In the continuation of our journey towards small town Ranohira and Isalo NP in the south part of Madagascar, my friend Sneža and I reached in our rented car driven by Rija, our driver, a section of the road which like an almost straight line extends over the length of almost 10 km. It was not a spectacular phenomenon and yet I certainly found it interesting.
10 km of a straight, albeit not a flat road
Very soon the road started to ascend, while the landscapes and the vegetation again changed a little.
Sparse vegetation by the road
Then the road brought us to the top of the Horombe plateau and it was all perfectly flat there. In the beginning we passed by eucalyptus trees...
Horombe plateau
... and then the eucalyptuses disappeared and there was only the plain of the plateau. At some point Rija stopped the car in order for the two of us to be able to get out and take photos without constantly moving.
Horombe plateau
Although the landscape seemed utterly simple, I was (again) completely enchanted by the beauty of the place where I was, this time primarily because of the colours – there were intensively red earth, intensively green grass, intensively blue sky and a myriad of white chubby clouds that hovered above the horizon. No matter how much I tried to record all of this by my photo-camera, my pictures cannot convey even closely the impressions I had while I was standing there, since there were also the warmth coming from the Sun and the light breeze that was blowing across the plateau. All of this together filled me with intensive feeling of content, it made me absolutely exalted and I could not take the smile off my face.
Horombe plateau
The intensive colours of the Horombe plateau
As it can be seen in the photo above, it was possible to discern the peaks of some mountains in the distance, but we still had to drive for a while longer before approaching the mountains of Isalo National Park. Meanwhile, in some spots there were somewhat bigger clouds and I could also notice rain that was falling in one place.
Mountains of Isalo National Park and a rain cloud
Isalo National Park is situated near small town Ranohira and it is one of the most visited places in Madagascar. This is a park that includes sandstone mountains which over time and thanks to the erosion caused by wind and water developed some specific forms and they are also cut through by numerous canyons with permanent or seasonal watercourses running through them. All of this provides numerous interesting landscapes which visitors may see either spending there a few hours or several days. On the other hand, the park is very easily accessible because it is right next to the national road RN7 and it is less than 250 km away from the international airport in Tulear.
To start with, we settled at a hotel that was outside the small town and that had rooms in the shape of bungalows. Having left our things in our room, we first went to have coffee, more really in order to check our digital devices, since the hotel had an internet connection only in the building in which the reception and the restaurant were.
Perhaps the internet lines here were not as good as we all like to have nowadays, fast and available in every corner of the space in which we are, but it was quite clear that the hotel had very good gardeners, so while going between the reception and the room I regularly enjoyed walking along a path between the plants grown there, as well as when I walked around the not-too-big hotel complex.
Among other plants, where were also several cacti of the Cereus genus. That first afternoon when I walked past these cacti, I noticed very big buds, while the following morning I could see completely open flowers which in fact open during the night and close again very soon after the sunrise.
Cereus cactus in the afternoon
Cereus cactus in the morning
The cacti I saw here are not originally from Madagascar, but the garden also contained several specimens of the elephant’s foot (Pachypodium rosulatum), a plant that is endemic on Madagascar and that seems like a baobab miniature.
Elephant’s foot in the hotel’s garden
Passing by those plants, I also noticed a tiny resident who was hiding among the leaves of an oleander.
A spider from the vicinity of our room in Ranohira
After this walk of mine around the garden with camera in my hands, Sneža and I went to the hotel’s restaurant to have a light lunch, but it was more than clear that we were here during the low season – on that day we were the only guests in the hotel and the restaurant did not work at its full capacity, so we ended up eating something rather improvised.
At that time of the day it was very hot, so after the lunch Sneža went for a swim at the hotel’s pool, while I returned to the room and relaxed there enjoying the pleasant cooling that was coming from a large ceiling-fan, while waiting for the time when we were to meet again with Rija at the reception.
Namely, within Isalo National Park there are several “natural sculptures” – bigger or smaller rocks or rock formations which the time and the erosion have given a certain shape that reminds humans of something specific. One of such “sculptures” is the “Isalo Window” which is particularly popular during the sunrise or the sunset. But, in order for this to make any real sense, it is necessary that there are no clouds or very few. Thus, we had agreed with Rija that after the afternoon break we should meet again at the reception around 5 pm in order to see what our chances were that there would be no clouds in the sky at the time of the sunset. The chances were nil, so we agreed to postpone the visit to the “Window” until the day after hoping that we would have more luck then with the weather and the clouds.
So, we sat again at the reception area and had coffee, while in fact checking our digital devices and contacting our friends and family. Then we decided to go to the centre of town Ranohira in order to have dinner there, but before that I took another photo of Isalo NP’s heights.
Isalo National Park
In the centre of Ranohira there are several restaurants and cafés, and we went to the one recommended to us by Rija. This was, of course, a restaurant primarily intended for tourists and foreigners, but we no longer asked any questions, plus we were not interested in making experiments. Because, in the meantime, during this journey around Madagascar both of has had occasional problems with bowels, but it was kept under control.
Generally speaking, the advice for all visitors coming to Madagascar is to be very careful with food and water. It goes without saying that only bottled water should be drunk and it is also recommended to use bottled water when brushing teeth. On the other hand, I think it is impossible to travel in a completely “sterile” manner, especially if you want to eat fresh fruits (only bananas are naturally perfectly and practically packed, the other fruits must have their skin touched when being pealed and it’s no use washing them with tap water if this one is polluted). In addition, I doubt that all the cutlery and plates in restaurants are washed in dishwashers where they are possibly sterilised. So, unless you want to end up eating only industrially produced and packed up biscuits and drink only bottled water, then you should relax. Everybody should bring probiotic pills and anti-diarrheal preparations, but you should relax.
This is what the two of us did. For this dinner, I ordered chicken Mine Sao once more, only this time they also added a fried egg over the noodles. There was, of course, a local beer – THB.
Dinner in Ranohira
By the time we had finished with our meal, the Sun was already behind the horizon, but in combination with clouds its light still kept creating fantastic sights.
Twilight above Isalo NP
With pleasantly full stomachs, we went again to the reception area of our hotel and started to check our mail and/or news, but we had to abandon this activity very soon, since there was an incredibly big invasion of bugs and small locusts around us. Sneža still had the fresh experience of her allergy which she got after the bite of an unknown insect, so we did not want to experiment much there withdrawing hastily to our room.
Although it started to rain soon after, the following morning we were greeted by dry and very nice weather. First we had breakfast and then Rija took us to the centre of Ranohira where there were offices of Isalo National Park. There we were met by a guide Rija had already booked for us and then the former first took us to buy tickets and then to the section where the visitors opted for the duration of the tour. If you don’t already have your guide, then this is the place where one is assigned to you and they most often speak French, but some also speak English and other languages.
Then the four of us got into the car and following a dirt road went to a parking lot from where a walking path began. Rija and the car remained there, while the guide, Sneža and I continued on foot.
We are getting closer by car to the parking lot from which the walking path starts
Sneža and I opted for the Namaza route (by the way, “Namaza” means “good place”) and we agreed on a 5-hour tour. That route involved walking along the bottom of a canyon, as well as climbing to some natural pools. Depending on the interest of the visitors, it is also possible to go to some cascades and to a viewpoint at the top of a ridge, but the two of us went only as far as those natural pools and that was fantastic enough by itself, so in the end we were exceptionally content with the excursion.
To start with, we came to a section where there is a camp for those visitors who want to spend the night at the park and who are looking for nocturnal lemur species that are relatively abundant here. The two of us were more than happy to see several ring-tail lemurs, a diurnal species, in the treetops. One of them was particularly ready to cooperate, so for a while he kept sitting relatively peacefully on a branch where I could take photos of it.
Ring-tail lemur
We need to wash ourselves a little, right?
Ring-tail lemur – I wonder what it is looking at?
Now I’m going to stretch myself a little
There were other lemurs there, too, and they are all, without exceptions, extraordinarily flexible and have the perfect sense of balance.
What a fantastic flexibility and the sense of balance – note the foot of its left leg!
When we continued with our walk through that forested section of the trail, the guide drew our attention to yet another resident.
Chameleon
Soon we got out of the forested section and continued walking along a path that led along a riverbed that was at the bottom of a canyon covered in dense vegetation. As it can be seen in the photo below, by now the day was perfect and without a single cloud.
View towards the ridges and the sky from the bottom of a canyon
By the way, these rocky mountains consist of sandstones and it is not permitted to climb its cliffs, instead of which only the walking trails may be used for moving around. This is so in order not to crumble the rocks and destroy them in this manner. The colours that dominated the rocks were red, green and black. As the guide told us, the red came from the presence of iron in the rock, the green colour had its origin in different clays, while the black colour came from some lichens.
Be as it may, our walk along the bottom of the canyon could start.
The canyon that we walked through within Isalo NP
The canyon that we walked through within Isalo NP
The canyon that we walked through within Isalo NP
At the beginning of our walking, and that was in fact at the end of the canyon since we were going upstream, the canyon was not particularly deep or too impressive, but soon we entered some sections where the sides of the canyon were vertical indeed and I had to tilt my head backwards in order to be able to see the top of the canyon and the sky above us.
The canyon that we walked through within Isalo NP
In the previous photos, it was possible to see the relatively wide and flat bed of the small river, as well as sand shoals, but with time we entered significantly rockier and steeper sections of the canyon. There we often had to walk over some rocks.
Sneža on the trail within Isalo NP
In some places these rocks were naturally rounded or of an irregular shape, in some other they seemed flattened by the human hand, and in some places it was evident that the humans either chiselled in small steps or placed some other stones in between bigger rocks to make a passage easier.
A path beside the small river in the canyon within Isalo NP
At some point we came across some rocks which the river had smoothed out nicely over time and since at the time we were passing there the Sun shone directly on those rocks it was possible to see well the colours that are present here.
Colours of the canyon within Isalo NP
The riverbed we followed was occasionally decently wide even in its upstream section, but as we approached the natural pools, the canyon was getting increasingly narrower.
The canyon is occasionally wide...
... and occasionally quite narrow; here we walked along the narrow path cut into the cliff
In this narrow section of the canyon, we often passed by rocky walls down which came water in thin streams, so this constant moisture made it possible that relatively a lot of different plants grew on those surfaces. In one place, the guide brought to our attention a rather tiny plant that was growing on a moist rock that we were walking by and which I certainly would not notice myself.
Although definitely less known than two other carnivorous plants both from the Nepenthes genus and both endemic on Madagascar, I found this particular minute carnivorous plant (Drosera madagascariensis) quite interesting in its own right.
Drosera madagascariensis
We soon arrived at the first “pool.” This was the Blue Pool and it is said that its name comes from the turquoise colour of its water. At the time we reached it, it was completely in the shade, so the guide told us that the particular colour of the water may be seen only when the sunrays shine onto the pool.
Blue Pool
While we were standing there in order to take photos, I also noticed a couple of butterflies nearby. This concrete species is not linked to Madagascar at all, it’s present even in Europe, but these two were quite ready to pose for a short while. Long enough for me to take a photo.
Butterflies close to the Blue Pool in Isalo NP
And then we also went to the nearby Black Pool. The water there was quite murky and although the guide told us we could swim there (we knew about this possibility, so we had already had our swimsuits on), we decided not to do it here, since this murky water was not inviting at all.
Black Pool
But... The beautiful, transparent water of the Blue Pool, even if it was not of turquoise colour, was another matter and we went back there in order to dip ourselves in.