As thoroughly impressive as the ringtail lemurs of Anja Park were, lunch on the grounds was a little underimpressive. I am well aware that French for potato is "pomme de terre", which literally means ground apple and that it is often just shortened to pomme. The menu also had English translations, and for almost every dish that was related to "pomme", they translated as potato. For "pomme sautee", they translated it as "fried apples". That sounded great to me, so I ordered it. It was home fried potatoes, though. I love a good home fry, but I was kinda looking forward to fried apples. Fruit had been difficult to find. But, oh well. I enjoyed my home fries, and we headed out with hopes to get to the Isalo window at the magic moment.
All was going well until we came across bribe-hungry gendarmes at two check-points, back to back. Niko had to go into the building, and ultimately, we had to stop in a town to pick up some more cash. We barely missed that magic moment.
This is what we were trying to get. (Joushia sent me this shot he took on a different day.)
This is how close we came to getting it.
It was a beautiful area. And there was a yellowish/greenish sheen on several spots of the rocks. Our guide the next day said it was lichen growing on the rocks.
After looking at these, we headed to the hotel had dinner, and tucked in for the night. The next morning, we were up and packed bright and early. We set out for our hike as soon as we got to Isalo National Park. On our way down, we happened upon some more ringtail lemurs!
We hiked further into the park. There is a waterfall and two pools. One pool is very deep and is called the black pool. The other is very shallow and is called the blue pool. We opted for the waterfall because it was the easiest of the three hikes. It was brutal, but I was able to do it with significant help. The waterfall was lovely. It was in what I could only call a topless grotto. Where the water trickled down, you could see some of the same formations that are commonly found in wet caves, mostly the ribbony drapes. Since there is light, plants grow, also. Plus the lichen are all over the walls. It was lovely.
In the picture, you can barely see the waterfall itself in the back. But you can see where trickles fall along the sides and see the drapes better in this video.
When we got back to the camping area, our food was ready and sitting on our picnic table. Just as we were getting ready to dig in, our guide asked if we wanted to see some more lemurs. Of course, the question needn't have been asked, as the answer was a foregone conclusion! Out came the camera and off we trotted (well, hobbled in my case) to see another group of lemurs. These guys were sifaka or dancing lemurs again, but this was a color variant. They were almost solid white with their little black faces. There was one baby, who was often difficult to see.
I couldn't resist this picture.
If you look closely at the lemur at the top, you will see her baby in front of her, close to the branch.
I've blown Mommy and Baby up for you!
That's the best shot I could get of the baby. It tended to stay in the background.
After a while, we had to go eat our lunch because another group was scheduled to use our picnic table, and we needed to head out for our next destination, Toliara, a beach town on the western side of the island, on the Mozambique Channel. It was a pretty significant drive. Along the way, we passed our first boabab tree,
(The Avenue of Boababs was not part of our itineraray because it was so far out of the way and boabab trees could be seen along the way.)
an area where there were a number of tombs of the type that the bones would periodically be exumed to be cleaned and taken around to visit the descendents,
and these rare trees called alluaudia comosa. I can't find a common name for it. I just saw it once as we were passing by, and I forgot to ask Joushia what it was after we stopped and I looked at my pictures.
When we got to our hotel Susan started looking at reviews for the place we were supposed to stay on the small island we would be on for the next two nights. That's when we learned there were no electrical outlets in the cabins and I would have no place to plug in my BiPAP. I messaged our primary tour guide in Antananarivo. Instead of saying he would take care of it, he had the audacity to chastise me for not telling him earlier! I informed him of my need to use BiPAP in January, eight months before the trip, before he quoted me the price for the trip. I tried my best to make sure he knew my needs for accommodations before he quoted me a price so that he could be sure to quote appropriate accomodations. Apparently, he just ignored me. It explains why Joushia had to sort out my room so often. This guy even had the audacity to ask me if I would rather change to a more expensive hotel or do the additional activities that were scheduled when we got back off the island before going to the airport for our flight back to Antananarivo! I had to ask him if he was seriously asking me if I would prefer to do an activity or breathe overnight! He stopped responding, and I, obviously, had a very poor sleep that night.
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