Isalo Canyon

Madagascar Day 6

Reasonable start this morning at 7:15, I was still last to the bus!
2 hour journey for a very short distance due to the state of the road leading up to the canyon. The locals bury their chiefs up in this canyon, you just wouldn't believe how high they carry the coffins.

The aim was to find three lemurs this "morning"; we found two.
We started the walk in the blistering heat before finding the comfort of the canyon. We waited around, while the local guides went in search of lemurs. There was too much ground to cover to have 14 people follow them. We had some local kids follow us, trying to get us to buy their carved animals. While we were waiting our main tour guide asked one of the children to search for lemurs. He came back 10 minutes later for his reward! He had found the Red-fronted Brown Lemur whilst our local guides were still out searching. Sadly no photo as they scarpered when the rest of my group reappeared.

We had started the walk back to the bus when we got called back by the local guides, they had found my favourite lemur, the Verreaux's Sifaka! So we took a long and treterous trek to find him sitting very high up in a tree, most of the time you could only see his bottom :-(

The walk back to the bus was so far, I was sipping my water so as not to run out which I almost did, taking my last sip as I spotted the bus in the distance.

On the way back to the hotel I was having a little shut eye on the bus when I heard "pschhhhfffffffffffffffffff", I came around quickly and slapped my hand on the tour leaders chair "stop we have a puncture!", my of my group thought I had said "Vulture" and started to look for it! We had driven over a graphite rock which had ripped a hole in the back tyre. We got back to the hotel at 3:30 for lunch which we should have had at 12:30!

Wild Lemur Species Count = 9
Verreaux's Sifaka
Red-fronted Brown Lemur
Ring-tailed Lemur
Milne-Edwards' Sifaka
Greater Bamboo Lemur
Golden Bamboo Lemur
Red Bellied Lemur
Common Brown Lemur
Brown Mouse Lemur