The islands of the Indian Ocean have a combined biomass so different from the rest of Africa that traveling through them is incredibly exciting and illuminating.
But this 25-day trip is not for many of my clients, however they may claim to love Africa.
Down one of the world’s most beautiful beaches, Anse Lazio, past the boyfriend doing a photo shoot of his girlfriend, past the Rasties selling organic coconut elixir, through gorgeous sand paths around huge artistic boulders leading from one spectacular beach to another, to the end of the cove is Honesty Bar.
Reached only by foot, tucked into the thick mangrove and wild mango forests of Praslin, you find the price list, stand behind the bar, make your drink or pull it out of the fridge, and put the cash in a plastic dish labeled “change.”
Madagascar’s internal airline is so unreliable that we had to charter a long way from Tana to the South to see what is perhaps the island’s most unique ecosystem, the Spiny Forests.
We were not the first to seek the unique treasures of this weird part of the world. Olivier Lavasseur (aka ‘The Buzzard’) and Edward Seegar (aka ‘Edward the Pirate England’) teamed up in the 1720s to bury a $1 billion dollar treasure here.
We’d seen up-close and personal the pointy nose black-and-white ruffed lemur. In fact, they jumped on our backs and ate out of our hands! But now we wanted to see them in the wild. This would be a challenge.
Virtually all tourists to Madagascar see lemurs in private reserves, as we did at “Lemur Island” in the east, or as many tourists do in Berenty in the south. These aren’t wild lemurs. They are as domesticated as circus animals. To see our pointy nose black-and-white was going to take some extraordinary effort.
In Madagascar, Jim is enjoying an immersion into the forest. This unique wildlife experience, frolicking with the island’s endemic species, is worth the trade-off of sporadic wifi. Check back in – Jim will soon be able to connect again and recount his adventures.
I’m in Madagascar with very bad wifi. No photos possible today, but my account follows. Note that starting tomorrow we may be out of touch for a week!
There is nothing comparable to Madagascar in the wild. Isolation for millions of years has created an ecology unique to earth. It’s an absolutely essential trip for anyone who truly wants to understand the wilderness of our planet.
But Madagascar isn’t easy to do. Accommodations are poor. Urban areas are congested, impoverished and polluted. Roads are horrible. Especially important for tourism, its airlines are notoriously inadequate and unreliable. And to fully appreciate what it’s all about, considerable physical exertion is required.
So it’s an ideal destination for young, adventurous people deeply curious about our nature world. It’s not friendly to a 60+-year old veteran of African safaris. Yet almost all visitors to Madagascar are exactly that, older safari veterans. Why?
Barely two months ago an historic hurricane devastated much of the eastern side of Madagascar. This is where so many of its precious endemic species are found, especially the lemurs.
The two largest lemurs, the sifaka and indri, were among the hardest hit. In the forest of Analamazaotra where we trekked today, the rivers had quintipled in size for two days of rage, tearing down not only pedestrian bridges, but many trees on which the lemurs feed.
Normally benign towards one another, we saw them fighting today.
After nearly several weeks in the Mascarene, the remote volcanic archipelago of Africa defined by pirates has revealed its wonders to us, and they are grand!
The beauty is profound. The ecological health is unique, better than practically anywhere else on earth. But the greatest treasure is helping us understand evolution.
More for man, less for animals? More for all men, less for those at the top?
This moral rationing has defined Mauritius for four hundred years. Our three days here only increased our agony in having to make such choices.
I think the six of us came to Rodrigues because we all love Africa, and this is the most remote and unexpected part of Africa that exists. Like any Robinson Crusoe island hidden in the giant oceans, we also expected very unique beauty, history and ecology. We weren’t disappointed.
Look on the bright side: Driving in Mauritius is like being the first astronaut to drive on Mars. Yes, there’s problems. It’s costly. But what an adventure.
I’ve raced my broken Landrover over the Lemuta Plains through a dust storm and avoided every aardvark hole. I’ve navigated through a blizzard in the middle of the night on Chicago’s highways. I’ve kept my Vauxhall on the right edge of the ditches in the Scottish moors. I’ve even zigzagged a bus on the Chapman’s Peak Road over the Cape!
But this was a first: My Peugeot in Port Louis.
I’m in Mauritius, defined by geography, pirates and free money. I flew in from its much larger and much poorer cousin, Reunion, and the contrast between the two couldn’t be greater.
The ideological and even moral divide between these two main Mascarenes Islands are as great as the political divisions around the world between the right and the left, and one is forced into concluding that in a relatively short time, only one will still be standing.
Right now I’m in the longest country on earth, more than 5900 miles across. No I’m not in Russia, which is a measly 4500 miles wide.
I’m in Africa in …France(!) doing a reckie before returning with my group next week. The Île de la Réunion is a départément, one of the 18 “states” of the French Republic. It took an 11-hour nonstop flight from Paris to get here. When I return next week with my intrepid travelers I’ll describe the remarkable attractions of this remote ecological paradise in the Indian Ocean. But here are my first impressions as any first-time tourist:
Air Rage grows fueled by the increasing difficulty of flying anywhere. Last month American Airlines reported 6800 passengers missed their flights because of incompetent airport security.
USA TSA Security is a joke that’s working for exactly the wrong reasons. So stepping into an airplane, today, in the US is like walking into a bawdy bar outside a Carolina industrial park where executives have just announced the closing of factories that are moving to Mexico. Beware!
Jim is heading out on safari for a very long time! Keep up-to-date with his posts which should begin the end of this week.
He’s guiding people to a wide range of Africa this time. Here are some of the highlights: