The real Madagascar
I am feeding a banana to a wild cat. I know this is a bad thing to do in a national park but the damage has already been done.
Each day at dusk, the cat and its companion, a brave little mouse lemur, step out of the rainforest shadows to delight a score of visitors who have spent the day traipsing along muddy paths in the elusive search for wild lemurs.
Today we are doubly fortunate; a real glamourpuss puts in an appearance.
The rare red-bellied lemur flings her long tail around her neck like a fur stole and poses round-eyed for our lenses, coping with the whirrs and flashes like an old pro. Bananas are accepted with dignity by hands that look almost human.
Hollywood's new blockbuster animated film, Madagascar, stars a mouse lemur named Mort who punches well beyond his weight and charms his way into the hearts of a group of New York zoo animals searching for a wild life on this island 250 miles off the coast of East Africa.
"He's the sweetest little thing," says Mort's co-star, Gloria the hippo. "I just want to dunk him in my coffee."
Frankly, that's one of the dumbest bits of dialogue I've heard for a while. The film-makers have been more successful with the casting. The leader of the black-and-white ring-tailed lemurs, cheeky social animals that are active both day and night, has the voice of Ali G.
There are plenty of sassy lemurs to be found in Ranomafana National Park. Down by the waterfall lives a troop of greater bamboo lemurs, a species thought extinct until five years ago.
The latest addition to the family is two weeks old. He clings to mother's armpit as she flings herself from tree to tree. Father nibbles daintily on leaves and then relieves himself from a great height on to the noisy, gossiping primates camped below.
This is all great fun, but I want to see the primary rainforest at the heart of the national park. This proves difficult to arrange. My excellent guide, Harilala, has to take a registered park guide who knows the trail.
The problem is finding someone prepared to get up early and walk for six hours in a single day. Theodore comes to the rescue.
We set off at 6.30, climbing steeply through the cool, misty forest, wearing plastic-bag gaiters to combat the leeches (they don't work).
The trumpet lilies, wild ginger and guava disappear, then the mid-level trees, until only bamboo grass grows beneath buttressed hardwoods which soar into the clouds above us. Theodore makes a loud hooting call, which is immediately answered. Is it a lemur? "No, it's just one of the researchers," he says.
A few minutes later an almighty racket breaks out, like angry men screaming at each other in an alley. "That's the call of a male white-ruffed lemur," says Theodore. Just the one? "Yes, only one."
We never meet the owner of the big voice, but the rest of the family - a mother and her three young - are up a tree beside the path. The babies, their faces framed by little white ruffs like those of Elizabethan princelings, scamper along the branches, showing off and scaring themselves.
When they spot us they are petrified and whimper until their mother comes and gathers them up. It is a rare sighting; like many species of lemur, these are nocturnal and should be curled up asleep on a high branch.
The primary forest is surprisingly small, half the size of Hampshire's New Forest. We emerge from its cool depths beside a burning field. The farmer says he has chopped down the trees and set fire to the field so he can grow peanuts.
"We are trying to stop this practice in the secondary forest," says Theodore. "We are taking some of these farmers further east where the forest has all gone, where soil is poor and the rivers are dry.
We explain that this will happen here if they cut down the forest." Do they understand? "Slowly, slowly, it is getting through, but they are very poor and this is an easy way to grow food."
Madagascar is the size of France, so many visitors fly between the national parks, but an overland journey in a private vehicle with a knowledgeable guide gives a better feel for the diversity of this extraordinary island and the chance to meet its warm, open people.
The highways used to be in such a bad state that 20mph was considered good going.
Then along came President Marc Ravalomanana, a self-made yogurt tycoon with a puritan work ethic who, since his election in 2002, has been rebuilding the country after a disastrous period of Communist rule.
To get Madagascar on the move again, the country's trunk roads are being repaired with EU money and the help of Italian engineers.
I take the Route National 7, which connects the capital, Antananarivo (known as Tana), with the somnolent port of Toliara on the south-west coast.
There is little motorised traffic, only the odd Mercedes lorry and the clapped-out minibuses that act as bush taxis. Most people are on foot, on their way to weekly markets. We edge around herds of zebu cattle, guarded by men in baseball caps. Rustling is big business here.
On the treeless Hautes Plateaux, every scrap of usable land is given over to rice, beautifully terraced in the Asian style by Betsileo and Merina families who arrived from Indonesia and Malaysia about 1,500 years ago.
Their farming hamlets spread over the ridgetops, built of the rich ochre soil on which they stand. There is French colonial influence in the painted blue shutters, the clay-tiled mansards and the tall spires of the Catholic churches.
Beyond the lovely town of Ambalavao, the badlands start. November is Tavy time, the annual burning of the countryside to induce fresh green grass to shoot. For the Malagasy ranchers, Tavy is an economic necessity; for environmentalists it is a catastrophe.
Gill Charlton visits the island that inspired Hollywood’s latest animated blockbuster – and finds the lemurs every bit as sassy as their cartoon counterparts.
(Filed: 16/07/2005)
Madagascar basics
Each day at dusk, the cat and its companion, a brave little mouse lemur, step out of the rainforest shadows to delight a score of visitors who have spent the day traipsing along muddy paths in the elusive search for wild lemurs.
Today we are doubly fortunate; a real glamourpuss puts in an appearance.
The rare red-bellied lemur flings her long tail around her neck like a fur stole and poses round-eyed for our lenses, coping with the whirrs and flashes like an old pro. Bananas are accepted with dignity by hands that look almost human.
Hollywood's new blockbuster animated film, Madagascar, stars a mouse lemur named Mort who punches well beyond his weight and charms his way into the hearts of a group of New York zoo animals searching for a wild life on this island 250 miles off the coast of East Africa.
"He's the sweetest little thing," says Mort's co-star, Gloria the hippo. "I just want to dunk him in my coffee."
Frankly, that's one of the dumbest bits of dialogue I've heard for a while. The film-makers have been more successful with the casting. The leader of the black-and-white ring-tailed lemurs, cheeky social animals that are active both day and night, has the voice of Ali G.
There are plenty of sassy lemurs to be found in Ranomafana National Park. Down by the waterfall lives a troop of greater bamboo lemurs, a species thought extinct until five years ago.
The latest addition to the family is two weeks old. He clings to mother's armpit as she flings herself from tree to tree. Father nibbles daintily on leaves and then relieves himself from a great height on to the noisy, gossiping primates camped below.
This is all great fun, but I want to see the primary rainforest at the heart of the national park. This proves difficult to arrange. My excellent guide, Harilala, has to take a registered park guide who knows the trail.
The problem is finding someone prepared to get up early and walk for six hours in a single day. Theodore comes to the rescue.
We set off at 6.30, climbing steeply through the cool, misty forest, wearing plastic-bag gaiters to combat the leeches (they don't work).
The trumpet lilies, wild ginger and guava disappear, then the mid-level trees, until only bamboo grass grows beneath buttressed hardwoods which soar into the clouds above us. Theodore makes a loud hooting call, which is immediately answered. Is it a lemur? "No, it's just one of the researchers," he says.
A few minutes later an almighty racket breaks out, like angry men screaming at each other in an alley. "That's the call of a male white-ruffed lemur," says Theodore. Just the one? "Yes, only one."
We never meet the owner of the big voice, but the rest of the family - a mother and her three young - are up a tree beside the path. The babies, their faces framed by little white ruffs like those of Elizabethan princelings, scamper along the branches, showing off and scaring themselves.
When they spot us they are petrified and whimper until their mother comes and gathers them up. It is a rare sighting; like many species of lemur, these are nocturnal and should be curled up asleep on a high branch.
The primary forest is surprisingly small, half the size of Hampshire's New Forest. We emerge from its cool depths beside a burning field. The farmer says he has chopped down the trees and set fire to the field so he can grow peanuts.
"We are trying to stop this practice in the secondary forest," says Theodore. "We are taking some of these farmers further east where the forest has all gone, where soil is poor and the rivers are dry.
We explain that this will happen here if they cut down the forest." Do they understand? "Slowly, slowly, it is getting through, but they are very poor and this is an easy way to grow food."
Madagascar is the size of France, so many visitors fly between the national parks, but an overland journey in a private vehicle with a knowledgeable guide gives a better feel for the diversity of this extraordinary island and the chance to meet its warm, open people.
The highways used to be in such a bad state that 20mph was considered good going.
Then along came President Marc Ravalomanana, a self-made yogurt tycoon with a puritan work ethic who, since his election in 2002, has been rebuilding the country after a disastrous period of Communist rule.
To get Madagascar on the move again, the country's trunk roads are being repaired with EU money and the help of Italian engineers.
I take the Route National 7, which connects the capital, Antananarivo (known as Tana), with the somnolent port of Toliara on the south-west coast.
There is little motorised traffic, only the odd Mercedes lorry and the clapped-out minibuses that act as bush taxis. Most people are on foot, on their way to weekly markets. We edge around herds of zebu cattle, guarded by men in baseball caps. Rustling is big business here.
On the treeless Hautes Plateaux, every scrap of usable land is given over to rice, beautifully terraced in the Asian style by Betsileo and Merina families who arrived from Indonesia and Malaysia about 1,500 years ago.
Their farming hamlets spread over the ridgetops, built of the rich ochre soil on which they stand. There is French colonial influence in the painted blue shutters, the clay-tiled mansards and the tall spires of the Catholic churches.
Beyond the lovely town of Ambalavao, the badlands start. November is Tavy time, the annual burning of the countryside to induce fresh green grass to shoot. For the Malagasy ranchers, Tavy is an economic necessity; for environmentalists it is a catastrophe.
Gill Charlton visits the island that inspired Hollywood’s latest animated blockbuster – and finds the lemurs every bit as sassy as their cartoon counterparts.
(Filed: 16/07/2005)
Madagascar basics
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