Montagne d'Ambre

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mda02.jpgIt was not easy to go from Maroantsetra to Diego Suarez a little further in the North. You first have to fly back to Antananarivo. Due to delays and given away plane seats, only the half of us could fly back to Antananarivo, the other half of the group had to go by car. This took over 16 hours. Then the flight to Diego Suarez got cancelled and we had to wait for the following day, so we arrived 2 days later at Diego Suarez. Here we first visited the national park Montagne d’Ambre. Montagne d'Ambre is a green tropical oasis in the middle of a very dry area. It is one of the most accessible national parks of Madagascar with a good trail system where you can see many animals. It is known for its variation of lemurs and birds. Here we saw the Sandford brown lemur, the crown lemur and many mouse lemurs. But Montagne d’Ambre has also a large variety of chameleons, we found here many other brookesias, chameleons, uroplatus (leaf tailed geckos) and frog species. 
Here we had a base camp, from where we made several trips.mda04.jpg The night trips were not popular, so we went every night alone away with a local guide. Here we had a good guide, who was doing investigations about the animal life at the park for the university and wrote his thesis. He really could find everything and knew a lot to tell. At our night trips you even saw more that during the daytrips. The chameleons were really beautifully to see at night, with their tales rolled up, brighter colours. You now could easily take pictures, during the day they are not that cooperative.