Day 17 – 24.10.2026 – Ranomafana
In Ranomafana, we started at 7:30 in the morning and the day started perfectly! We were split into two groups, the so-called fast group and slow group, and I was in the first one despite being always last. But I knew that if I’m not in the first group, then there is zero chance to see any bird because the first group would usually scare the birds away, but the day actually started awesome because almost immediately after we entered, we saw one of my top bucket list animals that I wanted to see – the giraffe weevil beetle. It is a beetle which has a very long neck. It is red on its back so it looks like a ladybug but with a long neck and it’s just so hilarious, so bizarre to see. I love it.
I was so excited about it that I kind of screamed a little bit when I heard someone saw it and I just ran to it. So excited! Then we hit another jackpot and it was the satanic leaf-tailed gecko. It’s a gecko that blends in so well sitting on a tree trunk that you just don’t see it and normally during the daylight they sleep somewhere high on the tree and you can see them on the nighttime tour. However, this one was already disturbed so it was awake and very low which allowed us to see it pretty well basically at our eye level and I took a lot of pictures and it was such a gorgeous creature. I loved it. It literally looks like dry brown leaves and if you don’t know what to look for you will just not see it.
Besides that we saw the golden bamboo lemur, and sadly, the last female grey-tailed bamboo lemur. There is just one left in that forest and it’s a female. They do exist in other parts, but not there. Due to the deforestation until recently, the pack of lemurs from that species left, leaving only this last female there. She was asleep so we couldn’t see her very well. In fact, we saw only her tushie. But it was way overcrowded in the forest because everyone wanted to see her of course. The guide told me that they tried to bring three different males to mate with her, but it didn’t work. And we also saw a pitta-like ground roller. This was such a gorgeous bird. It was very elusive, very hard to spot and even harder to take a picture, but in the end I managed to snap a good photo.
That however, involved getting really into the bush and down a slippery slope basically so it was good that I was wearing long pants because I would’ve been scratched all over and I think I even was, a little bit. When we were done with the trip in the forest on the way back, we saw another giraffe weevil, this time very low, and it was perfect to see and take pictures of. I think I have some very good pictures of them now. I was again super happy. So at the entrance of the park, there was this local artist who painted with watercolour and then once he had a painting, he would make a print out of it and sell them as postcards or pictures a little bit bigger framed, and all his art was gorgeous.
I absolutely loved it. It was amazing and he also had a sketchbook which I asked him to show me and I recorded a video of and it was mind blowing, especially now that I am into scrapbooking. I want to do some little drawings, but I’m so bad at drawing, but I will try eventually, but the thing is it made me appreciate his art a lot more so I bought a picture for myself and also a smaller one for Fina. They were so thankful, both the guide and the artist and it was a really well-spent 60,000 ariary (about €12, so cheap!). I should’ve bought more but sadly, I had no more space in my luggage…
Day 18-19 – 25–26.10.2026 – Peyrieras and Andasibe
The next day we left for Antsirabe, where we had slept the previous time, because it was a long way to drive. There was nothing really interesting there. We just went there and slept basically.
And then the day after we continued on our way to Andasibe. This is another part of the rainforest in the same mountain east of Antananarivo. There we would spend two nights again with a night and a day tour. But before that on our way we stopped by a reserve called Peyrieras. They call it a chameleon farm. The word farm kind of concerned me so I need to do more research on this place but of course you cannot really say no, or I guess you can but you also want to see the animals and they had all sorts of chameleons from the smallest Brookesia chameleon, to the largest Oustalet’s chameleon as well as the famous gorgeous panther chameleon. And they had all sorts of colours and it was amazing to see from very close and to be able to take pictures from very close.
We also saw Malagasy leaf-nosed snakes that I could hold and more of the leaf-tailed geckos. There are two types of leaf-tailed geckos, one is called Mossy leaf-tailed gecko and the other one is the satanic leaf-tailed gecko. They also had different species of frogs, including the Mantella frog that sits on the 100 Ariary bill. And someone from our group took a picture of the bill with the frog on top of it and it’s amazing. We also saw a tomato frog, a very big red frog, and also a tiny orange frog which is called golden Mantella and we saw the Painted Mantella. I also asked them specifically whether they return any animals back to nature, to which they said they do for chameleons but not for the other animals because they don’t have that many of them.
They also showed me the tiniest chameleon which I really wanted to see and it was so small. Actually, there were two tiny chameleons. One I thought was the tiniest, but apparently there are small chameleons of different species or so. So there was the Brookesia chameleon, but also one of those with a little snout that was also super tiny, pretty much the same size as the other one and I have them both in the same picture and they were big, maybe about 3 cm each. Super super cute! I was in love. I could live there in this place and just make it a proper conservation place. Actually it started as a conservation project because there was a French man, André Peyriéras, who founded and ran the Mandraka Nature Farm, now known as Peyriéras Reserve Madagascar Exotic, about 75 km (47 mi) east of Antananarivo in Madagascar. Here they breed many of Madagascar’s rare and endangered reptiles, frogs and insects. The farm is now run by his daughter, Sylviane Peyriéras.
However, she is apparently not doing a great job because our tour guide said previously they also had the fox bats and other animals, but they couldn’t take care of them and probably they either sold them or released them or they died. I don’t know what happened to them. They also had tenrecs which was a bit sad for me.
So what people say online and I saw the same thing is that basically the animals are confined in small cages and this is really something that is used more as a zoo than a conservation project. I did notice also that all the chameleons were very hungry so when he would take a grasshopper to feed them, many of them would just immediately jump and try to stick their tongue to get the bug, and it made me think that they don’t feed them enough, let alone the constant flow of tourists who walk among them and stress them. Another thing was that I didn’t know, but we saw a tomato frog and other little frogs which he took from their cages and put them on a giant green banana leaf where we could take pictures but of course they’re animals and they don’t stay there so they would jump off the leaf and he was very kind of rude, grabbing them and put them back on the leaf and I didn’t know that tomato frogs would get big like inflate themselves under stress and they were giant, pretty much inflated, which means they were stressed and I could see why and to be honest that’s really sad and I don’t want to contribute to these kinds of places with my money, but of course as a tourist I wanted to see the animals which you otherwise have very little chance of seeing but on the other hand, it is cruelty and here I should say, please don’t go, but also I will understand if you do because you just wanna see these animals and some of them maybe you don’t see them in the zoo in your country.
I am lucky that in the Netherlands, some of the zoos have lemurs, mostly maki but they live in good conditions so I have seen lemurs before, but that’s not of course valid for everyone.
So after that park, we arrived at our hotel in Andasibe.
Day 20 – 27.10.2026 – Andasibe
Andasibe and the park nearby called Analamazaotra, is home to the largest lemur in the world, the Indri Indri. Indri is the only lemur that simply cannot survive in captivity and therefore you cannot see it anywhere else but in Madagascar. They have tried before to keep them at zoos etc but have failed. Therefore it is a really special experience to see them in person. Below you can hear their mystical and magical call, it is insane to hear this in the rainforest. Sadly it is often spoiled by having too many tourists around but I managed to get a bit further from the crowds to record the snippet below. Enjoy! I cannot find a good plug in to visualize the soundwave for you, so I am posting also a screenshot of my Isotope Software so you can see that the waves look just as magical as the sound itself.
There the next day we had a day tour in the rainforest. Later on, we would have a walk in the village and then a night tour. During the day walk in the early morning we were walking around park Analamazaotra which is the rainforest near Andasibe. And what we saw there was a tiny little tree frog which was basically 1 cm big super cute and it’s a natural plant where it lives that’s its natural environment. We also saw one of the leaf geckos, the mossy leaf-tailed gecko. If the guy hadn’t told me it was there I definitely would not have seen it. It blends in so perfectly, just looks like the bark. It is insane how well it disguises itself. It’s called the master of disguise for this gecko.
It was just such a pleasure to walk through the forest and little bridges and just… I love rainforest what struck me is that in Madagascar sadly there are not so many birds you can see some, of course, but generally, there are not as many as you would see in other countries even in desert countries you see more birds, but what I noticed on the other hand, especially around the desert areas around the Baobab area, where the road is really bad, is that you can see so many butterflies everywhere and also some giant butterflies like there is a black butterfly with white dots I don’t know the name of it but it’s gorgeous and I have been trying to capture it throughout the whole trip and I think in Belo, I finally managed to do it.
On the way back from the day tour, we stopped for lunch and after lunch, the bus dropped some of us at the entrance of the village. A few other people and I wanted to walk. It is a really cool village and it was definitely way different than what we were used to seeing when you drive through the country so I kind of wanted to explore it with its tiny little streets cute two-story houses made of wood and artisan stores on the first floor of every house or little stores on the first floor where people sell their things and I assume they live on the second floor. It was very cute and I loved walking around it. This is also where we entered multiple art stores where they would sell different sorts of local crafts and arts. They can make all sorts of beautiful things out of natural materials like the raffia palm tree, fishing string, can tin pieces and whatnot. It’s pjurely amazing and such a joy to support them by buying these items! I came back with way too many things and kept getting more stuff even when I knew I virtually had no space left in my bag and in the end I went back with an extra bag to hold some of my items. But anyways.. back to the story
What followed next was the nighttime tour where we saw a lot of animals. THe night tour was this time super close to the hotel. Still the same forest, but another entrance. The issue with most of the night tours is that normally you cannot enter the park at night so you walk along the park onto the road instead. And that’s not very appealing, so we cancelled some of the previous night walks for that reason. But this one allowed you to go into the park with a guide. The issue I had was that all guides had super bright headlights and were shining in the eyes of the animals which blinds them. I asked several times that they do not do that, to my guide and to others around, but they were so succumbed to the pressure to please their tourists that they didn’t care. I asked at the end our guide to please try to educate his fellow villagers who worked as local guides not to do that and to protect their wildlife. I cannot imagine these poor creatures having to ensure that every night, it’s horrible. So our guide would shine below or above the animal, it works better for photos anyway, with shining directly on the animal I get a white blob in the end so also for the tourists it’s not helping. We saw a tiny mouse lemur, a boa and a super pretty tree frog of which I have the perfect shot!