Everyone else is back at work and we’re camped in the middle of a rain forest – well for one more night at least – running seriously low on French franc currency.
We wake up just after 5am thanks to the green light filtering through the tent and the chatting of the birds in the trees. At 7am we meet our guide Herman outside the Angap office. The park fees are much more than we expected – 125 000 each for a day. Before we’ve even left the grounds (we’re waiting for water which is being fetched by bike) he’s pointed out three chameleons creeping around in the trees of the park. The path curves up behind the office on a narrow paved road through thicket and then out at some fish farm dams where there are two huge fat boas sunning themselves.
And then into the forest which is still cool and damp. Our guide finds three more chameleons marching solemnly in one direction but change their minds as we approach and then turn shakily round on a narrow branch to face the other way. He leaves us waiting on the path and wanders off into the flattened undergrowth looking for the first group of indri indri whose territory we are passing through.
Its clear there’s been a large number of people looking for the indri – the undergrowth is almost trodden flat with paths through the scrub and between the trees. We soon spot some woolly lemurs – active by night (everything is either active by night or active by day) – they hang in the trees and eye us out nervously.
Eventually a group of indri are located, high up in the trees eating and swingingly slowly from one branch to the next. We happen across an America who is standing, staring up, smoking a cigarette and yelling out ‘whoop, whoop’! I can’t believe he’s come all the way to Madagascar to do this.
The inri inri are quite shy but periodically stare straight down at us. The guides yell and call to one another and before long there’s a whole group of tourist gaping up and swapping away and off go the indri, swinging from one branch to the next and leaping between trees, their backs straight and knees raised up. They catch on with their hands.
Our guide has amazing eyes. He spots large yellow beetles hanging on flowers, chameleons all over the place and on the way home another woolly lemur asleep in the crook of a fern tree – well until we pass at which point he stares out at us with eyes wide open.
We see countless snakes – small ones, long ones, fat ones, fast ones. It’s much, much easier to know that they’re not poisonous – back biting fangs mean you can’t get killed by them. Large thumb sized spiders of all shapes and colours have spun webs across the path or over a block between leaves. They hang in the middle of their nests looking poisonous, large and red and yellow. There’s one called a crab spider.
We see the pincers of a crab peeking out from a hollow in a tree and Herman informs us that this is a very poisonous crab. Unlike the harmless tree frogs he finds tucked into the fronds of long leaved spiky plants .
Away from the maddening crowd we find another family of Indri-Indri with a baby being carried on the mother’s back. Babies are only born every 2-3 years and can’t jump until about 8 months. They stare down at us and then begin to call - widening and narrowing their mouths to change the note of the sound. Standing beneath them it’s almost deafening but still eerie. The wailing echoes across the forest and can apparently be heard for two kilometres. It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
Later we spot a small group of brown lemur in much denser forest. This is supposed to be extremely lucky because unlike the indri they have no fixed territory and so aren’t as easy to locate. They stare at us nervously and leap off when the camera clicks. But I think we still got some nice pictures.
Most of the walk we see very little and just wander along narrow paths – not as over walked as the others – leaves brushing against us. I catch a leech on my hand somehow walking like a caterpillar up towards my shoulder. You can’t shake them off and when I try to loosen it with my nail it sticks to my nail. It takes a twig and some persistence to eventually dislodge it.
We walk past streams gurgling below us and climb up paths that wind between trees. Tall thin stemmed trees rise above us and spread out a bobble leaved canopy above. By 11:30 we’re back at Angap, tipping the man generously and arranging a night walk.
We have lunch at the small cafe at the entrance – sautéed vegetables and chips. Large blue, red, green geckos skit about us in the sun. After lunch we sit in the shade of the shed thing – too hot to move. Rob reading me just lazing on a bench.
At about 2pm I take a walk to the village – Andisabe – about 2kms down the road. The road is narrow and well tarred but runs through the middle of the forest so the calls of the Indri Indri echo round me.
The village is extremely poor and set in a circle with the railway line running through the middle of it. At the entrance an enormous Victorian railway station built entirely out of wood towers over a cluster of rickety houses from which crying babies can be heard. The old station is now a hotel and restaurant with a solid teak bar and white table clothes, flower in glasses on the tables.
Up around the corner is a craft shop run by Association Misinjo – a charity community project working around the principles of eco tourism trying to convince people to use better methods of farming and also give them financial assistance. I am given a long and detailed explanation in almost perfect English by a German man who tells me he considers himself part of the village because he has lived in Madagascar for twelve years and his wife is from the village. Outside a young man (16?) is cutting the grass with small rusted sickle – the size of a hand – back and forth, bare back bent to the sun.
I walk on a circular track through the village and buy bananas and biscuits for supper from rickety shops that are dimly lit but cool. The market is draped with cheap clothes and tables bearing piles of drying fish. People stare at me as I walk. The road leads back around over a rusted railway bridge above the water. Down below women and children bath in the river and the banks are spread with drying clothes. Everywhere fat hens with stocky legs lead broods of peeping chicks in and out of the human traffic, pecking at the dirt.
On the way back to the camp I walk through the ‘Orchid Park’ which is really just a small lake with a few benches (some fallen apart).
There is a trail on the left which leads through the forest back to Angap. It’s exhilarating walking in the forest on my own. I like the feeling of not knowing if I’ve taken a wrong path. You can stop walking and stand still, hold your breath and hear nothing but insects and wind in the trees, sounding like rain.
In the afternoon I’m sitting in the ‘shed’ and Tom (Australian) and Andy (Maltese) came over to say hello. They both seem really nice. We talk until it’s time to go on the night walk. Carrying my maglite we meet Herman outside the gate and set off down the road. He finds chameleon after chameleon, just with a flash of his torch and in all that bush – a baby chameleon the size of my smallest finger and then another the size of a thumb joint – just days old. All sleeping on the ends of branches out in the open, tails curled in perfect circles on the right not clutching round the branches at all. Some open their eyes and stare at us – vaguely annoyed. In the trees on the reserve side we see Grey Tailed Dwarf Lemurs pouncing and dodging away from our lights. The guides are very careful – only one light may be shone on them at a time. They twigs that they pull down to show us the chameleons gently returned to their original position once we’re done.
We walk around the garden of orchids and up into the trees but don’t see any more lemurs. Herman finds a tiny tree frog and we watch it calling – filling small round pouches on either side of its mouth with air – frog skin bubbles! For the first time since we’ve been in Madagascar the sky is completely clear and we can see hundreds of stars – Orion, the Milky Way, Scorpio, the jewel box. Later when I’m staring up brushing my teeth on the grass next to the tent I see a shooting star.
After generously tipping Herman again we’re delighted to find we have enough money for dinner but the little cafe is closed and so the walk back to Andisabe with the guides to the train station hotel and share a potato/mayo salad topped with tuna. The whooping tattooed American is seated at the bar smoking Boston cigarettes and drinking Three Horses Beer. He’s a barman from Minneapolis with a penchant for travel and two hoops inserted in his earlobes. We eat up and head home walking along the path in the pitch dark, listening to the forest. We fall asleep to the sound of frogs in a pond near the tap.
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