Isalo NP

A rainbow locust.

The two gorges we went to explore.

Making the local hootch, cooking it....

and fermenting it.

A beautiful face.

A broad billed roller.

A beautiful pink leaf bug.

Believe it or not, the white fuzzy things are the larval stage of the leaf bug.

Verreaux's sifaka.

The water pool at the end of Maki Gorge.

Thursday, November 9^th.

We got to sleep in a bit this morning before heading for our trip to Isalo NP. As I mentioned yesterday there was a fire in the park the last couple of days and it burned the area where we were supposed to hike. So our local guide came up with a plan B and we drove 17 kilometres over a very bumpy dirt road into the park. En route we picked up our guide and a cooking team who are going to make us lunch in the park. We stopped at a nice lookout where we could see the two areas we were to explore Maki Gorge and Rat Gorge. When we finally arrived at our destination. We started our walk. Our local guide knew his stuff and had the eyes of an eagle. The first thing he found was a male and female rainbow locust. They were really large and beautiful. He held the wings open so we could see the red underneath.

Shortly after that we came to a very small local village where they were making hootch – local rum, in barrels by the river. It was interesting to watch them making it and cooking it. Then our guide found us a razor backed chameleon and a small silver tree frog with yellow racing stripes. How he sees these things as we walk along is beyond me. Next we saw a wide peaked roller, which is a reddy brown bird with blue wings. Then he found the leaf bug. This is a very pretty pink bug that looks like a small leaf. But more interesting is the larvae. They are white and look like a bit of fungus moving along the branch. Really oddly beautiful. We also saw a Madagascar bee-eater, which had a very long beak.

By this time we had arrived at the entrance to Maki Gorge. Our guide went ahead and could not find any lemurs for us, but he ran into another group of tourists who said they had seen some in Rat Gorge. So we went there. Shortly after we arrived we found a family in a tree. They were fairly high up and it was hard to see them because of the vegetation but we did manage to watch them for a bit and get some fairly good photos. They were Verreaux sifaki lemurs, the same species I had seen on the west coast. They are the white ones with the black faces. There was female with two young and a couple of other adults. We watched as they fed and then they all jumped from tree to tree to a resting or nest high up a tree.

After that we walked back to Maki Gorge and hiked into it. We climbed over rocks and boulders for about a half kilometre before we reached a water pool. This area really reminded me of Western Australia and the gorges and water pools out there. We sat around there for a while enjoying the location before hiking back out to our picnic area. The cook and assistant that we had brought had prepared a great lunch for us, with a vegetable salad, grilled zebu and pineapple and banana. Then we walked back to the van and drove back to our cabins.

We hung around for a couple of hours, typing, reading and talking before dinner. Right after dinner most people went to their cabins and Patrick, Florien and I talked for a bit before retiring.