Magical Madagascar: Lemurs, Baskets & Baobabs!

Antananarivo

We’ll arrive in (and depart from) the bustling capital city of Antananarivo or just ‘Tana.’ (If you want to say the whole word: ‘An-tana-nana-rive-oh’…long word but easy when you break it down.) Almost every city name and personal last names are very long here!

Tana is about halfway in the middle of the country; we’ll go out from there to see particularly interesting regions, all the way to the ocean in the southwest. Each area is home to special flora and fauna that lives nowhere else. This will involve a couple of domestic flights, but will avoid some of the most pot-holed roads!

Much of our time will be spent in and around the large national parks and official nature preserves. These preserves have been specially created in regions with fascinating endemic creatures or amazing baobab tree forests. Each national park or nature reserve we visit is home to specific varieties of lemurs, lizards, cute little tenrec, and other fauna – and flora. Exotic plants such as vanilla orchids and Ylang-Ylang (left, top) grow in specific places. Ylang-ylang (Cananga odorata) is a tropical tree famous for its heavily scented, star-shaped yellow flowers used to make essential oils and perfumes.

Our private naturalist/guide will be with us during the entire trip. Local guides will also accompany our group in each Park and Reserve. This practice gets the community involved in conservation practices, and offers work to expert local guides, who know the locale and the animals better than anyone. These local guides and ‘spotters’ are also keen to motivate others in their home region to learn about and support the local ecology. Many of these guides have discovered new species and have accomplished a great deal of important research on site.

We will maximize our time and see as many areas as possible! We’ll take both day and night hikes to spot lemurs swinging through the trees by day and sleeping chameleons and other nocturnal creatures at night.

Our guide grew up playing and learning in a national park and loves all wildlife. He knows the birds as well as all the “herps” and the scientific names for everything too. His dad is a renowned lemur geneticist who coordinates with an important US zoo, famous for its lemur research.

Weaving with Wild Silk Cocoons

Big, tan-colored, endemic wild silkworms (Borocera cajani), locally known as landibe, produce the fiber for one of Madagascar’s textile forms. The ‘silkworms’ forming the tan cocoons are different than the worms spinning the familiar smaller white or yellow cocoons in that they don’t eat mulberry leaves. Instead they eat the leaves of the endemic Tapia tree (Uapaca bojeri).

In the natural cycle, both kinds of silkworms eat their preferred food for a couple of weeks then they spin a protective cocoon around themselves. Then the worms metamorphose inside the cocoons, into pupae. In the next stage they transform into moths.To escape the cocoon, the moths eat an exit hole into their cocoons which breaks the continuous filament of the silk. Thus this silk cannot be reeled like silk from unbroken cocoons.

The cocoons are cut open to extract the pupae, then boiled for hours to soften the fibers. The fibers are then scutched or pounded and roughly combed to form a fiber mass. This mass is twisted into strands on the spinner’s thigh, dyed with natural colors, and then woven into scarves with a surprisingly soft hand. It is also used for funeral shrouds on the island. We’ll visit a silk workshop where we’ll see the whole process of boiling the cocoons and processing the fiber into thread for weaving.

Other Malagasy textile forms are woven or crocheted raffia fiber purses in many appealing styles and colors, and the colorful coiled baskets and mats found in some regions. We’ll have a workshop to make our own bright coiled baskets.

Chameleons and Other Creatures

Plus there’s a wide array of gorgeous chameleons in different colors and patterns. Over a hundred different species of chameleons live in Madagascar! We think of chameleons as changing colors but most only get darker, almost black, when they are afraid or stressed. Some are as tiny s your fingernail and others are 18 inches long. They are harmless, slow-moving and most of them will walk right onto your hand if you approach slowly.

We’ll see loads of other critters everywhere we go, as well as interesting flowers and birds! We’ll see lemurs of different varieties, from tiny Mouse Lemurs (at left, about the size of a hamster) to big ones like Sifaka which are as large as a very big domestic cat. And if we’re lucky, we’ll spot a tenrec, a cute and shy little creature something like a hedgehog.

Baobab Trees

We’ll fly to Morondava in the west to see the Avenue of the Baobabs. Few sights in Madagascar are as iconic as the towering trees of the western side of the island. Some of these remarkable trees have lived for well over 1,000 years, with their massive trunks storing water to help them survive Madagascar’s dry climate. Their oval fruit is also surprisingly useful—the pulp can be dried and ground into a nutritious powder that is used in everything from drinks to ice cream!

We’ll visit the famous Avenue of the Baobabs during the day, when you can appreciate the trees and surrounding landscape, and return at sunset when the warm light transforms the rows of trees into one of Madagascar’s most magical views. And keep an eye out for Madagascar’s famous vanilla beans, which are widely available to buy in shops and markets along the way—a wonderful souvenir to bring home.

At the end of our adventure, we’ll return to Antananarivo and connect with our homeward bound flights on January 18.