Monday 3rd October 2022. Kirindy Forest

Met the guide from the previous evening as we wandered in for breakfast (fruit, pancakes, bread and jam) at 7.30am.  True to his word he had made some enquires about the fuel and was able to confirm that there was a mobile fuel station at Tsimafana.  This was a massive weight off our shoulders!   By the time we had finished breakfast pretty much everyone else had left either to drive further north or to go on a morning walk in the Kirindy forest.  We took our time and repacked the car to ensure we could access everything we needed more easily - this resulted in us repeatedly walking over the ground one of the local ladies had carefully swept so we felt seriously guilty.

Even though we had been taking our time we still left the lodge at about 9am and I drove the short distance of about 7km to the Kirindy Forest Ecolodge to make sure I got some practice of driving on the sandy track.  We arrived to find dozens of white 4x4s and a raft of military personnel which was slightly unnerving until we found out that the US Ambassador had visited the previous day and was about to check out but the Ministry of Tourism had also arranged a tour for a group of foreign tour operators.  On the plus side this meant that the lodge was spotless and everyone was on the absolute top form.  We booked in to do a 2 hour day walk which started at 11am - it turned out just to be us and our guide Harry as everyone else had more sense to do the walk in the middle of the day as it was seriously hot and the animals were hiding to keep cool.  We did manage to see a red-fronted brown lemur and an owl but pretty much nothing else.

We headed back to the Ecolodge for a huge bowl of delicious carrot soup for lunch and had just finished when Harry reappeared in his casual clothes and flipflops to tell us he had found the white lemurs if we wanted to see them.  Naturally we were keen so headed back into the forest.  Harry had a slight panic when they weren't exactly where he had expected but he soon found them in another group of trees 20 metres away.  There were 3 adult Verreaux Sifakas and a baby so we felt extremely privileged and fortunate that our guide had gone the extra mile for us.

Came back for a siesta and was just putting up our camping chairs on the veranda when a group of the white sifakas appeared in the trees right next to us and we got to watch them jumping from tree to tree.  We also got to see a fosa which had returned to the lodge to try its luck at getting another chicken having had one for its breakfast (sadly no photo though).

The night walk started at 6pm and we were joined with four Germans.  The surprise was we had to drive for a kilometre deeper into the forest before parking up to do the walk - this of course meant we would be driving back in the dark!  Harry was keen that we got there before the hoards as he wanted us to see the grey mouse lemur emerge from its hole in a tree.  We also were able to watch two other night lemurs - the fork-marked lemur and the largest of the night lemurs whose name escaped us - although they are almost impossible to see in my photos. 

Returned in time for dinner of chicken and chips we are pretty sure we had heard being killed in preparation earlier in the evening.  The Tour Guides had been taken to the Relais du Kirindy for their dinner presumably because they wanted to impress them with better food but we were quite happy with what we got served.