I have wanted to visit Madagascar for years and now that I’ve had a very short visit, I’m ready to go for a longer visit. When we arrived I smelled smoke from all the wood stoves the people use for cooking. I was surprised I could smell it while on-board the ship.
Jennifer and I took an excursion to Lokobe Natural Reserve where we hoped to see lemurs, which are only found in Madagascar, and chameleons in the wild. It was very fun but quite warm.
The cruise line rated it as a strenuous excursion with slippery & muddy trails requiring folks to be able to exit a small boat and walk thru water to get to land. I was completely flabbergast at the number of folks that had difficulty walking on the ship and flat land that came on this excursion. And amazed at the number that were surprised that they would need to walk thru water and might want to wear water shoes. This isn’t the only excursion where I couldn’t understand some of the folks who joined and wondered if they read the excursion description before signing up.
To get to the reserve, we boarded a boat directly from the ship; it was a 30 minute boat ride to the reserve where we had a wet landing where we stepped off the boat into the water and walked to shore. It was a short walk- maybe 10 feet- to shore and the deepest water went just past my knees. Once on shore we were split up into smaller groups to hike thru the forest to look for animals.
I was not prepared for the lemurs that were in the trees at the beach so I didn’t get my camera out in time to take pictures before we started our hike- no matter I saw another lemur (or two) on the hike. We also saw a beautiful green chameleon and the world’s smallest chameleon which is about the size of a thumbnail. It’s impressive that the guides can even find them.
After the hike we re-boarded the boat(another walk thru water) and rode about 10 minutes to another beach where the villagers gave us a soda/beer and some delicious food after we disembarked. They also danced for us and had items for sale.
After refreshments, we boarded the boat again(another walk thru water) and went back to the pier(30 minutes). At the pier Jennifer boarded a tender back to the ship and I walked around town for a bit. When I returned to the pier, I enjoyed the women dancing on the pier while waiting for my tender back to the ship.
