Madagascar: The Land of Lemurs, Nocturnal Wildlife, & Sifakan Miracle!

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”

This is what I laughingly suggested to my daughter should be the intro for this post.

Why?

Madagascar has some of the most fun memories and quite possibly our worst memory from our two years of living abroad and out of suitcases.😅

But first things first…let’s talk about why we decided to visit Madagascar after we were living the slow life and recuperating a bit in South Africa.

*These brightly colored homes across the street were businesses like barbers and hairdressers.*

If it were up to me, I may not have spent more than a few days in Madagascar, just to check out some of the landscape and geological interests.

However, I have two daughters who love animals…and one in particular who is as near to a Walking Animal Encyclopedia as I’m aware of.

She didn’t ask to go to Madagascar, but I know her well enough to suggest it because I figure hey, I already know I want to head to India after we leave Africa, so why not make some fun stops on the way?

“Madagascar? Lemurs are endemic to Madagascar!” I was fervently told.

And so to Madagascar we booked tickets, flying through Johannesburg.

*Yes, I absolutely take pictures of interesting roof interiors.*

At one point, we struck up a conversation with a U.S.-born mom and daughter traveling together on our flight. They’d been in Jo-burg for a medical appointment and were now heading back to Antananarivo (Madagascar’s capital and where we started our explorations), where her husband was working for a few years and had been holding down the fort with her other kids while she was gone.

I was interested in their lives in Madagascar and what it was like having a family while living in Tana. She was very interested in where we were staying and where we were going, recommending good places to eat and visit. She said they didn’t use a car, they had a Malagasy driver they used, and after talking for awhile, the woman slipped me his phone number. “Tell him you know me. If you ever need a driver, he’s the one.” We’d already had our drivers set up ahead of time, but it’s always good to have a backup in case of emergency!

We didn’t stay in Tana for long. After enjoying a number of new fruits (like soursop) for breakfast where we stayed, soon we were driving for hours into much less populated areas of Madagascar.

By far one of the highlights was this chameleon place! For hours, the four of us went through various netted areas filled with trees and chameleons (and other creatures, as you’ll see below).

The girls even got to feed some of the chameleons their favorite delicacy: Cricket-On-A-Stick! 🙂

See those bracelets? Our landlady in **Zanzibar** gave them to us girls when we left, and the girls as you can see kept theirs on for months! (They eventually broke, sadly, but we kept the beads to remake.)

I think this was the tiniest type of chameleon in the world!

Madagascar is home to about HALF the world’s 150 or so species of chameleons!

We also — all 4 of us! — got to pick up this snake. I’ll have to ask my Animal Encyclopedia if she remembers which type of snake it was. We held it in our hands, we held it on our shoulders…we held it anywhere the guy suggested because WHY NOT?! 🙂

After several more hours of driving in an old minivan with AC that didn’t work and one sliding door that only opened from the outside (I don’t remember the type of snake but I do remember that minivan! 🙂 )…

…we arrived at the hotel recommended to us almost literally in the middle of nowhere…and it was lovely!

We had two separate bungalows so slept one adult and one child in each. Mercifully, they had AC and showers and it was much-needed.

My #1 tip for any trip to Madagascar would be this:

DO A NIGHT SAFARI!

Pictures of course don’t do this experience justice because hello, it’s at night and so all photos and videos are poor…

…however, walking through a jungle in Madagascar looking for nocturnal animals, with the moon above and when you stop, it’s silence except for all the night sounds of the jungle…it was amazing! I actually thought it was so “The Bucket List Item I Never Knew I Needed” that I took a sound recording one time we stopped completely, so I’d always have 1-2 minutes of the sounds of a Madagascar jungle.

Our guide was incredible. Our wonderful young man driver whispered to us at one point, “You got the most experienced guide they have!” And you had to believe it once you saw this guy at work. I mean, it’s PITCH BLACK out there, and he’s spotting things you’d never dream of seeing…

We thought we’d gotten pretty good at animal spotting after all the safaris in Tanzania and Botswana, but nighttime safari skillz are a whole different animal (no pun intended).

I know this looks like the same photo I put above but no, it’s different. All night photos are like this.😂🤣

The next day, we got the same wonderful guide helping us find lemurs in the wild.

At our hotel that morning, we’d met a family that had been living in Madagascar for two years and spoke fluent Malagasy…but were originally from Canada and heading back there within days! We had a lovely chat and ended up running into them again at the start of our day looking for lemurs.

It’s impossible for you to fully appreciate these photos of lemurs in the wild because they’re being handed to you on a silver ~~platter~~ screen — you’re not walking for hours through the jungles of Madagascar looking for lemurs because you love your children. 🙂

Speaking of which, and this above photo illustrates it a bit, that was one of our biggest surprises in Madagascar. I think based on movies, we thought it would be more “jungly” and almost tropical…but nay. Madagascar is DRY.

*At one point we came across a group of lemurs who were so loud and had THE most interesting calls!*

My daughter had a list of the specific lemurs she wanted to see.

Bamboo lemur.

Mouse lemur.

Indri.

Aye-aye.

Ring-tailed lemur.

(Although they’d already hand-fed ring-tailed lemurs while we were living in the Canary Islands, she told me “ones in captivity are different than seeing them in The Wild.”)

But her #1 Dream Lemur to see in the wild was the Diademed Sifaka Lemur.

(Not just a “sifaka lemur,” I learned. Diademed! Consider me educated!)

Towards the end of our time in this particular area of Madagascar, we’d spotted all the ones on her list…

…except the elusive Diademed Sifaka.

To set the scene: Keep in mind that at some points you’re on a very small marked trail, but many other times (as your guide hears things he thinks are XYZ lemur you haven’t spotted yet), you’re literally pushing your way through the Madagascar forests, wishing for a machete! So you almost feel like you’re just wandering aimlessly through a forest “hoping” to come across something.

As we traipsed through the forest for Hour #873 and the sun was going down, I started praying like I did in Tanzania for that cheetah. “Please, Lord…can you connect us with this ~~darn~~ Diademend Sifaka Lemur? I mean, we’re all the way here in Madagascar and it’s THE ONE she really wanted to see in the wild.”

Less than 15 minutes later, I kid you not, we’re traipsing through what really should be a Machete Area and nearly stumbled over a family of Diademed Sifakas.

While after ten minutes the majority of the family moved away through the trees, one stayed in the area where we had verrrry slowly spread out but weren’t talking to each other.

Now, you need to understand how amazing this is: before you imagine this lemur is used to humans, allow me to dispel that thought. This remote Madagascar forest is not like Yosemite where the deer are SO used to millions of humans coming through their home that they’ll let you almost walk right up to them.

No, all day long, lemurs were doing their normal behaviors when humans came around – going up high in trees, sound alarms, or only giving us a glimpse of them and chance to take a quick photo before they disappeared into the jungle.

Not only did this Diademed Sifaka Lemur not leave where we were standing, but the girls were able to inch themselves so close that I’m going to show you one of many photos I took of this:

Needless to say, we had a happy couple girls.

They even noticed the kinds of nuts he’d been foraging for, and they slowly started “helping” him…

We got back to our bungalows just in time for dinner and bed.

MADAGASCAR TRAVEL

I wish I’d taken photos of each different African country’s money, but I forgot until we were in Madagascar for awhile and I thought the artwork on this one was beautiful.

They did have some beautiful flowers and interesting palms, of which I will only show you one each…

One day, we had some time to kill and visited a place with a LOT of crocodiles.

They also had a hatchery for babies…

Another day, we took a canoe out to an island full of lemurs that WERE used to humans.

So used to humans, in fact, that the man had to remind our girls not to touch them.

After several days of rough driving through Madagascar, we returned to Tana to catch our flight to Nosy Be (pronounced like “bay”).

But not before we made Stop #2 at The Chameleons-Snakes-and-Insects Place because our girls hadn’t stopped asking if we could go there again.

Long story short, we were supposed to go up to the northern part of the island but had to change plans and honestly, we weren’t sorry about it. 😉

We got up at 4am to catch a sunrise flight…

…and arrived to the place someone had recommended on Nosy Be.

We had this place overlooking the ocean all to ourselves, and it couldn’t have come a moment sooner because one daughter got sick…then it spread to the rest of us and here’s where I tell you the lowest point of our trip. It happened in Madagascar. The sickest we’ve all ever been, and I won’t go into detail. I’ll just leave you with beautiful views of what we looked at for a week while we all went through it.