Road Work
We arranged the rest of our trip through Mad Chameleon; they provided us with a car and driver, and an English-speaking guide. Our guide, "Lova" (pronounced Loov or Loova) and driver, Caesar, met us early the next morning.
Dona and I both needed some cash, so on our way out of town we stopped at an ATM. We have the same kinds of credit cards, and had both called the banks to let them know we would be in Madagascar. I tried both of my cards, and neither worked. Dona got some Aria, and so did Sid. So we stopped at another ATM, and the same thing happened. Good thing I wasn't traveling alone.
We also discovered Dona had left one of our adapters and her phone charger hanging from the plug at the top of the mirror in the bathroom of our hotel. Good thing she had an extra, and we had brought three adapters.
We had a long drive — timewise, at least. We would be going east, over the divide and part-way into the eastern sub-tropical rainforest. This was a short excursion so we could see some of the rain-forest species before spending most of the rest of our time in the dry west. The road is the major highway (National Road 2) of commerce in the country. But while it is nominally paved, it has more pot-holes than a war zone, is narrow and only two lanes, and is stuffed chock-full of heavily loaded trucks travelling extremely slowly when going uphill. We didn't make it out of town before we had to stop and wait for some road work.
As we traveled to the outskirts of Antananarivo we became aware of one of the constants of Madagascar: if there is a valley, it is filled edge-to-edge with rice production. Residential and business structures will be located on the adjacent hillsides, but immediately abutting them will be rice fields. Madagascar used to be self-sufficient in rice production, but because its population has exploded from 4 million in 1950 to 30 million today, they are now a net importer of rice. One of their biggest problems is a lack of birth control options and education.
Because of the heavy traffic, slow-moving freight trucks, and the winding two-lane highway, passing opportunities were few and far between. Often, when it looked like there was an opportunity to pass, it was because there were potholes across at least half of the road and it was impassable on all but one side. When we could pass, it usually involved driving mostly on the unpaved shoulder, which often didn't amount to much. We were thankful Caesar drove with caution.
Eventually we arrived at Peyrieras Wildlife Park, named after its founder André Peyriéras, a French entomologist. I had mixed feelings about scheduling a stop there, as there is some concern that it may be catering to the pet and zoo trades. However, it was our first opportunity to see some of Madagascar's endemic lemurs, chameleons, frogs, snakes, and butterflies. In retrospect, we probably should have skipped it; we saw the lemurs we encountered there lots of other places, as well as many of the chameleons and the ground boa. However, the giant butterfly we saw nowhere else.
There are two lemur species commonly seen at Peyrieras; the Common Brown Lemur, and the Decken's Sifaka. The Common Brown Lemur is native; the Decken's Sifaka was introduced from other parts of the country where it is endemic.
The lemurs are fed daily by staff, and are totally habituated to people, which for us is a put-off. We would rather see them behaving naturally, if only fleetingly. As soon as we appeared with our guide and his helper with food, the lemurs stopped whatever they were doing and headed our way for a hand-out.
We saw Decken's Sifakas in several other places on our trip without much effort. Like many lemur species, they have a very long tail. The tail in lemurs is not prehensile, so they cannot use it as a fifth arm/hand. It serves to help with balance when maneuvering and jumping from tree to tree. The Decken's Sifakas are Indrids; their back legs are longer than their forelegs, so they are crazy-good at leaping between trees. Now that would come in handy at times!
We encountered a large group of Common Brown Lemurs. They are a cathemeral (yeah, it was a new word for me too) — active day and night. They eat a wide variety of fruits and foliage, and are not affected by some foods high in tannins and alkaloids, allowing them to make use of some resources other lemurs avoid. They are able to share territory with other lemur species such as mongoose lemurs and ring-tailed lemurs because they occupy different physical niches (Brown lemurs spend most of their time in the trees, while ring-tailed lemurs spend more time on the ground; and mongoose lemurs are active at different times.)
Peyrieras Wildlife Park has a large outdoor cage containing a large variety of chameleons. We saw many different species, but it is not always easy to identify them so many of our pictures are labelled Xxx. Even individuals of same species sometimes looked radically different, both in coloring and in build, depending on the particular circumstances where they were at the time. Chameleons are the only vertebrates in the world which can focus using only one eye. They have a prehensile tail, which helps when moving around in trees and shrubs; unlike for many other lizards, it cannot be broken off and regrown.
Madagascar is home to the two largest species of chameleon in the world, the Oustalet's and the Parson's. The Oustalets is the longest, while the Parson's is heavier but slightly shorter.
I had hoped to see a number of different native frogs at Peyrieras, but we saw only one.
We saw an amazing Leaf-Tailed Gecko. Talk about good camoflage!
They had a Madagascar Ground Boa in a concrete walled pen. It seemed pretty good sized, but since they hunt things from small tenrecs to the largest lemurs, I suspect this one was not all that big.
They had a butterfly house, but the only interesting thing we saw in it was a Giant Comet Moth, also known as a Moon Moth. It was huge. Unfortunately, they are nocturnal, so it pretty much just hung there. It would have been pretty cool to see it flying about. They only live from four to five days.
