Surprisingly I was awake before the alarm went off at 4am! The washed clothes were 90% dry and packable - today's attire saw me wearing my underwear ( thankfully as I have never much fancied y fronts) - it was almost dry and anyway it soon dried once on - my half trousers, John's t-shirt,socks and shoes - the latter were easy as we have identical pairs of shoes except his are supposedly half a size bigger - not that I could tell. A very light breakfast and we we...

Today as it was a travelling day was going to be 'blogless' but needs must! We left the hotel at midday and arrived at the airport an hour later - having passed people assembling around a taped off track for some sort of car race - we saw one supped up saloon arrive - it was an official race event, sponsored by amongst others Orange; we also saw some real poverty as we passed several rubbish dumps - people were living around them and scavenging on them. You can'...

A late start,0930,as we were heading back to Antananarivo today but not before visiting Vakona Lodges lemur islands and the crocodile farm. Five small islands are home to rescued lemurs; they stay on the islands as they don't like getting wet and therefore won't cross the water. After a quick briefing to say don't worry if the lemurs jump on you - they won't bite and will jump off again - we headed the short distance,by canoe, to the first island. As we got out ...

We were collected at 0730 for our morning looking for lemurs in the secondary forest and main national park. The forest was a mix of endemic Madagascan trees and imports i.e. eucalyptus and pines from Australia. This area is much more accessible so there were far more tourists visiting which meant sightings could have upwards of 20 people watching. That said it didn't cause any problems except for the rather large german guy,with a matching large camera, who was...

Today it was off into the depths of the untouched primary forest. Enroute we passed small settlements and people walking along the paths and saw bare hillsides where there had been slash and burn to create farmland for the ever increasing population. There was stark evidence everywhere of the pressure on these last bastions of original forest. If it was not for the tourist income and the need to preserve the wildlife they would surely soon disappear. Once in the...