Ranamofana National Park

This past weekend I had every intention of camping in Ranamofana National Park for 2 nights, since Friday was a holiday. So, I packed up my camping stuff, a little bit of food, and set off to take a taxi-brousse to the park. A French couple was sitting next to me, and once we arrived at the park we began talking about logistics of visiting Malagasy national parks. They charge 25,000 ariary (between 15 and 20 dollars) a day to be in the park at all, camping is dirt cheap, but you must have a guide with you if you venture into the park. Guides are 60,000 ariary a day, or less for shorter hikes. In other words, staying for the whole weekend was not going to be a fiscally responsible thing for me to do. I left my bag at park headquarters, and the French couple (Babe, who is a doctor, and David who does I’m not sure what) invited me to join a 6 hour tour with another French couple they had just met. That saved me a lot of money, and gave me some people to talk to. They were young, though a good few years older than me. On the hike we did see lemurs (pictures posted in the previous entry). We even saw the rare golden bamboo lemur, but my picture of that one was blurry. Also highlighted were a couple of thumb sized chameleons (couldn’t get a good photo), a couple of more common lemurs, a sifaka, and a sportive lemur. The sifaka was alone, and the guide explained that his ‘wife’ of sorts and children were recently eaten by a fossa (puma-like predator, rarely seen). They’re normally social family oriented critters, so it was sad to hear that story. Although we did see cool wildlife, it felt a little Disney – guides found the animals, lots of white people gawked at them.

The trail continued out of the forest to the big cascade (also pictured in previous post), which was a beautiful place to take a break. Continuing on, we wound through a very small Tanala (ethnic group/tribe on the East side of the forrest corridor going from Ranamofana to Andringitra) village, and some farmed land. We got to see banana trees, pineapples, raffia trees, avocado trees, coffee plants, and various other fruit trees, which was actually quite interesting. Here is a particularly nice ravenala we saw on the way back.



The hike ended in the town of Ranamofana, and one of the French couples had rented a car (driver included of course), so they let me ride back to Fianar with them. One of the nice things about having a private car is stopping wherever you want, so we stopped to take a picture of this sign :


Overall, I have to admit that the whole park experience was a little underwhelming. A very nice hike to do in a day, but I was hoping to feel like I was a little more out in the wild. Good fresh air, and my legs were sore the next day, so it was still a good day. And, I did see lemurs… ☺