Tana again

In Tana, we had a brief city tour in the afternoon, stopping firstly at Lac Anosy surrounded by Jacarandas in bloom, and with ‘Antananarivo’ written on the side of the hill, Hollywood-style.

The top of the hill sports a great view (though it was overcast on the day we went up)

and is where the Queen’s Palace (Rova) is located, which is still being renovated after being burnt in an arson attack following the 1995 elections.

We walked down Independence Avenue to the Railway Station,

and then bought some souvenirs at the craft market. It was quite difficult as it was dark and the stalls only had a dim torch light, so you couldn’t really see what they were selling. Electricity is not always available, but if they put in brighter lanterns/lights I think their sales would double. My only purchase was a tiny recycled metal pousse-pousse and most others bought a stack of vanilla pods – about 8-10 pods cost around 10,000 Ariary (roughly $5).

The next day, 6 of us decided to skip the organised village walk and instead took a taxi to Lemur’s Park as we wanted to squeeze in some more lemur watching.

We spotted another Oustalet’s chameleon, stick insects,

spiny tailed iguana,

and an Octopus tree from the Spiny Forest,

as well as other flora.

The park contains 10 species of lemur:

-coquerel’s sifaka

-black and white ruffed lemur

-crowned sifaka

-red fronted brown lemur

-common brown lemur

-mongoose lemur

-mouse lemur

-fat-tail dwarf lemur

-black lemur

-ring-tailed lemur

It has a natural river boundary which lemurs do not cross, and the lemurs can leave from the other side of the park if they like, but they tend to come back as they’re given fresh fruit chopped up into bite-size pieces 4 times a day.

The following day we flew out to Jo’burg but before leaving, thanked Hery the Madagascan way that he taught us. One person calls out ‘Lamaku’ – then everyone claps four times. They call it again and everyone claps another four times. Then they call out Averenu twice and everyone claps 10 times twice. Then it finishes with two calls of ‘Atombaru’ and you clap once and then one final time.