Ankarana is an amazing national park. The first day we saw lots of lemurs, other wildlife, walked over a crazy suspension bridge, and saw tsingys. Tsingy are volcanic rock formations created by rain erosion. Ankarana has huge areas that are impassible because of the tsingys, which is why there is no road between the east and west parts of the park.
Our guide, Seth, was a 54 year old Malagasy man. Although the first day he smelled a bit of alcohol, he remained sober during the next 2 days (except for the beer or two Caryl would buy at the end of the day at Kathy's shop). After telling him we wanted to learn Malagash, he took it upon himself to teach us as much as humanly possible. We now can say important phrases such as umbi mangieri (zebu poop), komba hadala (crazy lemur), and amani, mangieri, maturi (piss, shit, sleep, apparently a popular phrase for the local youth). We learned a whole verb salad: Machiroo! Vooki, amani, mangieri, maturi, mafuha, manseca, mandeha (Delicious! I am full, pee, poop, sleep, get up, wash, let's go!). He also taught us all the numbers, from 1 to 999,999. Which we would repeat while walking through the jungle. This has helped a lot with discussing prices at the market and for cab rides.
A few noteworthy pictures:
First two tree pictures - baobabs! There are several varieties, most only found on Madagascar, though one species only grows in Australia.
Third picture is, I believe, of a pachypodium tree with white flowers.
The picture of the out of focus red mammal is a mongoose. They are wily, squirrelly critters that are very hard to photograph.
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