Vacation Travels Part 3: Ankarana National Park

first lemur sighting in Madagascar. This one didn't dance.

  

We arrived in Ankarana not having any idea if there would be a place to stay, and wondering whether we would have to do a quick hike and then leave again. Luckily, we got there, found bungalows, and before we knew it they were cooking us lunch and we were drinking a cold Fanta. Nothing tastes better than cold fanta. Yum. After lunch we went on an afternoon hike to the BAT CAVE. 

Pride Rock is actually in Madagascar. Get it right Lion King.

This one didn't think anyone was watching.

But first, I had my first lemur sightings. Oddly enough they were singing and dancing just like the movie. But actually they were pretty awesome and got really close to us without getting scared away by the 8 cameras we shoved in their face.

We continued on our 4 hour hike and finally made it to the Bat Cave which was an enormous cave that we hiked into. As the name implies, there were thousands of bats and you had to watch where you were walking or you would get pooped on. Unfortunatly, half our group forgot their headlamps, so we were hiking in a cave in the dark. It was a little scary, but beautiful. We also saw a 400 year old baobab tree and hiked over the tsingys. At times I thought I was in Jurassic Park, or on an alien planet…hard to say which.

tsingy

Day two we did a day hike which was supposed to take us to the “green lake.” However, there was a miscommunication and our guides forgot to bring our lunch, and we forgot to bring our lunch, which meant that our day hike turned into a half day thing. But it was still really amazing. We hiked through more tsingy, through another cave (saw human bones), and had to cross a rickety suspension bridge which could only hold one person at a time. That’s a little scary, but it was fun. Our final destination was the “Big Hole.” They really do a good job at naming these places. The big hole was indeed, a really big hole. And it was really fun to throw things in. Apparently during the rainy season it fills up with water, but I don’t know if that’s actually true. It was dry when we saw it, with many pairs of shoes at the bottom.

The Big Hole

After hiking so far we were all exhausted so we hung around our bungalows, tried to find ripe jack fruit (failed), and watched movies. And then the next day we left for Diego.