I never miss a chance to do so if I can help it as I’m a water baby (typical Aquarian in that sense).
We went to eat outside, at the Shalimar restaurant, and though it was only 4 blocks away our driver insisted on driving us there so that we’d be safer. There were lots of street lamps but none were in working order. It sounded like the French installed the infrastructure when Madagascar belonged to France, but when they left, the new government didn’t bother repairing anything !!!
Our driver was very dedicated to us, he also made a point to take Sylvie to see a private GP to get her foot checked and investigate the cause of her fainting (she had also fainted the day before, at night, when going to the toilets). The GP had said it was nothing serious, probably just a reaction to the pain & being ‘in shock’. He only charged 8 euros for the check-up so she was quite relieved.
That night I couldn’t sleep till 12.30 (I guess I was still on GMT time) and I was also really excited about everything I’d seen already and was going to see next.
The drive to Joffreville, at the foot of Amber Mountain, was lovely, very green again. I’d asked my guide whether we’d see some lemurs at Montagne d’Ambre and he’d said ‘maybe but they are a bit shy in the wild and can be quite high up’, so I’d asked if there was a reserve on the way (a bit like Berenty, the famous one South of the country) but he said not really. However, we could swing by Chez Violette as she owned a restaurant but had some lemurs in a cage in her courtyard to entertain tourists. I kind of frawned upon that as they were kept in a cage and obviously desperate to get out. 4 were in a slightly bigger cage but 2 were in a much smaller one and when one knows that these animals are monkeys that never evolved and that they have back legs design to leap from tree branches to tree branches, it seemed pretty cruel to see them and their leg muscles waste away in a small confined space. I queried this with my guide (‘how come she’s allowed to keep them then ?’ and he said ‘She’s not. It is forbidden by law, so, chances are, she just went into the mountain and took them’). I wouldn’t be surprised if a few policemen had already been in to investigate but there’s nothing a bribe won’t take care of, as we know.
Actually, a bit of trivia: the reason lemurs are called lemurs and not monkeys is because, unlike their close counter-parts, they are unable to ‘copy-cat’. A monkey just has to watch someone draw a sketch with some pencils and if you leave the room unattended it will then grab the pencils and try to replicate what you did – whereas it will never cross a lemur’s mind to even consider doing that.
My driver said that March-April is the mating season, gestation then lasts 125 days and females give birth in October, when it’s possible to see them with their babies on their back, making October a very popular month to visit.
Madagascar has an astonishing 79 species of lemurs.. Last time I checked (probably 10 years ago) they only had like 35... but our guide said that 4 new species were discovered just last year, i.e. the nocturnal types that are very hard to see. The most ‘common’ ones were absolutely discovered first.
Lemurs, as you no doubt know, are 100% endemic to Madagascar... in fact, a staggering 80% of ALL the flora and fauna found here are not to be found anywhere else in the world... This is why it’s been dubbed ‘the African Galapagos’. Islands will always evolve at a different rate than the mainland and when Madagascar broke away a few million years ago, it was no exception to the ‘ecological’ rule.
Some lemurs are more “cuddly” than others and the aye-aye who is unique to Amber Mountain is actually so ugly that it is considered ‘bad luck’ to see one and so it has been hunted down to near extinction due to superstitious beliefs. Poor animals... they can’t win: if they are too beautiful, we want to keep them in cages to admire their beauty any time we want and if they are too ugly, we want to kill them as they insult our sense of aesthetics ! What a sad lot we are really....
We did manage to see 2 very grey lemurs, perfectly camouflaged. Our guide knew the tree trunks they lived in, otherwise you’d never see them basically. They like to stay pretty high up as they feel safer. If they find a hole in a tree that’s not high enough, they won’t make it their home.
Beside the lemurs, Madagascar has also got the highest number of chameleons, from the tiniest to the biggest. The tiniest of all lives in Amber Mountain and our guide was able to find one for us, they usually live on the ground among rotting leaves. It’s probably 1/10th of one of our small fingers in size but the most incredible feature about this little guy is that it has TWO penises. The female has 2 openings on each side of her body to match and so he can use both at the same time -- the idea being that when one penis gets tired, the other one can take over and carry on ! Needless to say that the local joke here is that “all guys who believe in reincarnation want to come back as a chameleon” !
A sadder anecdote re-these intriguing creatures is that the female (in some breeds of chameleons at least) will commit suicide upon giving birth. I’m not sure biologists can understand why yet but once the eggs are safely delivered, she will climb high up on a tree and throw herself off knowing she will die on impact. If, however, she is unable to climb a tree (maybe because she’s in captivity) she will bury its head in the ground until she suffocates. I don’t even know if the male then takes care of raising the young or whether they have to fend for themselves from day 1. Basically it’s always the same story: 99% of the times, the guys have it SO much easier, sigh.
One particular chameleon was so well camouflaged that it looked like he had become the tree branch, the colour imitation was so incredible you could barely see it. I only realised it was there by the shape of its toes. Our guide had bet $5 that we would not see it – most people just can’t though it’s right in front of their eyes. Perfect optical illusion. I put a picture on my F/Book (the brown ‘trunk’ with one large white stripe across his body).
During one of our jungle walks Sylvie tripped on a broken branch, badly injured her toe and soon after passed out (but thankfully could feel it coming so we were there to ‘catch’ her). Our guide, who had no mobile phone (no coverage inside the park) or talkie-walkies, had to run back 4 miles to send a car for her. He did it in about 20 mins when it’d have taken me 4 hours as there are so many trip hazards. We saw lots of leeches too and I was quite pleased I’d brought my wellington boots along specially for this walk. They won’t kill you but they are a nuisance if you can’t stop bleeding for ages (as they inject you with something that stops your blood coagulating so that they can feast on you better). I had brought my 100% DEET mosquitoe repellant and sprayed it all over my hands too as it’s supposed to kill them instantly if they had biten my skin (i.e., yes it was pretty toxic for my skin too). I’ve been ‘done’ in the past (in India) so wanted to avoid a repeat at any cost.
Thankfully, that evening we stayed in the best hotel of Diego Suarez, Le Grand Hotel, super comfy, great pool (no-one in it), hot water, A/C, just bliss. They even had internet access, albeit, very very slowly as they didn’t have broadband and they only had ONE so it was quite hard to actually get on it, but it allowed me to re-connect with the rest of the world and to let people know I was doing great and was loving it so far.
I made a point to go into the pool at moonlight and it was perfect... just cool enough to cool you down. It’s not often I get the chance to swim so I never miss a chance to do so if I can help it as I’m a water baby (typical Aquarian in that sense).
We went to eat outside, at the Shalimar restaurant, and though it was only 4 blocks away our driver insisted on driving us there so that we’d be safer. There were lots of street lamps but none were in working order. It sounded like the French installed the infrastructure when Madagascar belonged to France, but when they left, the new government didn’t bother repairing anything !!!
Our driver was very dedicated to us, he also made a point to take Sylvie to see a private GP to get her foot checked and investigate the cause of her fainting (she had also fainted the day before, at night, when going to the toilets). The GP had said it was nothing serious, probably just a reaction to the pain & being ‘in shock’. He only charged 8 euros for the check-up so she was quite relieved.
That night I couldn’t sleep till 12.30 (I guess I was still on GMT time) and I was also really excited about everything I’d seen already and was going to see next.
posted by Sylvie at 9:56 PM
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