Kirindy Reserve

Another day’s drive brought us to a park famous for not only lemurs, but also their main predator, the fossa (a nocturnal cat/weasel-like creature that climbs trees). The roads have been relatively good with a few potholes, fewer police stops than we found in many places on the mainland (though the police here might be even more corrupt as our drivers have had to pay bribes twice already), and good signage. The landscape has been very interesting varying from rice paddies, to farmland to cattle grazing areas. Unfortunately, the poverty here is really visible and worse than most of the places we’ve visited so far.
As we got further west, the landscape became very dry and hot (38 C) and we learned the A/C on our van was broken. We were none too happy about this and quickly let the tour organizer know. They are going to attempt to fix it while we take another car on the dirt roads heading further southwest. Luckily, the new car has working A/C. The odd thing, which we don’t totally understand, is that not only did we pick up a second car (stronger 4x4 for the bad roads), but also a 2nd driver. So now we have 2 drivers for 4- 5 days - Tom and Joclyn.
Our accommodation was a spotlessly clean safari-style tent with mattresses on the floor and an open-air toilet/shower outside. Very pleasant.
While here we did both a night and day walk and were able to see a few more kinds of lemurs and some adorable babies learning to leap and climb (the mothers bring them low to the ground to do this in case they fall, which makes for great viewing). Also saw a fossa – in the parking lot!! One of our guides, every time we saw a lemur would exclaim loudly “WOW” as though he had never seen one before – very cute, but we were trying not to laugh every time it happened.Read more