Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park

Tsingy = where one cannot walk barefoot

How true to the Malagasy name this incredible UNESCO World Heritage Site is..... Jay and I first learned of Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park several years ago when National Geographic ran an article on the "stone forest" of Madagascar. Since reading that issue, I've pretty much obsessed over the idea of going to this country (I also wanted to see lemurs before they disappear). After traveling for days via airplane and more days via car and 4WD, arriving into this stone labyrinth was anything but a let down! No photograph can come close to capturing the awe of looking across the horizon to a scene filled with jagged peaks of weathered limestone rocks.

 

And guess what National Geographic didn't tell us? The whole darn thing is an ancient coral reef! It made so much sense to us once we knew this because when you look at a satellite image of the tsingy, they are a long and narrow geographic feature, just like a barrier reef. And when you are on the ground at the park and you look at the stones, you spot fossilized coral (Jay is demonstrating). Since Jay happens to study coral reefs, among other things, you can imagine how exciting this discovery was for him.

Getting up to this kind of view was no piece of cake - especially for us pale ass white folks from Washington who had not acclimated at all to the dry, hot heat of the Malagasy west. If we had done the same kind of hiking in WA, it would have been 50 degrees and the hike would have been moderate most of the time with a few steep sections that got you a tiny bit sweaty. Here the hike felt like the most difficult day hike of all times because the rocks were frying our fingers, the temperature was well into the mid-90s or above, and we sweat out every drip of water in our bodies within 30 minutes of starting the hike.

Heading up with our guide, Tokey (all national parks in Madagascar require that you take a guide with you, a fantastic way to encourage the park's preservation through community involvement)

To get to the top of the Grand Tsingy for the awesome view you have to scale these super steep and spiky fingers of limestone (terrifying and exhilarating at the same time). So we used harnesses and pretended that if we fell we would be O.K. even though we both knew that without helmets or better clothing, a fall would seriously hurt on these daggers.

Once you are at the top you basically stand around gaping at the view (see the photos at the beginning of this blog for a panoramic) but you don't stay too long because it is HOT and you are totally exposed to the mid-day sun. So we crossed this bridge.... 

 And headed back down, down, down, into the forest and then.....

...into a cave! Erosion is the name of the game here in the tsingy, so it isn't surprising at all that caves lie underneath this labyrinth of jagged stones. One of the things I found to be incredibly amazing about this dry and hot place was the diversity of plant life. How the heck were plants surviving amid these rocks? Well, a step into the caves gave the answer.....their roots were incredibly long, extending far down into the caves in search of water. If you look at our photos (link provided at the bottom of this blog), I've uploaded a video that shows the length of the roots in these caves. Pretty fascinating.

Find Jay.

You can't possibly go to the tsingy and escape the wildlife. The park has several lemur species, but they are not the only rockstars in the forests. The birds in Madagascar are delightful - brilliant in color, behavior, and song. And the reptiles and insects are just freaking awesome.

The birds on the left (starting from the top left and working clockwise) are: Madagascar paradise flycatcher, Madagascar pratincole, crested coua, and an unidentified tiny little cute owl. All are endemic but the pratincole - although the pratincole was still a really neat African bird sighting for us.

Our morning started out with our first lemur sighting of the entire trip - the Decken's sifaka (sifakas are simply lemurs that are mostly white in color). Our guide, Tokey, was fantastic because he never rushed us, he was very knowledgeable, and he was extremely respectful of the wildlife and the park. So when we saw the sifakas for the first time, Tokey, let us stay and watch them for as long as we wanted - which was a long time! Lemurs are pretty entertaining to watch and we were thankful to have our binoculars to be able to take in full views (i.e. it was easy to figure out who was a boy and who was a girl).

This troop had a baby in the bunch! Most lemurs have their babies in October, so November is prime time for serious cuteness. In addition to the Decken's sifaka we also saw red-fronted brown lemurs, but never got a good photograph of them. Click here to see a short video that Jay took of a Decken's sifaka grunting at the mongoose in the photo below (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXc-8XhjrFg).

This ring-tailed mongoose was really interested in obtaining pieces of our lunch. He (definitely a boy) wasn't successful. Biologists are never the type to feed wild animals, so he did not choose his tourist prey wisely.

We spent our second day in the park closer to the town of Bekopaka at the Petit Tsingy - which are mini-versions of the Grand Tsingy I've been blabbing this entire time. Numerous folks think the Petit Tsingy are not worth the visit - but Jay and I loved this entire day and the different geological features.

We started the morning out on the Manambolo River in a pirogue. Tokey was our guide again and he spent the morning identifying all the beautiful bird songs we could hear as our captain (?) poled us up the river. The river banks were tall, limestone cliffs that has eroded to almost look like the Grand Tsingy, but not quite. These cliffs were topped with a spiny dry forest containing many interesting plant species - my favorite of which became the gorgeous and funky Pachypodium.

We pulled the pirogue up to a sandy back and got out to explore a sliver of a cave in the limestone cliffs. Once we were done exploring this small cave, we headed back down the river and back to land where we headed into the Petit Tsingy for a hike.

Here is Jay exploring the canyons of the tsingy. We also discovered that you can play the tsingy like an instrument - no joke. Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erVBtNFG6bs

 Happy campers!

After our lovely morning in the tsingy, we headed back to spend the afternoon at our awesome hotel. Here is Jay with our sweet little bungalow. This turned out to be one the best places we stayed - the bathroom plumbing worked (rare!), they had great live music (performed by locals from the villages), and the woman running the place loved plants and had placed tons of different Malagasy plants throughout the grounds. It was a great place to relax and we happily took advantage of our free afternoon to do just that.

Our first view of a chameleon! This guy (gal?) visited us while we were relaxing with a beer in the hotel garden. Later on we watched it climb up into a tree, which happened to be occupied by another chameleon that wasn't happy about the newcomer, so a fight broke out and our dude lost and headed to another tree. The color changes that happened to the chameleons during all these interactions was pretty fantastic to see. 

Our next stop was a nature preserve south of the park, so we had to take the awesome, high-tech ferries again and drive through many local villages on our way to the preserve. This woman was selling bananas along the road.

Collecting firewood - probably the only way this woman can cook her food.

Kids in the smaller villages love to chase the cars and shout for empty water bottles from tourists. Jay and I try to reduce our plastic water bottle consumption by using a Steripen to sterilize the tap water we put in our reusable water bottles (single-use plastics are a serious pet peeve of mine and water bottles are at the top of the peeve list). As a result, we did not have many water bottles to give to the kids when they chased the 4WD - except this time. Just that morning I happened to notice some critters swimming in my drinking water - after we had sterilized it. I promptly decided the critter presence was an acceptable reason to buy bottled water until we got to a place that had tap water without swimming critters (for the record, we never got sick from our sterilized water, critters and all). So the kid on the left was the first to grab my empty water bottle....after that he never left my side so I was able to get a few fun photographs of him and his enthusiastic friends.

We had to load back onto the high-tech ferry by driving through a small section of the river this time....amazing. Once we were on the ferry, all the foot passengers followed and surrounded us (which I thought was quite fun). Jay and I couldn't help but notice this shirt and have a good laugh over it. We tried to explain to our guide/driver, Jack, why this was so funny....after many attempts in crappy French we resorted to a drawing of what the shirt should really look like and he finally understood what we were cracking up about. He quickly told us the shirt was from China. =) Uh huh.

Stay tuned for my next blog - which will focus almost entirely on the wildlife and plants of the Kirindy Reserve. It seems to take me about two weeks to get through a chunk of photos - so I figure that is when this next blog will happen. Happy holidays! 

You can find more photos here (if you looked at images from my last blog, you will need to scroll past those to get to the tsingy images): https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/111221596171793333099/albums/5954879783191118289?authkey=CLq91drp6pOjyAE

Getting around Madagascar is all part of the fun

I couldn't figure out where to start with the blog - do I write individual blogs about all the different species we saw or do I write a day by day journal of our adventures? Or just blog about the parks? The people? The environmental problems? Where to begin!? I've decided to go with the journal style, mostly because it is going to take me forever to get through all our photographs and this way I can blog about our trip as I work, in consecutive order, through our photos.

Here are some fun numbers: 4 hour flight from Vancouver to Toronto, overnight in Toronto, 8 hour flight to Paris, short layover with enough time to get a chocolate croissant, 10+ hour flight from Paris to Antananarivo ("Tana" for short), and a 1 hour cab ride to our budget hotel in the capital. Total hours in a plane with legs that are far too long for the seats? 22. We needed this vacation after all those flights!

Antananarivo ("Tana")

We are not really the type of travelers that plan our trips. What is the fun in that? We had only booked a hotel room in Tana for the night we arrived because we were arriving very late at night and needed to be able to just go straight to a room and sleep. The only other thing we knew was that our first destination was the town of Morondava and then a national park north of the town. November is the start of the rainy season and the road to the park closes once the rain begins - so Morondava had to be our first stop if we were going to make it to the national park. We had tried to book a domestic flight to Morondava from Tana back in the States, but Air Madagascar couldn't process our attempts (this is a common problem we have encountered with small airlines in other parts of the world so we were not surprised). Thus, our first day in Tana was spent wandering around the city trying to get to Morondava. The flight was fully booked, so we had to get there by car. This shouldn't be that big of a deal right? The distance between the two towns is a mere 400 miles. Well, this is Madagascar and the roads, to be blunt, suck. It ended up taking us two days to get to Morondava and that was fast! How did we get there? Well, the roads are so bad here that you can't rent cars on your own. But you can hire a car and a driver to take you places. The only other option is the public taxi-brousse (bush taxi), which is a mini-van overloaded with people, livestock, foam mattresses, bags, rice, veggies, and who knows what else. We wanted the experience of traveling by taxi-brousse, but sadly did not feel like we had the time. With a car and driver it was 14 hours of travel time but with a taxi-brousse it would have been over 24 hours. Since we only had three weeks and we wanted to visit three places, we had to pay more money to get from A to B faster so we could see that wildlife we came here for!

Here is the route we traveled to get from Tana, to Morondava, to Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park. In the end, it took us almost four days of travel to get to the Tsingy, but oh boy was it worth that adventure.

The Malagasy people love their rice. Madagascar ranks #10 in the world in terms of average rice consumption per person (Brunei, a tiny country in Borneo, is number one), beating out China and Japan! We passed many interesting, gorgeous, and occasionally depressing views of the country from the road. I was fascinated with how the local housing changed as we moved from highlands, to central desert, to the coast (mud/brick huts, to wood huts, to grass huts). This photo was taken in the highlands of mud/brick homes and rice fields.

After leaving Tana, we aimed to drive for several hours to the city of Antsirabe. Our drivers (a father and son pair that spoke a tiny, tiny, bit of English) managed to get us to the city in time to check out the fascinating Sabotsy Market (the potato section is pictured here). Markets are the pulse of any country and we love to visit them to get a read on the food, clothing, and goods that people like to purchase. Plus, they are so colorful and alive - they are great fun to visit.

Our room in Antsirabe was awesome for $20 a night. In general, we stayed at budget places around this price - Africa is much more expensive than Asia! The $20 room was never a guarantee that the place was going to be good though, so we encountered the entire range of the good, the bad, and the ugly in our budget range. Looking back, this $20 room was a steal compared to some of the other spots we stayed. And I have a thing for round rooms....like yurts or the African rondavel.

The Red Island used to have a lot of forests; scientists estimate that about 90% of the original forests are gone (not that the USA does much better, only 10% of our old-growth forests remain). In a country where over 60% of the population is under the age of 24, the people and the land are suffering from growing pains. Erosion, deforestation, sedimentation problems in rivers, sewage issues, and lack of access to clean water were all problems that even a short time visitor could easily see.

 But agriculture can be beautiful...

 Joseph, our driver, and Jay stop to stretch and check out the view.

Many hot and sweaty hours later we arrived in Morondava! Joesph and his son departed and our new driver, Jack, with a 4WD vehicle introduced himself. He spoke much better English than Joseph did and we were excited to have a driver who might be able to tell us a bit more about his country as we moved north along the coast toward the Tsingy. The plan was to depart in the morning for the town of Bekopaka!
I took this photo from our hotel in Morondava, where sailing is still king because most people cannot afford motors. Morondava is actually right on the beach looking out over the Mozambique Channel, but our hotel looked out over this healthy mangrove. The next morning I took a quick look at the mangrove and spotted some cool oysters, crabs, and mudskippers - it is always fun for marine biologists to get just a little muddy.

One species that I was really excited to see was the iconic baobab tree, and the west coast is the place for big tree sightings. There are nine species of baobab trees and six of these species are endemic to Madagascar. The species in these photos is the Grandidier's baobab and I'm guessing this is the most common baobab species in the Morondava region.

Thankfully, about half of the Malagasy people adhere to their traditional beliefs, while the other half have been converted to other religions. We met a Malagasy man who explained to us how many of the people in this region worship trees - including turmeric trees and baobabs. This particular baobab tree is visited by Malagasy people when they need something such as a good crop of rice, to get pregnant, or better health. I think I'll convert to the traditional Malagasy beliefs, as I've always revered trees and I think they are far more powerful spiritually than anything else on (or off!) this planet.

 A day time view of the famous Allée des Baobabs

As we drove north with Jack we passed many areas where the dry, deciduous forest had been cleared for zebu (cattle). Basically, when the farmer burns the land small shoots of plants appear, which is easy food for their economically and culturally important livestock.

If a Malagasy person owns a boat it is most likely this, a wooden pirogue (Americans would refer to this as a dugout canoe). This man is paddling along the Tsiribihina River, which is probably red in color due to erosion, sediment overloading, and ultimately deforestation. We also had to cross this river with Jack, but we took a super high-tech ferry.

 Here is the high-tech ferry.

 Jack loading our 4WD onto the ferry - note the ramp. 

What a treat! A yellow-billed kite flew closely overhead at the ferry crossing. These are not endemic to Madagascar, but it is a new African bird for us and it was big and beautiful! I loved this ferry crossing - we were able to watch villagers doing their laundry, fishing with interesting nets, chatting with one another, playing and swimming in the water.... the ferry time gave us a little glimpse into the everyday lives of these lovely people.

 The passenger ferries are a bit more crowded, but look like a lot of fun too! 

Zebu carts are an important mode of transportation in the more remote areas (although we saw them in Antsirabe and Tana as well).

 A small village on the drive to Bekopaka

While we bumped our way up the dirt road to Bekopaka, I spotted this Madagascar kestrel from the car!

And when we stopped to pee in the bush, Jay spotted another super awesome treat!! A Madagascar night jar. There are similar species in America, but I've never seen one....so it was especially awesome that we saw an endemic night jar.

Ten hours after leaving Morondava, we arrived at the "ferry terminal" to Bekopaka. As we waited for the ferry we were surrounded by a few kids from the local village. They all wanted to stand next to me because I was so tall. Since I don't speak Malagasy, all I could do was laugh at the small line-up of kids waiting to stand next to me to compare height while they shrieked with laughter. Jack confirmed that they, indeed, were seriously entertained by my height.

After spending the night in Bekopaka we finally arrived here, at the Tsingy, on Friday the 15th - after leaving Washington on Saturday the 9th. If it had just been planes, trains, and buses on nice roads it would have been insanely boring. But getting around Madagascar is all part of the fun of traveling in this awesome country. And look at the prize! The Tsingy had been stuck in my head ever since National Geographic ran an article on them in 2008 and I can't wait to tell you all about them in my next blog.

Here is a link to the photos I've posted so far: https://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/Madagascar2013?authkey=Gv1sRgCLq91drp6pOjyAE
It seems that this link doesn't always work so please post a comment and let me know if it is working or not this time.

Happy 70th Dad!

I had a great October - fantastic fall weather in Washington followed by even more stunning fall colors in Upstate New York. It had been about six years since I'd been in the Northeast for the best autumn colors in the world and I was thrilled to have an excuse to fly east around the peak colors - my Dad's 70th birthday! And the most exciting part was that my Dad had no clue I was coming and somehow we all managed to pull off the big surprise!

We are reenacting the surprise here.... but we really did surprise him! Want to know the whole story? Well, I flew in on a red-eye flight, landing around 11am in Albany, NY. My parents had tickets to see a matinee ballet performance with another couple long before I planned my trip. So my mom got another ticket for me and asked the other couple, Bill and Kathy, to pick me up at the airport before the show. The plan was for my parents and Bill ad Kathy to meet up for lunch before the ballet - they would scoop me up at the airport, walk into the pub, and I would appear behind them and surprise my father. Well - it mostly worked that way except my flight was delayed! Eke! My father hates being late to things, so when Bill and Kathy called to tell my parents they were "running late" he was a bit huffy and decided to order his lunch without them. All the while - everyone is just waiting for my freakin' flight to land. The delay wasn't too bad and soon we arrived at the Irish pub. Bill and Kathy headed in and I waited in the car a few extra minutes before jumping out and walking into the restaurant. The timing was perfect! My Dad was looking down at the table as he was just starting to sit down. The chair across from him was empty...and I managed to slide into the empty chair right before he looked up. Then he looked up and saw me instead of my mother! His jaw dropped, the phone in his hand dropped, and there was a fantastic moment of shock, joy, and disbelief. It was awesome. Then we all cried and hugged. Classic Barber-family style. Does it get any better than that?

Happy to be home for my Dad! 

The next day Christina, Sara, Henry, and Jackson arrived. The whole family had also planned a surprise birthday party for my father and Henry and Jackson were part of the ploy to get my Dad out of the house. So these little 7-yr olds had to be let in on the secret! All day Henry kept giving us the thumbs up on the secret (as in this photo) and somehow my Dad never noticed - although he picked up on other hints and had a bit of idea of what was going on.  =) 

I managed to sneak a jog in on the morning of the party - I dragged along a small camera to take photos of the road by my parent's house and a nearby farm called Little Farm. Gorgeous colors!

 The surprise!

 Mike Kennedy, Sara, Christina, Dad, Mom, and my Uncle David (what a treat to see my uncle!!)

 The birthday boy! 

Our wonderful family minus the sleeping twins and Jay (Jay stayed in WA because he had flown back in March to surprise his mother on her 70th)

It sure is interesting and fun to try and get a photo with your very energetic nephews

After all the birthday fun had toned down, I went with my parents to their lakehouse and we relaxed outside by the fire - sipping mulled cider and staring at all the awesome fall colors.

I had one more full day in NY before I had to fly back to Washington and I requested that we spend the day leaf-peeping. The colors were already past their peak in the mountains, so my parents had the great idea of spending the day along the Hudson River where the colors were probably still at their peak - and they were! Anyone familiar with the Hudson River area knows that there are large areas of land occupied by historic mansions and their undeveloped lands. Here we are at the Clermont State Historic Site which was all fancied up for a haunted house tour.

We also went to the Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site - it was nice to see the good ol' NPS picklesuit back in action! I was amazed to learn that when the Guilded Age mansion (considered outdated in 1938), surrounding land, and smaller houses were put up for sale in 1938, the starting price was $350,000. What!??!!! When it didn't sell the price was dropped to $250,000! When it still didn't sell, the neighbor (only the famous FDR) called and suggested that the Vanderbilt's niece donate the mansion and lands to the National Park Service. She did...and for $1 the NPS acquired the mansion in its pristine Guilded Age state. Not a bad deal at all.

View of the Hudson River from the Vanderbilt Mansion

My mom's new house

 

I had a lovely time with my family and a wonderful time taking in as many fall colors as I possibly could. I'm thinking that Jay and I need to take more trips back east in the fall, as it really is the best time of year to be in the Northeast. A huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my Dad!!! And a huge congratulations to my mother, sister, sister-in-law, and nephews for keeping everything a secret and pulling off a great party!

More photos in the middle of this album: https://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/October2013?authkey=Gv1sRgCOLO-O_-3pr-9gE

While this photo has nothing to do with my father's birthday - I couldn't resist putting it in the blog. This squirrel taunted our indoor-only kitties for about five minutes! What a riot to watch.