Atsimo-Andrefana Region

Today, we packed up our bags and left our luxurious resort to take a long drive toward Isalo National Park. The only activity that we would be completing was a tour of an arboretum, which is effectively a large garden that is managed by botanists to essentially study and preserve ecologically important plant species. Although it sounded like a quite boring activity to break up our drive, it ended up being quite interesting. The guide was very well educated and clearly understood the flora and fauna of the site and region incredibly well. We had arrived at midday, and as such, it was blisteringly hot. 37 degrees, to be exact. Nonetheless, we began the tour by walking through the gardens and having the man explain the different species of Baobab trees and where they are likely to be found. 5 of the 7 species are only found in Madagacsar, with the other 2 found in Australia and East Africa, respectively. Although the tour was targeted towards the plant species, our attention gravitated toward the wildlife as it suddenly exploded with really cool animals. As such, I saw my first Chameleon in person. Although just a small green male, there would be a few more seen by the end of the day. We also saw the spiny-tailed lizard quite a lot throughout the park, as well as a plethora of different bird species. Although he told us quite a lot about the plants, most of the information went over our heads as it was quite high-level knowledge, and our brains were slowly frying in the heat of the sun. As such I have limited memory of the things he told us but I did find it very interesting to walk through the gardens and see the diversity of wildlife that we will undoubtedly get to witness as we continue our tour through Madagascar. We even caught a very, very minor glimpse at the mouse lemur. The first time (kind of) seeing one. They are nocturnal, and as such, he was asleep in a bundle of leaves atop a tree. Nonetheless, i got a small glimpse and attempted to video him, which didn't work out very well. It's rather unfortunate as they are probably the cutest type of lemur, but oh well. Afterwards, we got back on the road and continued our long journey. A part from a minor stop due to a broken fan belt, that was remedied in a short period, we continued East. As we went along, our guide explained some of the history of Madagascar as well as the current political climate. It may be no surprise that the Malagasy government is quite corrupt, and they are in the process of electing a president, who is not even a Madagascan citizen, as he is a French citizen. In Madagascar, you can only be a duel citizen if you have parental connections to a country. Because neither of his parents are Madagascan, and despite being born in Madagascar, he opted to get a French citizenship, meaning he is no longer malagasy. Nonetheless, he managed to (likely) regain his seat despite being against their constitution (or similar). He then explained the history of Madagascar and some of the indigenous tribes and their beliefs. Their belief system for burying the dead is quite interesting and changes from tribe to tribe. Generally, after you die, you are wrapped in fabric and stored for 3 years. After 3 years, a ceremony is put on where everyone gets really drunk and celebrates the life of the deceased. After this, the person is buried in an enourmas tomb. I say enourmas, it would be equivalent to a large bedroom for westerners, but these tombs are considerably larger, more extravagant, and better built than just about any house you see along the road. This means that families will pay CONSIDERABLY more to be buried in large, painted, decorated, and muralled concrete graves than build a house out of anything other than sticks and branches. It is a unique thing to see given the extreme poverty, to then suddenly see these well-built constructions that are used for nothing more than dead bodies. The bodies are re-wrapped every year in preparation for the winter - the belief being that the feeling of the body will follow into the afterlife, and if not wrapped, the spirits will be cold. Some other tribes choose to bury their deceased on clifftops, but I do mean in chasms and caves halfway up the cliff. This means a rudimentary process of abseiling people and materials halfway down a cliff to build a makeshift grave in the cliff face, many people have died trying to bury dead bodies in these incredibly isolated and dangerous burial grounds. Finally, we continued on in our travels to see the sapphire miners washing their daily finds in the river near Sakaraha. The town, and many around it, formed in 1998 when the French first found precious minerals in the area. What was nothing more than tiny settlements for the indigenous people suddenly became whole towns, and now these parts are some of the richest in the region. This is mostly due to the Western influence and expenditure on their precious saphires. The catch being that the conditions in these mines are horrible, and although the government has banned tunnel mining due to the significant number of deaths, the open cut mines are still horrible for health. After our 7 hours of driving, we arrived at our new hotel. I once again scored a room to myself, so I dropped off my bags and headed to dinner. I had a noodle dish and listened to our briefing for tomorrow that outlined a 12km hike.Read more