Fri, Aug 30 - Return to Tana

We set off after breakfast into the park with Julian and immediately up a hill.  We saw a pair of Cuckoo- Rollers, one of the birds I most wanted to see as their shape is really unusual with out-sized heads.  I didn't manage to photograph them very well, but enjoyed watching them fly around and even to a nest site. 

Cuckoo-Roller

I could have watched them quite a bit longer, but we had to be off to look for other things.   We saw four Madagascar Wood Rails, small brown birds that scurry around in the underbrush, and are quite difficult to see.   We were entertained several times by really wonderful eerie concerts from the  Indri, the largest existing lemurs.

Indris singing - hope this works!

I would have loved to see them calling, but they were further away then I thought.

  We walked through beautiful forests, by lily-pad filled ponds, and finally passed by a patch of bamboo in which we were shown Eastern Bamboo Lemurs, small teddy bears who spend all their time munching bamboo leaves  as they need to consume a lot to counteract the low nutritional value of their food. 

Parson's Chameleon

We returned to our hotel, packed up, and had lunch before taking off at 1 PM in the van with Tuvo driving and Fano and Julian in the back.  We made a pool as to when we would get to the Au Bois Vert in Tana.  I guessed 4:16, the earliest and the other guesses ranged up to 6:45 (Bob’s).  

We drove down a narrowing valley full of emerald rice paddies before climbing into the mountains that lead up to the central plateau of Madagascar. 

Typical house in this area

This two-lane highway is the main road from the  largest port to the capital, Tana, and is constantly full of large tankers and freight trucks carrying goods to the city. The government doesn't seem to realize the importance of maintaining such an important route as it is full of pot holes from all the traffic (just as they don’t help the national parks in grading roads and improving tourism access).

We came upon several miles of huge trucks parked in the right hand lane of the highway, and we followed a stream of smaller vans in the left hand lane.  Where was the oncoming traffic??

We crept along watching several police wandering around not directing traffic!   We finally came upon a large tanker truck jack-knifed across the entire road!!  Tuvo could just barely squeeze our van onto the berm so we could edge our way around.  On the other side was very light traffic going in our direction, of course, but all sorts of vehicles continued to approach the mess from the Tana side.  If we had been just 30 minutes later, we would have been stuck in a very slow line of cars slowly working their way around the disabled truck!   There is probably still a huge mess on that road right now!

Once on the  central plateau there are interesting houses, several stories high with thatched roofs, and attached farms producing a wide variety of vegetables, such as giant cauliflower, carrots, and cabbage.   We stopped at a very modern gas station for a break and found Magnum bars!

As we approached the city the traffic got worse.  Time passed and I lost my bet as it was now 5 PM.  We passed a large market and the traffic came to a complete halt in downtown Tana. 

We sat, moving one car length at a time for 90 minutes!  It turned out that roads are being hurriedly repaired as the Pope is arriving next week!!   Tuvo is an amazingly good driver and he kept his cool the entire way!  As did  the Malagasy people  - no one honked or shook fists!

We finally made it to our hotel at 7:20 (Bob won!) , we cleaned up, had dinner and went to bed.