The Big Tsingy

 Local traffic on the road.

Morgan climbs the Tsingy.

Decken's Sifaka lemur.

Life on the edge.

The suspension bridge above the gorge.

Views from the top.

Monday, October 30^th.

The rainy season is about to begin and yesterday afternoon we heard a thunderstorm in the area, but it never rained on our camp. However, the river had risen substantially overnight from rain up river somewhere. The little shacks that the local people had constructed on the edge of the river and were using for selling food snacks to the ferry people and passengers, were all flooded and the river had a stronger current with natural litter floating downstream. The people were having their breakfast higher up the bank and watching the river.

Today we were off to see, hike and climb the Big Tsingy. We crossed the river in dugout canoes again and met our guide DeeBee again. We had about an hour and a half drive north to reach the Tsingy. It is called the Big Tsingy because it is higher and covers a much larger area. When we arrived we had a short walk to the bottom of the geological site. From here we had to climb to the top. Again it was a very hot, humid day and we were all sweating before we started. I gave Morgan my little camera and he had fun taking lots of pictures of us climbing. Because the rocks are very sharp and there are lots of places with steep drops into gorges we were climbing using harnesses and carabiners. These allow you to clip onto support railings to ensure that if you lose your footing you will not fall into the gorges. A bit like climbing over a glacial icefield, except it was much hotter and it was rock and not ice. As we climbed up and down we had numerous beautiful views in this amazingly strange place. At one point we had to walk over two suspension bridges across two very deep chasms. Not for people with vertigo. Later we had to descend again to the valley floor where we had a walk through the forest. We saw another species of lemur, the Decken's Sifaka and a beautiful little bird, the paradise flycatcher.

After our visit we drove back to Bekopaka to a hotel for lunch. The hotel had a pretty good pool, so after lunch we all cooled off in it. Morgan asked if we wanted to go for a walk through the local village, which we did. So he suggested we stay at the pool until the temperature dropped a little. Shortly after that a thunderstorm rolled in and it began to rain pretty hard. The rainy season is coming. I noticed that Morgan and Patrick had to push the 4x4. There was something wrong with the alternator and it was not charging the battery.

We hung out at the hotel until it stopped and then went for a walk through Bekopaka. The rain turned the dirt road into a mud bath and we had to watch where we walked. These villages are a real eyeopener. The people are very poor, the housing is quite shabby and most have dirt floors, and the town is very primitive. There is no electricity here. Unfortunately it was a school holiday so we did not get to see the students.

From there we got back in the truck and drove back to the river, and took a ferry back to Camp Croco. Shortly after we arrived it started to rain again. I stayed in my cabin and read and listened to the storm and watched the rain. We are on the last Intrepid trip to this region as the rainy season makes the dirt roads impassable. So I was thinking about the muddy roads, the 4x4 with battery problems and wondering if we would get stranded here. This is a very remote area. Even the local people are stranded here for four months during the rainy season. They have to stock pile food and supplies to get them through it.

After the rain stopped we had dinner and Morgan joined us. We are now the only people at Camp Croco. Morgan told us a lot about the history of Madagascar and the problems it faces today: too many people, corruption, and clear cutting of the forests among other things. He regaled us with several stories that the local people would tell their child to teach them lessons. They were like fables with morals. He told us why the chameleon had to walk so slowly and constantly look in all directions with his two independent eyes, because he used to be fast and get in everybody's way and God punished him by making him super cautious. And why the hen has to constantly scratch the ground looking for something that she borrowed and lost that belonged to the black kite, otherwise the kite was going to eat her chicks. He loves to tell these stories.

Considering where we are and how remote this place is, the food here has been pretty good. There was no menu and we got whatever the chef prepared, but it was all good. The chef was trained in French cooking and loved to make pastries and croissants for breakfast and for dessert on our last night he prepared a fancy dish. It was a crepe with custard inside that was stood upright and stuck to the plate with a sugar toffee. This made the trunk of a baobab tree and he put more sugar toffee on top in the form of the branches. Really quite creative and delicious.