We left quite late, around 10:15 to visit the Kirindy national park, home of the famous Fossa lemur. After 90 minutes drive on relatively good dirt road, we arrived in the forest. Kirindy is very dry and dense, very different from the rain forest of the east coast. Just before the rest area, we saw a dancing sifaka crossing the road ahead of us. Great photo opportunity, but it lasted for 2 secs and I was totally unprepared.
Kitindy forest
The forest walk lasted two hours. It was very hot and humid and I got tired more than I was expecting. It was much easier to spot the lemurs and birds than in Ranomafana as there are no leaves on the trees to obstruct the animal spotting. We saw a good number of sifaka lemurs, resting on the trees, a nocturnal red tailed sportive lemur sleeping – yes, with his eyes open – in a cavity on a tree and some colorful birds. It is easy to spot birds as the trees are stripped from foliage. The most interesting spotting was a Madagascar Buzzard, eating a snake. It is also fairly easy to spot chameleons, if you know what you are looking for. We failed to see the fossa, but we were lucky to see a bunch of brown lemurs at the back of the rest area.
After a tasty zebu steak, we drove back to Morondava. First we stopped at the famous Baobab Amoureux, two baobabs with their trunks twisted together. Then a quick stop for some pictures of baobabs and kids and last stop at the Allée des baobabs, the iconic place where some 20-25 trees tower 30m over both sides of the 250m stretch. The best viewing is just before sunset and this is exactly what we did. Magical!
We asked Lelo to leave us about 2km away from the hotel and we followed the sandy beach to the lodge. On the way, we stopped at a beach bar to watch the sunset sipping some local rum.
Sunset in Morondava