•• Wailing in the Jungle Isn’t Always a Bad Thing: Indri in Andasibe ••
September 2nd -3rd, 2017
Waking up bright and early we set off on our first lemur-spotting venture into the park. Andasibe Park, or more specifically the Reserve Speciale d’Analamazaotra, is famous for being home to the rare Indri. The largest species of lemurs in Madagascar, and hence the world, the lemurs are also renowned for their distinctive wailing call that you can hear reverberating through the misty forest. This park is one of the few places you can spot these striking white and black lemurs as they careen through the tree tops, and we were lucky enough to do just that. We also spent an inordinate amount of time ooing and awing over every distant sign of any type of lemur we managed to spot. Our final score for species of lemur spotted was: the Diademed Sifaka, the Common Brown Lemur, the Red-Bellied Lemur, and of course the Indri.
In the afternoon we went on a second guided walk not in the strict bounds of the park, but an adjacent reserve established by the villagers themselves that received no funding or support from the government. We visited a tree surrounded and colorful ties or ribbon and cloth that was sacred to the local people as it could supposedly change its species. Near the end of our time we spotted our best viewing of indri the whole time: a family of hanging out right above us in the trees. Complete with a baby who was doing circuits leaping from one branch down to his mom’s leg and then over to another branch; we stood for ages just watching exist in their natural habitat unconcerned with us trespassing onlookers.
Buoyed by our successful lemur encounters, Papa K made the mistake of being adventurous at dinner and trying out the local Madagascar river fish.
“Does it have many bones?”
“No sir, not many bones, not at all, very little bones”
Thirty minutes later he was still trying to pick out minuscule shreds of flesh from between the pile of innumerable bones that was termed a fish.
