We didn't have to be at breakfast until 6:30, and arrived to a very nice spread of food.
This park is quite popular and the hotel seemed to be almost full. We met our local guide, Julian, who had us driven a short ways to a park trail. He took off uphill and we managed to climb up slippery, viney slopes with a little assistance.
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| Indri Lemur |
Several times we could hear the mournful songs of the Indri lemurs. They are the largest existing lemurs with a head-body length of 2 feet and 20 lbs in weight. (Several extinct gorilla-sized lemurs once lived in Madagascar)
Julian led us off trail, scrambling down a slope and to an amazing sight. I couldn’t see anything for a while, and finally made out a mound of feathers which turned out to be two Collared Nightjars, snuggled together, which is their usual daytime behavior!
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| TWO Collared Nightjars snuggling |
We managed to see one large Indri right up in a tree and I hope we’ll see a group singing!
We returned for lunch and heard that Fano determined that our luggage was indeed on the (late as usual) flight from Diego Suarez to Tana.
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| Crested Drongo |
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| Purple Heron |
After lunch we relaxed a bit, and then took off in the van a short ways to a private reserve of lovely forest that is owned and managed by local people.
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| Crossing a rickety bridge |
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| A mat of caterpillars |
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| African Stone Chat |
We crashed through woods and finally got great views of the Red-breasted Coua, a dark red bird about the size of a chicken, and with a patch of blue skin around its eye.
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| Lovely hotel pool- which we didn't use |
We returned back to our hotel and went in to dinner. David bought us a bottle of nice French white Bordeaux. Our luggage still hadn’t arrived but Fano said he was on the way, so we placed bets as to when that would be. My time frame passed, then Nancy’s, Dave’s, David’s, so Bob was the winner with 8 PM or later!
At 8:45 as we were staring to get ready for bed, Fano arrived with our bags.
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