First real day in Madagascar...finally, lemurs!!

We awoke early and had breakfast before driving into the Mantadia National Park. We hiked through the rainforest seeing birds and admiring the plentiful ferns. We even saw a frog! At the end of our hike, we saw our first wild lemur, the Golden Sifaka, a fairly large lemur. Monkey-like, they move quickly through the trees but when they jump from one tree to another, they hold their bodies vertically. We were able to view three of these sifaka fairly closely and watch them groom each other while settling in for a mid-day nap. Sifaka do not drink water and get all of the liquid they need from the leaves that make up their diet. It was a rewarding end to our hike!
After lunch at the lodge, we walked to “Lemur Island” where the hotel works to return orphaned or confiscated lemurs to the wild. The lemurs live on the islands and will not cross the water that surrounds it. There are a series of four stages that the lemurs progress through as they learn to become less reliant on people and are eventually released into the wild. We saw indri, sifaka, red fronted brown lemur, grey bamboo lemur, brown lemur and black and white ruffed lemurs. The guides feed the lemurs fruit and they will come very close to people, even sitting on some tourists’ shoulders. One peed on Jonathan’s shoulder. We also saw colorful bright green geckos.
Just before walking back to the lodge, we saw a Parson’s chameleon. These are fascinating creatures whose eyes look in different directions and have amazing long tongues to catch unsuspecting insects.

After dark, we took a night walk to try and see several of the nocturnal species. We saw several tree frogs, several small chameleons, two different species of leaf tailed geckos and a Goodman’s mouse lemur. The mouse lemur is the world’s smallest primate (another world's smallest to add to the list!!) and primarily eats sap from the trees.

Interesting fact: Half of the world’s known chameleon species are unique to Madagascar.