Day 8

We took a last morning boat ride, then packed up and transferred to town for our afternoon flight to Tana. The birds tried to outdo everything they had given us on the previous boat rides. We nailed bird after bird on great perches, displaying, flying and just being beautiful! Right now we are in Tana at our hotel shopping for Madagascar sapphires before dinner.

Day 9

Today we flew to Fort Dauphin on an afternoon flight and drove to Berenty. We had time for a visit to Lemurs Park outside of Tana. The have a large natural reserve with nine different kinds of lemurs to see and photograph. Most of the species we have seen or will see in the wild but our goal was to get some photos of two rare species that we won’t see on this itinerary: the crowned sifaka and the mongoose lemur. We saw them both, but while the crowned sifaka was in a great place to photograph and gave us wonderful chances for portraits, the mongoose lemur stayed in bamboo thickets and wouldn’t come out for us. One other lemur that was easy to photograph was the black lemur that we had shot in the wild at Palmerium. All in all it was a lovely way to spend the morning on a travel day.

Our flight to Fort Dauphin got in at around 6:00. Our bus took us on a 90 km drive through forest, villages, sisal plantations and spiny forest to Berenty Reserve, where we checked into our bungalows and spent the night dreaming of dancing sifaka lemurs.

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