Manara is located in the middle of the Route Nationale 5
which is one of the worst roads in the world. It is only reachable by 4x4
trucks or boat and therefore lacks behind the rest of Madagascar in
development. Walking through the rather busy “streets” (a sandy mixture between
deep holes and sewers) of Manara we felt a little bit taken back in time.
From the pier we walked with our backpacks to the center of
town to the hotel “Chez Roger” (d 25000Ar).The owner of the hotel is also the
owner of the small Aye Aye Island located in a river close to Mananara. On this
island lives a special lemur, the Aye Aye, which is very difficoult to
encounter everywhere else. We booked a tour to the island for the same evening
(20000Ar).
At 4:30 pm we were, together with two very nice girls who
had also booked the tour, picked up by a truck and brought to the river bank.
From there we got on by pirouge (a small boat carved out of a tree trunk) to
cross the river to the island. Arriving there our guide went first to pick a
lot of lychees for us from a nearby tree. Munching them we walked a few meters
through the junglelike island to see some red lemurs. Fairly quickly we
actually found a group of them making very funny noises and jumping around in
the trees, one of them even having a baby on its back. We watched them jumping
around for quite a while until darkness set in and they settled themselves for
the night huddeled up together high up in a tree.
Then we waited for the night to settle because the Aye Aye
only comes out when it is pitch dark. But this day the Aye Aye let us wait a
long time. Our guide told us that this is because of the peak of the lychee
season. Because of the lychees the lemurs are full and lazy with not much interest
in showing themselves to the tourists.
To my great delight our guide found us a tenrec which I was
longing to see. Tenrecs are a small species of animal that is endemic to
Madagascar. There are about 20 different kinds of tenrecs. The one we saw
resembles very much the european hedgehog but is smaller with a very pointy
nose and very agile. Still we were able to see two of them.
After we we almost gave up hope to see the Aye Aye one of
them showed himself to us. And how it did. Other than expeceted it was rather
close to the ground clinging to a trunk of a tree being rather unimpressed by
the bright beam of the torch being held in its face. We stood not more than a
meter away and watched the bizarre animal looking at us as we looked at him. Especially
funny is the hand of the aye aye which has an extremely long middle finger to
finger out the flesh of coconuts.
What followed was a hunt on the pitch dark island trying to
follow the lemur with the beam of the torch on its way from tree to tree.
Sometimes it stopped for a while and looked at us and sometimes it let himself
dangle on a branch with only one hand to scratch his belly. This encounter was
absolutely amazing and the first time that we saw lemurs J
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