| Madagascar Afremail Part 4 - Ranomafana | |
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This Afremail follows us through the rainforest national park of Ranomafana. It was quite a trek just to get there. But we were greeted by a rainforest filled with ravenous leeches, troops of leaping lemurs and absolute hordes of creepy crawlies. So I decided to write a special email that took a look at the plethora of creepy crawlies that inhabit this island hopelessly adrift in the Indian Ocean. (Unfortunately, I was not able to get a decent shot of the hundreds, no kidding hundreds, of leeches we pulled off ourselves.)
1. Ranomafana is a rainforest park that is tucked into the mountains along the eastern side of the island. It was a hard road to get there; unpaved, unleveled, etc, but after the 3 hour ride from the highway, a beautifully paved road (compliments of WWF) followed the canyon river/water into the park for about 30 minutes. I preferred the unpaved road because the driver (of our bus) seemed to like the idea of careening along the edge of the cliff on the undivided and extremely narrow road.
2. No joke, this bumper sticker was pasted in the back of our ride, above the last seat! You can image what the rest of the vehicle looked like.
(Rob's Photo)
3. It was lush and steep.
4. The plants were of striking colors.
(Rob's Photo)
5. Of course there was the gratuitous pristinely beautiful rainforest waterfall. I am sure you are as sick of looking at them as I was enjoying them in a remote area of the world that has up to this point remain untainted by humanity's destructive nature.
6. The lemurs here were amazing. They were almost totally unafraid of us; as they have no natural predators, they do not see humans or other animals as threats. The first one I saw was this one just as Rob shouted, "he's gonna jump on you." I ducked and turned my camera upwards and caught this image, but I don't think, even if I had not ducked, that he would have touched me. He was focusing on a bamboo stalk just above my head. After all these are golden bamboo lemurs.
7.
8. "Hey, hey, look at me, I am so cute."
9. They eat mostly bamboo.
10. There were a lot of critters and crawlies in this forest.
11.
(Rob's Photo)
12. See the cicada camoflauged on the right.
13./154 In fact there were quite a few weird and gross creepies here. Pretty much, Madagascar fits the description of that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where Indiana and the blonde lady find the secret passage from their room to the temple chamber; the scene where the walls are just covered with insects and so on. That scene might have been staged, but Madagascar is not. So, I have decided to dedicate a page to all the...
(Rob's Photo)