Indris

It was lightly raining when we woke this morning, so we set off to Andasibe National Park in our rainjackets.  It seemed fitting to be sloshing through the mud and rain in the dense rainforest.  This national park is known for the indri, the biggest type of lemur.  It makes a strange siren-like call that echos up to the 3 km.  We searched for over an hour before we heard the call.  Our guide started sprinting through vines, jumping over roots, and we followed, as best we could, through the thickly-padded forest floor of leaves and mud. But it turned out that the group was too far.  Not long afterwards, the guide spotted one on the side of a thin, but very tall tree.  Then there were two!  They are fluffy white and black and look like a cross between a monkey and koala bear, with strangely long limbs.  The two indri were eating leaves and launching themselves horizontally from tree to tree.

Then the guide found three very small wooly lemurs huddling together on a branch.  These are nocturnal,  so very rare to see in the day.  They are brown with red circlular eyes and an owl's face.   We were really close to these weird animals.

After lunch we headed northeast through the rainforest by taxi-brousse on the winding road to Tamatave, passing groups of palm-thatched homes on stilts (cyclones regularly affect this area).  Huge mounds of green bananas lined the road along with fruit and vegetable stalls. 

Tamatave seems like a nice coastal town - good selection of restaurants,shops, and snack cafes.  Thankfully they had an ATM that took MasterCard.  And they have a Shoprite (a familiar grocery store from Swaziland) where we stocked up on some foodstuff for meals:   PB, apples, juice, milk, crunchy muesli, beans, tuna, olives, and chocolate.  Instead of freshly baked loaves of bread, they had warm baquettes!  It is really comforting - to have some readily available and predictable meals.  Plus we like grocery stores.

Tomorrow we will be attempting to make it to the island St. Marie.