The lemurs of Isalo

This is my lemur entry. We'd trudged through the desert for six hours to see this troupe of lemurs, of course they were worth it. The little fella above was a very weird caterpillar, about three inches long and with comparatively bigger bushier eyebrows than Dennis Healy! Lol! Can you see the resemblance?!

I loved the flame red bush in the next photo, it stood out amongst the harsh desert landscape.

The lady on the left comes from a tribe who inhabits the desert, the white stuff on her face is a kind of make up applied to ensure she doesn't burn in the hot sun.

A close up of a branch of that tree.

This is Carol, one of our group walking along the path to see the lemurs, we walked for about an hour before we got to them. Mohamed had said it'd take 40minutes but I think we'd slowed down considerably after the long trek in the desert that morning!

After our well deserved picnic lunch we carried on a little way to where the lemurs live. This was our first sight of them.

Look at the sweet little baby! Lemurs live in troupes of twenty to thirty. They're very tactile creatures and are always hugging each other.

This group in the tree were having a long conversation!

They seem to make a fuss over all the babies, not just their own.

With such cute babies I'm not surprised!

Communal prayer meeting or group hug?!

This one ran down the tree landing at our feet and ran straight past us down the road.

He seemed to be offering a helping hand to the others!

They have gorgeous amber coloured eyes.

They aren't nervous with people around but they're very alert to sounds in the forest.

I think they're trying to protect the baby, you can just see his tail poking out!

He looks very chilled out at the back doesn't he?!

The others aren't so laid back!

Mum and baby came down to the ground.

This one stayed in the tree on the look out.

It was nice to watch their interactions.

There was a lot of foliage in the way of this shot. That's the trouble with taking photos of wildlife; you can't get them to pose away from branches!

I love this one, the way they hugged when they met or departed was so sweet!

They never keep still for a minute! Very busy creatures!

They're very intelligent primates, it was so good to be able to see them acting naturally in the wild. I've seen them in zoos just sitting around looking so bored.

The next place we went to was our last destination. Tulear is on the south west coast of Madagascar and we were spending three nights at a beach hotel. We deserved a rest after our long hikes through rain forests and deserts! The drive there was another scenic one passing through villages and meeting even more of the different tribes. There are eighteen tribes in Madagascar. We met the Merina, Bara, Betsileo and Mahafaly tribes on our journey.

I hope you're all getting to grips with Blogspot, it still doesn't feel like home to me but I like the way the photos come up really bigand they load through Photobucket much faster than AOL's ever did! I can download five photos in about twenty seconds onto an entry.

I'll see you next time and we'll head towards the beach with its white sand, turquoise sea and blue skies, plus the odd palm!

Have a great weekend!