Day 251, Year 5 Lemur-mania
Date: Sunday, July 4, 2010
Weather: 14th Gorgeous Day in a Row
Location: Ampangorina Village, Nosy Komba, NW Madagascar
Winter weather in this part of Madagascar is just fabulous. Sunshine and blue skies without a cloud, just enough wind to feel a breeze but not be blown away, with 80 degree days and 70 degrees night. Perfect! Today was a special perfect day as we got to see our first lemurs. What characters they are! They are about the length of a cat but skinnier, with longer hair, silky soft paws with long fingers that are very human-like but at the same time look like those of a tree frog, just longer, tails that are twice as long as their bodies, and a face that looks like a dog with little sticky up ears. In fact, our son Justin and his wife Jo have a mutt named Alfie and the male black lemurs look like him. The male black lemurs are black, but the females are a chestnut brown with a black face and white hair around their ears. Both male and female have orange eyes and are just as curious as they can be. Add a little banana to the mix and they readily jump on your shoulders, on your back, even on your head to get a little taste of banana. We saw three males and one female today, but no babies. Our guide, Florice, told us that the babies will arrive in September, so you can bet we will be back here again then. In fact, we are going back again tomorrow morning for a much longer walk up to the top of the mountain and we will get another chance to play with the lemurs. In addition to seeing the black lemurs, we got to see our first Madagascar boa, tortoises of various types including the radiated tortoise named for the radiating lines on its shell and the endangered little flat-tailed tortoise (Pyxis planicauda). We saw a tortoise that looks like a ploughshare but the scientific name posted in the park doesn’t match that of the ploughshare, so we’ll have to research this further. Another highlight was seeing the most outlandish looking chameleon that you can imagine. It was green with a tail curled like a fiddlehead, a nose like a pig, and outrageous looking eyes dotted with red. The female was not as colorful, but her walk caught our attention. She took one step forward with one front leg and one back leg and then gyrated back and forth a couple of times before taking the next step forward with the opposite front and back leg. Very interesting! Our guide through the park was a young man named Florice who was very good and spoke good English which is rare here. After the tour, we spent a long time walking through the village craft shops showcasing wooden carvings and the embroidered cloths that the women of Nosy Komba produce. We think it is called resseèleè. This is a cut out calico/cotton embroidery done in white thread on white calico. The designs are intricate and beautiful and my favorites are those with fish and turtles as the theme. We learned from another cruiser in Chagos that this art originated as door and window hangings for privacy with the cut-out areas allowing air to flow in and out. Now the designs are sold to tourists as table cloths, but we have seen them hanging in doorways and in windows on our way south from northern Madagascar, so they are still used in everyday life. Here in Nosy Komba they are hanging everywhere just waiting for the next tourist purchase. This tourist is certainly going to have to buy a few of these.
Tonight we invited Ed and Lynne over for a 4th of July barbeque. We had our first taste of barbecued zebu and it was quite good and very tender. So Madagascar beef gets a thumbs up. Our trek up the mountain starts at 7:30 am, so it is time to turn it and get ready for another day of lemur fun.
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| 100704 Day 251 Nosy Komba, Madagascar–Lemur-mania |
