While in Toamasina, preparing for the sailover to South Africa, I had the chance to travel to Ivoloina park to see what Madagascar is very well known for: the lemurs.
The place is a bit more than a half hour's drive from Toamasina. It's possible to visit this place en route to Le Vacoa Village, or to just go there and head back. Also possible to do this by motorcycle if you have one. The roads are not always super great, but absolutely doable, and it's possible to see a lot of local life while travelling like this.
The park cares for critically endangered black and white ruffed lemurs, greater bamboo lemurs and blue-eyed black lemurs as well as nocturnal lemurs like the famous aye-aye. Ivoloina assists the Malagasy government by caring for animals seized in the illegal wildlife trade and cooperates in international breeding programs for endangered species.
The park is lush green and there is a lake in the middle, giving some coolness together with the tall trees. Among the branches are the lemurs. There are twelve varieties of lemurs in the park, and they have different timings for eating, sleeping and hanging out. So depending on when you arrive, you may see some species but not the others.
Some of them are in cages, for instance the ring-tailed lemur (the classical King Julian type). But I will only post the photos of animals that are out there free. Not because I disagree with cages, but because readers may. Not all readers know the background for the animals being encaged. Oftenmost it's because they've been hurt, lost their parents or been poached and cannot be put back into the wild right away.
Lunchtime is perfect for observing these fluffy ones! They bicker over food, chase away others and get chased themselves. The young and the old take turns to grab some fruit. The moving pattern is a mix of monker and cat. The tails are used to keep balance. I've put a few videos of them on my Instagram, as well as a few more photos. But of c ourse, it's more interesting just to be there and experience it all in real life.
Having a guide in the park is not mandatory, but I would highly recommend that. The guide will be able to show and tell, point out different varieties of animals, birds and plants, and has an eye for the details that a regular person might miss. Here, for instance, the guide pointed out a mother lemur with a kid clinging to her.
The mama lemur found a piece of fruit to munch on, while the kid is making a ring around her waist to stay in place. It's importnat to stay put as the mama lemur hops around from branch to branch. Walking on the ground is not something the normally do - but there was fallen fruit there, so there you go...
Here in the park, the lemurs are less shy than in the bush. They are not too afraid to get closer to people, because they know that the guides and workers of the park will not hurt them. So these sweet furry animals hang out on the roof of the technical buildnings.
This little guy was especially curious, sometimes getting up to sit on his back legs as he would observe visitors with at least as much interest as he was observed with.
Here are the posts about some more of the East Coast, the baobabs in the West, the trip to Morondava, and soon I will also publish a post about the trip from Toamasina to South Africa.