Back to Tulear...back to Tana

July 5, 2011

Today we drove to Zombitse National Park, which is a dry deciduous forest, which is a small protected oasis surrounded by unprotected forest that has been completely devastated. We saw the Apperts greenbul, a bird that lives only in this small patch of forest and nowhere else on earth. This bird makes a strange “whirring” sound. We had two sightings of Verreaux’s sifakas, large white lemurs with black facial markings. These are gorgeous animals that leap vertically as they move effortlessly through the forest. We also spotted some dozing nocturnal Hubbard’s sportive lemurs peeking out of the holes in the trees where they sleep. They were probably wondering why the weird people were interrupting their rest! We saw several birds including the large Madagascar buzzard and a white browed owl (who was also trying to sleep).

After leaving the park, we drove back to Tulear and had an early dinner before flying back to Antananarivo. We arrived late tonight and will have the day to spend in town before starting the long journey back home via Johannesburg.