We've arrived at the last stop with Dad and our first official National Park. Also the luxury of two nights in the same place so I can get some washing done!

We're about three and a half hours east of Tana. The road to get here, the N2, apparently has more accidents than any other. It goes through the hills with hair pinned turns and goes all the way to the only port in Madagascar -so there are big lorries and petrol tankers on it. Weiza our driver (I'm sure this isn't the correct spelling) however did a good job getting us here in our peugeot 406 - and it even had working seat-belts unlike the 4x4 we'd been in before.

So we're staying in a lodge - small thatched cabin each with hot showers and a good mozzie net. We had a late lunch on arrival and relaxing couple of hours before heading out for our night walk. You're not allowed to do this in the park, so our guide Luc (I think - so bad with names), met us and walked us down the road for an hour and a half. The road was made of Tarmac but it was pitch black and the national park bordered it. He amazingly spotted quite a lot that there was no way I would have seen without him pointing it out - 3 species of nocturnal lemurs (mouse, dwarf and woolly), tree frogs and sleeping chameleons. A pleasant walk in the dark!

That night, I was woken up lots of times with noises coming out the forest. Beautiful sounds but the most distinctive, loudest and hard to sleep through was that of the Indri lemur. The largest lemur that the guide book describes as making a sound like the cross between a fire engine siren and Pavarotti being strangled - not a bad description!

This morning we the went for a four hour walk through the national park - a rain forest but not as hot - in fact a very pleasant temperature. Luc did a great job seeing more lemurs and other wildlife. We got incredibly close to the lemurs and when we saw some Indri - they burst into 'song' - considering their sound carries for 2km so standing 10m away was deafening. I did a film of it that I will try and upload onto the blog. You can't really see the lemurs on the clip but you can definitely hear them!

We've got a lazy afternoon and will probably walk to the visitors centre at the park and then tomorrow head back to Tana for Dad's last afternoon.