Berenty Lodge in the Berenty Reserve is our first ‘real’ stop in Madagascar. The lodge is in the middle of the private Berenty Reserve and is surrounded by large sisal plantations. The sisal plantations are monoculture so it is very clear where the reserve starts. We will spend three nights here.
Berenty Lodge did not disappoint- we saw the iconic Madagascar Ringtail Lemur as well as the Verreaux sifika. The sifika are very similar to a lemur but are more elongated and primate like. The sifika is known as the dancing lemur because they cannot ‘walk’ on the ground because their physic is designed to climb trees- they kinda dance- it’s a move very like the ones that are done in a soccer warm-up. Shuffle step left, turn, shuffle step right. The sifika kinda jump between each step. We also got to see the very small mouse lemur- it weighs about 3 ounces. The lemurs are right at the lodge.
I liked the lemurs until they started pooping on our porch! The staff clean up very quickly but it sure curbed my interest in sitting on the nice couch on the porch. And it made me even more interested in keeping the door to our room closed.
We saw our first Baobab tree of Madagascar and got to walk in the Spiny forest which as the name suggests is full of thorny and spiny plants. We are here in the middle of the dry season so there isn’t much water around and the air and ground are very dry.
We also enjoyed the night hikes where we saw more mouse lemurs and chameleons.
