Mangroves and National Parks

So much has happened since I last wrote! Snorkeling, mangroves, camping, national parks, climbing mountains…

The story starts with snorkeling. After our brief stay in Tulear, we spent a day snorkeling in a coral reef. This was my first time ever seeing a reef. It’s a whole other world in such a habitat! The water is perfectly clear, so you can easily see all of the wildlife down below. There were octopi, brightly colored fish, clams, starfish, and colorful lobsters. I can understand how people become obsessed with this part of the marine world. It is something else.

After the day of snorkeling, we visited a mangrove restoration site run by a couple from Belgium. This was also my first time ever in a mangrove, and I really liked it. The plants and animals there are fascinating. Mangrove trees must find an alternative way to breath since they cannot do so in the waterlogged, saline soil; this means they do funny things like put out roots above ground (pictured below) or breath through their trunks. Also, there were gajillions of crabs. In literally every square inch of soil, one finds a small hole in which a crab lives. My favorite animal just might have been the mudskippers (pictured below), which are fish that go above water and hop from mud clump to mud clump.

Next, after those excursions, we started a five-day round of camping, hitting three different protected areas: Isalo, Anja, and Andringitra.

Isalo is my favorite protected area so far in all of Madagascar. There are so many of my two favorite (at least at the moment!) kinds of organisms: ferns and orchids. The more there are of these in a place, the more I like the place. Isalo was packed! We went on a couple of nice hikes there to admire the richness of the biodiversity. There were a variety of plant community types: lush palm-filled swimming pools with ferns and liverworts decorating the wet rock surfaces, and grassy balds with beautiful wildflowers and rough-barked trees in the dry valleys. The next four pictures show some of the plants and scenery of Isalo.

Anja was the next protected area we visited. Its plant communities were different from those of Isalo. Anja felt a little bit wetter and more rainforesty (maybe this is because it downpoured on us at the campsite…). After a hike up a shaded soil trail, we hit some dry rock outcrops, which we had to climb up. It was here that I discovered that I have an overpowering fear of steep rock surfaces on which there is nothing to grab. At least the view from the top was breathtaking (see picture below). I appreciate the guides who let me hold their hands!

Our last stop was Andringitra, which is composed of a series of tall mountains, including Peak Boby, which is the second tallest mountain in all of Madagascar. We climbed it! It was an extremely difficult hike in that it was long and steep, but not so difficult that it was miserable. Instead, it was a pleasant and beautiful workout. When I got to the top, it was cloudy, so I didn’t see down into the valleys but instead into an ominous, foggy rockland that resembled Mordor in the Lord of the Rings (see below). On the way down the mountain, things took a turn for the worst. It started raining… just before I had crossed over the scary, steep rock faces lacking plants and such to grip. I already tremble while walking across steep rock surfaces, but it gets twenty times worse when these rock surfaces are wet. I felt so close to death. I cried a couple of times and held the hands of several different guides who I deeply, deeply appreciate and who must have thought I was pathetic. What can I say? I’ve just been telling myself that this fear of falling stems from a powerful desire to continue living, and at least I can kind of take pride in that. I started to feel like I would never get down the mountain, but I finally did (and not because I fell off of it!). Now I’m going to erase the horrifying descent from my memory and just focus on how I climbed the second tallest mountain in Madagascar. The only reason we didn’t climb the very tallest is that it takes days of travel by foot to even get to the base of it (it’s way out into an undeveloped countryside).

After conquering/surviving the Andringitra massif, we concluded our camping upon arriving in a large city called Fianarantsoa, from which I write to you right now. We are staying in a wonderful hotel with hot, running water, so I just took my first shower in five days. We’ve been going without daily showers so frequently that I’m noticing my body is starting to adapt. My face and hair aren’t getting as oily as quickly – to my great delight! I’m beginning to question my tendency to clean so thoroughly each day when I’m at home in the States. Maybe the human body is not supposed to be that clean that often.

What’s in store after this R&R in Fianarantsoa? Tomorrow, we’re heading out for another, briefer round of camping in a protected area called Ranomafana, which is composed of humid rainforest (I can’t wait to see this!). Then, we’re heading to Antananarivo (Tana for short) for a week. Finally, at the beginning of April, we go our separate ways to undertake an Independent Study Project.

My Independent Study Project (ISP) is almost set-in-stone. I’m planning to do an orchid survey of the three different QMM mining sites, in each of which is a protected area of littoral forest that will not be taken down for mining. An in-depth orchid survey has not yet been done in these areas. My plan is to camp for a week in each of the three areas. In each area, I will determine what orchid species are present and what the abundance is of each. Then, I’ll spend a week organizing plant specimens and data and writing up my paper. The American scientists and QMM researchers that I’ve talked to strongly emphasized the desire and need for such a study. Some species in these areas, they’ve told me, aren’t even named yet!

I’m excited about this opportunity to be doing important and pioneering field research for my ISP. Although I like soft beds and taking showers every day, I happily give these comforts up to be doing such research in a beautiful forest on beautiful organisms that are not yet understood. (By the way, I’m not going three weeks without a shower. I will have a chance to take one at least once a week, which is well within reason.) An additional excellent aspect of this project is that QMM will heavily support me by providing me with a research assistant, a guide, and a cook to camp with me in each forest. They will also provide transportation between sites and, should I need it, medical assistance. Furthermore, I will have an advisor with whom I can meet each week, and he is awesome – he knows the professors of my study abroad program, is nice, and knows the flora of the three mining areas very well.

The future is bright! Ranomafana, then Tana, then four weeks in the littoral forest searching for orchids.

Andohahela National Park

The group and I just got back from a three-day camping excursion to Andohahela National Park. The park is composed of three parcels: one containing rainforest, another containing dry forest, and another containing transitional forest (transitional between humid and dry forest). We camped out in the transitional forest. I saw lots of awesome plants and beautiful landscapes. There were also plenty of lizards, chameleons, and insects. There are lemurs in this type of forest, but we didn’t see any, perhaps because of the rains brought in by the hurricane.

The academic focus of this excursion was botany, so I was a happy camper. We learned how to do simple botanical surveys in quadrants of a set size, and then we set off to conduct a little survey of our own. We were divided into groups of 5-6 students, both American and Malagasy, and each group was given a quadrant of 10 meters by 10 meters. My group divided up the work as such: a few of us focused on herbaceous plants, a few on shrubs, and a few on trees. This sped up our survey. I worked on the herbaceous plants. Since herbs weren’t included in the species guide we were using, we drew pictures and made small collections to facilitate identification later. It was often difficult to tell if a plant was truly herbaceous; many of the young plants on the ground were little plantlets of the trees in the canopy and thus not destined to remain herbaceous. It was also difficult to tell if a certain herb we saw was a species we had already noted or not, as differing species of herbaceous plants can sometimes very closely resemble each other in the absence of flowers and fruits. We did our best despite these challenges and came out with solid information about what was in our quadrant (mostly monocots in the genera Panicum and Commelina).

The trees in this forest were commonly bottle-shaped (with a trunk especially thick at the base; this serves to create a water reservoir for the plant). There were also several spikey and/or succulent plants, in families like Didiereaceae and Euphorbiaceae. Some of my favorite plants that we saw were a lycophyte (of the genus Selaginella), a hairy blue-green fern (Notholaena lanceolata, pictured above), and two species of Kalanchoe that can reproduce asexually be developing little plantlets around the edges of their leaves. I also totally dug this plant that I think is in the genus Pachypodium; it’s a stunted bottle-shaped tree that grows on rock surfaces that have collected a bit of soil. On the thin branches coming out from the top of the fat trunk are spikes leading up to the tips, from which radiates a circle of leaves. Somebody in my survey group called these little baobab-like trees “bonsaibabs,” which made me laugh embarassingly (as nobody except me seemed to find this entertaining).

The final evening of camping was a time for us, the American students, to celebrate via music and dance with our Malagasy peers after all the hiking and surveying. A couple of guitars had been brought along on the trip. The musicians played songs well known in the Fort Dauphin area, where our peers are from. Some of these songs we had learned the lyrics to in our Malagasy class, so we were able to sing along, to the great entertainment of the Malagasy people present. The dancing was tons of fun. It was typically in a circle, with somebody leading (Forward! Backward! To the center! Stomp!). Sometimes, somebody would get pushed into the center of the circle to lead. This happened to all of us some three or four times. When I got pushed into the center after having already used up all my moves (I have very few moves), I just pretended I was a T-rex (aka, walking strangely and waving around puny peg-arms in sync with the music). I was excited (and astonished) when people came up and shook my hand afterwards.

The next morning, we headed out. It’s customary to bring your host family a gift after having been gone. It doesn’t have to be anything huge, just something to show that you remembered them while you were gone. Our bus made a special stop at a market on the way back so that we could pick something up. I brought back a bunch of ten small bananas (50 cents total) along with a beautiful little elephant-ear like plant with pink polka dots on its leaves (75 cents). My family was very happy with these gifts! And I was most certainly happy to come back to their warm welcome and excellent cooking. Along with this, there was an additional delight upon the return: during my absence, my family had acquired a puppy. This makes me twenty times more excited to be here. I don’t often have the chance to hang around with puppies! The puppy’s name is Boulboule, and he friendly and spunky. It’s good to be back!

Hike of Extremes

Today, I hiked up Peak Saint Louis with the students of my study abroad program and the Malagasy students of CEL (Centre Ecologique de Libanona). Some members of our host families came, too. From my family came Zo, my host sister.

The hike was insanely difficult. The most difficult one I’ve ever done and will probably ever do, without contest. The trail was thin and steep, and it followed several mountains. We mounted and descended some three or four peaks before finally making it to the top of the tallest and final peak. Adding to the challenge of the climb was the affliction of travelers diarrhea, the high temperature, and the burning intensity of the sun. A few SIT students got seriously burned. For some, this is the first time they’ve ever been sunburned in their lives! And some were especially sun-sensitive due to being on doxycyclone (spelling?), an anti-malarial medicine. I’m usually a prime candidate for becoming fried lobster, but not today! (I owe you my life, Spf 70 Sunscreen.)

I drank two liters of water in total throughout the hike. I’ve probably never even had that much water in a day before. I sweated similarly enormous quantities, and my shirt afterward smelled like… well, let’s not talk about it.

On a positive note, I saw some of the most beaux paysages (beautiful landscapes) that I’ve ever seen. In fact, beautiful views surrounded us throughout the entire duration of the hike. This helped us pull through. During most of the hike, we were able to see mountains, forest, city, and ocean all at once. I was also excited to see lots of interesting plants, especially tree ferns, beautiful flowers, and highly adapted plants living in the rock outcrops. I saw several lizards and cool bugs too.

The end of the hike was a huge moment of relief. A cold bucket shower was sheer joy. Putting on clean clothes and stuffing the dirty ones deep, deep, deep into the dirty laundry bag – ecstasy. Now I’m relaxing on my bed as I type this and work on some readings for next week. I’m comfortably sore and filled with endorphins.