Trip to Kirindy

This morning we have breakfast again at the hotel overlooking the river. This time I only have a fruit salad and a few crepes. After breakfast, we leisurely pack our things and head towards the Kirindy Dry Forest. The village is relatively busy and there is also a funeral ceremony taking place, but here it is a bit different with a lot of music, a colorful parade, and without the bones being carried through the city. We stock up on water and then we hit the sand road. Once again through the impressive baobab alley and then further north. It's dry, dusty, and pretty hot. Manantsoa drives as if he's having fun. And you really don't need a roller coaster when you can drive on these roads. My sense of balance is just okay and I'm glad we don't have to drive on this road for too long. We come across a herd of zebu, which of course gives us the right of way and leisurely trots across the road. After about 2 hours, we stop at a lodge where a friend of Manantsoa works and we take a tour of the lodge and through the forest with him. It's super hot and humid. He shows us the sifakas, the dancing lemurs, they just have a very funny way of walking. Then we see a small dancing insect on a tree trunk and two medium-sized chameleons in a tree. We leave the lodge and go into the adjacent forest. On the way, we see a small cute mouse lemur and the red-fronted brown lemurs. They are relatively tame and hardly run away when we get closer. As a finale, a fork lemur, the largest nocturnal lemur, looks down at us from a tree hole. Then we make our way back to the lodge. It's super hot and I wouldn't be able to stay here much longer. A few minutes later, we are already in the Kirindy village, which consists mostly of a hotel with bungalows and a few residents. We have lunch and spend the afternoon relaxing by the pool, which is quite refreshing. I ask for water for a shower, as not much water came out of the tap, and I get two huge buckets of boiling hot water placed in front of the door. Well, I can't shower with that, and besides, I already showered with the little cold water. So I decided to wash my clothes, also very good. At 4 p.m., we go to Kirindy Park for a night hike. We take headlamps and mosquito spray with us and off we go, back on the sandy road. At the entrance of the park is also the research station of the DPZ, but there are no researchers here at the moment. We wait a bit for it to get dark and then we head into the forest with Alfred, our guide. The atmosphere is super beautiful and the starry sky is very impressive. We see a mouse lemur darting through the trees, a fork lemur licking the sap from the trees, and some geckos, ants, and even sleeping birds, which looks very impressive. I'm definitely not nocturnal, but rather quite tired. At the end of the tour, we even see a fossa, very impressive and definitely a highlight. Back at the hotel, we have spaghetti for dinner and even electricity in the hut on request. There are quite a lot of mosquitoes in the room, but it's somewhat manageable with the mosquito net.