Who knows how long it takes the local buses and trucks to cover those 80km. The road is far more holes than road. Though it is an interesting drive through villages and countryside.An alien place.
Acres of geometeric agave plantings flank the road, such as it is, before a crossroads. One fork leads to the defunct processing plant, one past a mothballed World Food Program distribution centre. Berenty lies beyond this. Berenty Reserve Lodge sits between the hot, dry, cactus filled spiny forest and a more verdant, cool, hanging vine, large tree forest.
The lodge itself is a long way from luxurious (think school camp) but is more than adequate. Its only purpose for us was to be amongst the lemurs...and this it certainly was. We had always said our timing of this holiday was mostly to be in Madagascar during baby lemur season. We
had thought perhaps we'll see a few of the babies at a distance, we had never dreamed that distance might be less than a metre away as they'd sit on the back of a spare chair at your breakfast table. The ring-tailed lemur (known locally as maki) are prolific, many with young ones attached to their stomach or backs...or generally causing mischief as any child would...cheeky little maki.The brown lemur was also seen in abundance, also with young. They were a little more shy than the maki but still seen up close and frequent.The third most common was the verikas sifaka (many jokes being made about the sifaka, pronounced sea-fuca, we'll let you use your own imagination).
The sifaka was probably our favourite, not for the name, they move across land by dancing/leaping sideways on their back legs with their youngs ones holding on tight.
A favourite moment for Tracey and Debbie was heading into the forest while the men had siesta. Sitting on the forest floor, to the right a family of maki, to the left a family of brown lemur, in front the occasional dancing sifaka. The babies in each family would play, venturing away from their mothers as they slept in the afternoon heat.
Two more varieties of nocturnal lemur were seen on our night walk, the white footed sportive lemur and the mouse lemur, difficult to see and photograph but extremely cute. Not cute were the various large colourful spiders you'd find yourself walking into in the dark.
It was so dark it gave us the most spectacular view of the night sky. The stars have never seemed so bright.
The spiny forest is unlike anywhere we've ever seen and feels very alien. The plant life is far more dangerous than the animals here. All vegetation has either sharp spines or is poisonous. The sifaka lemurs manage to quite happily live here and can be seen leaping from cactus to cactus. It was also hot - damn hot - reaching 39.9C one afternoon. Even the locals were sweating, saying it was unseasonally hot. We had a slightly concerning moment during our walk when a couple of villagers came out of the spiny forest (beyond the middle of nowhere) wielding an axe and meat cleaver. They then proceeded to help us find chameleons.
The food at the lodge was plentiful, though not as extravagent as some places we'd stayed. Drinks were cheap and also plentiful. We tried to find a decent Madagascan wine but we now understand why mostly they serve South African and French. We call it swine -simple wine. Over all Berenty far exceeded expectations, well worth the long travel and gruelling drive.
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