We hiked back to the van, our moon-bounce on wheels, to drive the two hours back to our hotel. Carmen, who is much more susceptible motion sickness, told the driver to stop and we would just walk. Manda got out and walked with us. I found a path that split off from the main road, took it, and caused much worry among my wife and guide. The path didn’t meet back up with the road as I had anticipated, instead it kept going up and away. I had to track through some pretty thick bush to get back on the road, only to find that they had started back to look for me. I figured they would just keep walking, I was not going to get murdered on the one road in the area we were. Oh well, eventually, we all got back together and walked into the little town before out hotel. There was an old train station here as well as a tiny shop playing some local music, perfect for jamming to; the shop also sold Fanta, perfect for drinking, which I did.

That evening, we had a walk with Fanu to find tiny lemurs, which we did end up seeing. It was a walk from the small town, Fanta-Town as I’m calling it, about a mile back to our hotel, flashlights blazing into the wilderness. The other 8500 people on the road were doing the same thing. It wasn’t overly exciting, but we did get to see what we were looking for, so it was well worth it.

The following morning, we were headed back to a smaller part of Antsirabe to see lemurs, which we did get to see. We saw wild bamboo lemurs up close, as well as Sifaka lemur. The sifaka, we were able to experience their loud call, which can be heard for miles and miles around. A small group of tourists, us included, we’re at the base of the trees they were in, as a guide was playing their call on his phone. I’m not sure if this is ethical or not, but it happened and I had no control over it.

We broke from the group as we headed back to the car and our hotel, only to run across a pair of ibis, which Fanu was wildly excited about. We chased them through the forest like that crazy old man in the movie Up! chasing that bird he chased. Shooting action with a Hasselblad is not the easiest thing in the world to do, so I was unable to capture a good photo of them. Carmen did, though, hopefully she will post it on her online internet website.