The Grand Tsingy

We had a trip to the Grand Tsingy today. This is a World Heritage site, with tsingy (limestone spikes) up to 30 m tall. It's set up as an adventure hike of 4 hours duration, with a "via ferrata" in places. This is where you have a safety belt with carribeeners that you hook on to a steel cable to protect you if you fall. There are also long caverns to traverse, slots to squeeze through and low openings to crawl under. Of course there is also lots of wildlife.

We had to drive 17 km from our hotel in Bekopaka, taking 1 hour by 4WD. You can imagine the state of the road.

We walked for 20 minutes through the forest to approach the tsingy..

..then after a long cavern traverse with headlights, we headed up to the top of the formations...note the smile on Julie's face, just a bit scared !

The views were pretty amazing

..with euphorbia and other exotic vegetation.

We crossed a chasm by suspension bridge..

..came across a couple of nightjars doing what they do in the day..

..then went down into " the cathedral"..

..where we were greeted by 2 ring-tailed mongeese..

Then it was back out into the forest for some serious fauna hunting. A paradise flycatcher..

..a giant coua (coua are birds of the cuckoo family endemic to Madagascar)...

..a crested coua...

..and last but not least, a small group of deckens sifika

We returned dirty and thirsty to our hotel, only to be greeted at our hut by a friendly and photogenic local quite a tail there. Gurner out to be a Madagascar collared lizard, one of the more common lizards of the country. He was peaking over the window of the shower, thankfully on the outside.