Lemurs! Lemurs! Lemurs!

One of the best things about Vakona Forest Lodge is that it has something called Lemur Island, where a moated island has been dug out and made home to lemurs who were raised as pets. They don't make such great pets, so the lucky ones are given a permanent home here and because they are habituated to people, they readily come to meet the small skiffs that take visitors to the island (or maybe it's the bananas we all bring...).

Crowned Lemur

See the baby?

Diademed Sifaka

Bamboo Lemurs

Brown Lemurs

 With baby:

Black and White Ruffed Lemurs

We did see a few lemurs in the wild, although they're a lot more difficult to photograph. Here are a few of the Indri, a large lemur (upwards of 20 lbs.) with the eeriest cry you'd ever want to hear (although you can hear it here if you wish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yK9uYJ3lIs). Indri do not survive in captivity, so when Madagascar finishes deforesting the entire island, that will be the end for this lemur and many others:

 Cute baby!

Black & White Ruffed Lemur goofing around

La Mandraka

On our way back to Tana from the Vakona Forest Lodge, we stopped at a true roadside attraction, housing all manner of reptiles, bats, and other critters. Here are a few for your delectation:

Flap-neck Chameleon

 Furcifer Chameleon

Juvenile Leaf-tail Gecko

Madagascar Day Gecko

Oustalet's Chameleon

Parson's Chameleon

Panther Chameleon

Uroplatus Chameleon

Veiled Chameleon

Tomato Frog

Tree Boa

Fruit Bat

 Tenrecs, an insectivorous mammal related to moles and shrews, endemic to Madagascar and parts of Southern Africa.

And the view from the top:

Montagne d'Ambre National Park

Next we were off to Diego Suarez, in the north, from which we were driven about 100 km on pretty bad roads, lined with very poor villages where many of the men work in the sapphire mines - clearly they don't garner much of the profits - to Montagne d'Ambre National Park

The Nature Lodge at Montagne d'Ambre was a nice change - my room:

It has some interesting landscape plants, including an old French rose:

The landscape decor included a lot of sculptural Baobab trees that look like they were made from gas cannisters:

They made a nice warm surface for a gecko to warm up on - just look at that foot!

 Haliconia

 We had a reasonably productive night walk here, but the flash on my camera had gone on strike, so the pickings are slim:

Lemurs! Lemurs! Lemurs!

Moving on to Parc Ankarana, we stayed at Relais d'Ankarana, which is a bit less grand than it might sound:

Oh, well...it have nice bougainvillea:

We had a picnic in the park, which immediately attracted the attention of a number of Crowned Lemurs:

Tsingy

One of the major attractions of Parc Ankarana is the tsingy, a 5 km by 20 km limestone-karst plateau pitted with pinnacles, caves and and canyons. But words don't really do it justice:

Video gives you a bit of a panorama:

A bonus on the walk was seeing a Northern Sportive Lemur, a nocturnal variety, tucked up in his tree: