Author Archives: Lesli W.

About Lesli W.

Yogini, photographer, writer, wanderer, wonderer, philosophizer, dog's best friend, reluctant but sometimes sparkly introvert, curious one, believer in magic.

A holiday spent doing elephant science: Part II (some science, some other stuff)

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Okay, so every day wasn’t elephant counting and monitoring and dung sampling. Yes, I really went to South Africa for my vacation and spent at least a small amount of time looking at, taking photos of, measuring, and rooting around in, elephant dung.

Read Part I of this series here. And read about the Bring the Elephant Home program and our mission: What happens when you drop a fence.

The Bring the Elephant Home program was structured to give us several days in the field, a day or two in the “office” doing projects (I wrote a blog post, created a few new visuals for the team, and contributed a BUNCH of photos for the ID project… and I’m trying to put together a Hackathon project to use AI for elephant ID. More to come on that as it progresses!), and time to see the local area and learn even more about Xhosa culture.

We watched some presentations on other conservation being done in South Africa and abroad, one by Bring the Elephant Home’s Antoinette van de Water on her work on the value of elephants [read the white paper here, or take a look at her TedTalk here], and by the amazing work being done in rewilding by Brett Mitchell of the Elephant Reintegration Trust. Their motto, “helping elephants in captivity or distress to gain the freedom they deserve” says volumes about the work they’re doing. (Know any gajillionaires? A new project they’re working on to create a sanctuary and rewilding center near Kariega needs funding. Let me know and I’ll put you in touch with the right people!).

A small public service announcement: If you are fortunate enough to see elephants in their native land and have the opportunity to ride or touch captive elephants, please DON’T! Just please don’t patronize these businesses. These types of business exist at the expense of the health and welfare of the animals. [read more here]

Elephants are sentient, endangered beings, mistreated and quite often drugged in order to be submissive enough for human entertainment; in the process they suffer years of emotional and physical hardships. Having seen captive elephants first-hand in Thailand and India, and wild elephants in Africa, I can assure you that there is nothing more exquisite than watching a wild elephant in its natural habitat. There is absolutely nothing satisfying about watching a captive elephant. [rant off]

One of the events later in the week was an offsite visit to the home of one of the Kariega Foundation’s staff for an afternoon cooking demonstration! Xhosa cuisine is comprised of quite a lot of meat, but also their staple starch called samp, a corn meal derivative that seemed a lot like the East African fufu or ugali, made with cassava, that I tried in Botswana and Zimbabwe. Beans or sauces (meaty and non) are poured over the samp, as other cultures would use rice or potatoes.

Lunch!

Fears of cultural appropriation dancing in my head, our faces were dotted with Xhosa-style paints, and we donned handmade clothes and beaded neck wraps. Our smiling hosts guided us into the kitchen and outside to the fire upon which we heated stews and baked the bread we had just hand-rolled. Note: It was a bad time to have quit bread, as these hot-off-the-fire rolls were simply divine. The afternoon culminated with a demonstration of local song and dance by kids from the neighborhood, replete with drums and chanting. This dancing show gave me pangs, as in cultural experiences I’ve had elsewhere in Africa: I wondered if the kids participating in the show resented their elders for making them show off for the visitors, or if the joy on their faces during the dancing and singing was genuine, and whether they were grateful to share this expression and pride of culture. I hoped for the latter, as they did appear to be quite enjoying themselves. The smiles were genuine. Ours too.

Over the course of the 10 days, we learned, we did research drives, we walked along the white sand beaches of Kenton-on-Sea, and even did a night drive through the dirt roads we spent so many days travelling in our quest to find the herds. Jackals and kudu, white rhinos and rhinoceros beetles (one, landing on my neck, was an unwelcome visitor!)…and the Southern Cross in the Milky Way-spattered sky. But the highlight of the evening, as we were heading back to camp in the darkness, was a weird little creature we saw scampering down the dusty road, looking like a cross between a tiny bear and a marmot. He ducked down into a dry gully as we stopped, popping up only a metre away from the vehicle to stare down his smarmy nose at us. A honey badger! To quote even our naturalist, “I’ve never seen one of these in person before.”

We went up to Addo, a national park an hour away that boasts an elephant population of ~300. It’s rumored that a couple of Addo bulls are planned to be transferred to Kariega to help balance out and give some adult supervision maybe to a young and randy bull population over there (stay tuned, maybe that will be a new research opportunity!). The day was drizzly and spitty, but it was still fun to see dozens and dozens of eles at the different watering holes throughout the park.

It’s not without irony to me that there are really no wild wild animals remaining in South Africa. Their wild stocks have been poached and hunted to near-extinction; the wild lands, animals and all, are all now locked behind fences to protect them from the most alpha predator of all.

It was fitting, then, on our last day, that we spent time in the pouring rain visiting the APU, the Anti-Poaching Unit, at Kariega. These rangers steadfastly protect their eles and rhinos (black and white) from said predators. In fact, while visiting the team, we were privileged to a sighting of Thandi and two of her calves. Thandi is famous in these parts for being the only rhino to have survived a brutal poaching attempt in which two others in her crash (an apt collective noun for rhinos!) where brutally murdered. Thandi’s face was mauled when they hacked off her horn, but hers is a survival story that speaks to the valiant efforts of surgeons and conservationists alike to restore her face and her family. Since the poaching in 2012, she has created a small battalion of rhinos and now has grand-babies roaming the thicket and savannah of Kariega in her honour. On our first game drive, we met Colin, Thandi’s 2nd calf. According to Kariega’s website, that calf was named Colin in memory of the reserve’s founder, a man loved and admired by many, who had died just days before Thandi gave birth. The name Colin means ‘victory of the people’. White rhinos in this case.

  • Colin
  • Black rhino
  • Black rhino (notice the radio collar on his leg?)
  • Not a rhino 😉
  • Thandi and 2 calves

The skies cleared just as we realised we were running late for lunch and our ride back to Port Elizabeth. We hadn’t managed to spot more than one or two elephants in the distance all day. But just like a cheesy movie, as we were losing hope, we managed to get a ping from Beauty’s collar – the one that had been malfunctioning all week. She was about a kilometer away from the fence at the edge of the Kariega Conservation Center. Of course she was. So as it turned out, in our last moments of our last game drive on our last day in Kariega, we were treated to a close encounter with the whole of Beauty’s herd, a brightening sky, and baked-in memories to last half a lifetime.

Late that night, in a hotel room in Cape Town, which felt like a million light years away from the reserve, I saw a WhatsApp message to our group from Brooke, the PhD researcher: “Beauty and Half Moon came up to the fence to say goodbye.” Later still: “Bukela’s herd crossed the river!” This was the exact thing we were there in South Africa to help observe: What happens when you remove a fence.

Next up: a few days in Cape Town and a long trip home.

THIS JUST IN: Want your very own elephant prints or cards? I just launched my new print store… take a look HERE. And use coupon code TGM-15 for a 15% site-wide discount!

I spent my holiday doing citizen science in South Africa: Part I

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What draws us to elephants is a mystery. Or is it? They represent wisdom and strength and empathy. They are revered in Thailand and in India and elsewhere in Asia. Ganesh is the Hindu elephant god of new beginnings, the remover of obstacles and bringer of wisdom and luck. His name in Thailand is Phra Phikanet.

line drawing of ganesha

Across Asia and Africa, these magical and mystical creatures are worshipped in temples and simultaneously loathed in the fields, where their land is being encroached upon by farms and development. A mere “drive by” by a herd can decimate a family’s crops in minutes.

I think I’ve always been charmed by the magic of elephants, intrigued by their human-like behaviours, disgusted by humans’ treatment of them and their habitat. My first visit to Africa gave me a up-close look into those long-eyelashed orbs and I was smitten. It’s not a secret that Ganesh is something of my patron saint, and it’s certainly no surprise that I’m something of a wildlife freak. So when an opportunity to participate in Bring the Elephant Home’s volunteer program, assisting scientists with crucial behavioral research to learn more about social structure, welfare and habitat usage, I couldn’t apply fast enough.

Fast-forward 8 or 9 months, and I’m beginning to pen this on my flight home, coming down from the elephant high that has been my status quo for the last couple of weeks.

I joined the group in Port Elizabeth (recently renamed to Gqeberha), on the Eastern Cape of South Africa: a couple from the UK, a handful of Californians, and a student studying ele behaviour at a University in Johannesburg. From PE, we went up to our post at the Kariega Conservation Center at the Kariega Game Reserve. I posted a blog at the beginning of our time there called What Happens When You Drop a Fence, outlining our initial observations and the main research objectives.

What was it like?

So the 8 of us volunteers, 2 PhD researchers, and a local ecologist ventured out into the thicket of Kariega Game Reserve each day looking for elephants. While like something out of a dream, it also felt much harder than it seemed like it should have been. One might think elephants are so big, and how could you miss them, right? Well, crazy ele fact #1: they move silently. I mean, so silently that you could be sitting in a spot for a while and see or hear nothing, but a moment later, you could glance over your shoulder and see an animal the size of a Land Cruiser standing just metres away, trunk curled, sniffing in your general direction. While you’d think they’d make themselves known by heavy footsteps, their massive feet are so cushioned that they walk as if clad in slippers. In fact, more often than not, we’d know they were nearby only from the branches snapping rather than anything else (the tracking collars, when working, didn’t hurt either 😉).

Day 1

That first afternoon we went out on a game drive to get our sea legs, as it were… we saw zebra and white rhinos and giraffes and warthogs (Pumba!) and of course a few elephants. Even though it was just a couple of hours on the reserve, and we got a flat tire just before dusk and had to wait a while for another vehicle to come and bring us a spare and a new jack, it didn’t feel like a harbinger of doom for the week. Instead, it felt like the beginning of a cool adventure. Especially when I looked up and realised that the giraffes we had been watching on the other side of a hill began to creep in closer to get a peek at what we were up to out there in the scrubby thicket.

The first full day was a series of lectures on why we were there, classes on how to do elephant identification, exercises in what to look for, behaviour-wise, and a slew of what to do when things around age and sex and different behaviours and dung sampling and using the Zoomonitor app to record said behaviours. It felt like a lot.

I mentioned to my manager that we had elephant school that first day. He replied that he had heard they are good learners. Us humans, though… the jury was still out.

One of the first lessons was ageing elephants. It’s done by relative size, facial features, and behavioral characteristics. Calves (<1) can walk underneath an adult cow. Juveniles (1-4) are still suckling but may or may not have tusk buds (squeee!!!). While Intermediates (5-8) may or may not look like sub-adults (9-15), they are weaned and the females take on more and more “big sister” duties. Sub-adult bulls spend less and less time in the center of the herd as they mature and become more independent (and, you know, more like naughty teenage boys!). Adults (15 and up) come in different shapes and sizes, depending on whether they are bull or cow. I learnt so much just this first day on these different stages, not least that bulls don’t even come into their first musth until they are about 25, while cows can start having their own calves by about 11.

Once we had a decent grasp on ageing, we moved on to sexing (size, head shape, body configuration, rear view). About half-way through this lesson I felt like I might fail elephant school altogether, so I was glad that the professionals would be with us in the vehicle to help out with our ID follies!

The team uses the SEEK (System for Elephant Ear Knowledge) system which incorporates a set of features and markings in addition to body condition on a scale from 1 (emaciated) to 5 (chubbo) to identify and code the targets of our observations. I’m grateful for the visual aids we were given, as well as the Elephant Voices ethogram website which we were encouraged to review prior to arriving. This was beginning to feel like work.

The last part of our training day was to review the different behaviours we were to observe and track: continuous behaviours like locomotion, grazing, browsing (and identifying the differences therein), and all-occurrence behaviours like head shake, sniff, play spar, trunk curl, trunk to face (and whose trunk to or from whose face)… again I was appreciative of the technology at hand – the app into which we were to record said behaviours and the myriad PowerPoint decks and references that had been prepared for us novices.

As the long day wound down, we received our marching orders: review the materials and get ready for an early wake up call. We were going into the field in the morning, then breaking up into groups of 3, one to observe behaviour, one to do elephant ID, and one to be the photographer.

One can only guess which role I was more than glad to take on.

Stay tuned for more adventures from a citizen-scientist perspective. And be sure to take a look at Bring the Elephant Home’s updates page for more stories from our time at Kariega.

THIS JUST IN: I just launched my new print store… take a look HERE. And use coupon code TGM-15 for a 15% site-wide discount!

What happens when you drop a fence: 5 observations.

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Big news at Kariega Game Reserve! In December of 2023, in association with the Kariega Foundation’s habitat expansion project, BTEH supports the removal of one of the internal fences connecting the Kariega West and Harvestvale areas of the park. A key mission of the project is to give herds on opposite sides of the fence (and river) access to a broader habitat. I mean, who wouldn’t want a larger area in which to play and explore? One of BTEH research objectives is to see, in short, what happens when you remove fences and how that impacts herd behaviour and population health.

I’m reporting from the BTEH elephant research program at Kariega, March 2024. This is the first time BTEH researchers Brooke Friswold (PhD student) and Antoinette van de Water (PhD) have observed the different herds here post-fence removal. It’s an exciting time to be a part of this! [Aside: if you’ve always wondered how to get involved with elephants, are a little nerdy about research stuff, and think the idea of a safari seems a little too much like a canned experience, you’ve got to try this program! 😉]

  • Drive by
  • Collecting data
  • Dung sampling
  • Materials reclaimed from taking down the fence
  • Brooke trying to get a signal

Here are 5 observations (expected and otherwise) after fence removal:

New places to explore!
Not surprisingly, we’re already seeing herds and individuals that were once confined to the Kariega West area exploring into the Harvestvale section, and vice-versa. Elephant location, movement and interaction are monitored via GIS (geographic information systems) tracking and low range radio collars which were fitted to 6 elephants of varying ages/sexes in August of 2022. Fitting collars is a complicated and costly operation, requiring veterinarians, helicopters and scientists (plus some luck), so it was devastating to learn that more than half of the collars have failed (full collaring report here) due to twisting and malfunction. The elephants are fine, but the science is impacted. Findings during our time here in March will assist with on-the-ground identification, behaviour tracking, and dung sampling (yep!).

You see Brooke tracking Beauty’s herd via a telemetry antenna contraption in the pictures above because a 4th of the 6 radio collars is malfunctioning.

The bulls are a little, erm, randy.
Think of it like spring break: you put a bunch of single college guys in a new environment with a bunch of cute and possibly available chiquitas, what do you get? Well, scientifically, many of the males (bulls) have gone into musth, or a state of pre-musth (though per the science-y folks, this observation is still anecdotal but we found out this week that there are 3 (!!!) bulls in musth right now here at Kariega). In general musth is a stage of the mating cycle when adult or sub-adult bulls experience testosterone levels of 60 times greater than average. This makes them do weird and not-so-weird things like Following sub-adult females (cows), Touching genitals (their own and cows’), placing their “Trunk over back” of desirable cows, chasing zebras, walking around Sniffing the air, wandering far and wide, and generally getting excited for the “new meat” in the vicinity. We’ve observed and logged many of these behaviors in the Zoomonitor app, and we’ll see how this plays out (stay tuned to the BTEH updates page for details).

Amazing social excitement and interaction.
In our first days of observation here, we noticed some of the Kariega West and Harvestvale herds have meshed. Our first morning, we saw the Half Moon herd mix with Beauty’s herd. This of course throws off the ID database, which had neatly arranged individuals by herd by area, and means that our ID work this month will be crucial to not only identifying individual cows and bulls assimilating into different herds, but also tracking the potential new herds that may form as a result (see point 2). Per Antoinette, “It’s amazing to observe elephants that fully have the freedom to explore and interact and make new social connections. This is the best way to see elephants completely in their element.

  • a herd of elephants in Kariega Game Reserve

Some are travellers, some are not.
Kariega’s elephant population is roughly 75 individuals. Elephants are social and highly intelligent: emotionally and mentally. They are said to never forget, and can hold onto traumas just like people. Herds are traditionally led by an old and wise female (I began writing this post on International Women’s Day, so of course they are 😉) So with all the exploring and commingling some of the elephants are doing, one matriarch, Bukele has still not crossed the river from Kariega West to Harvestvale. Whether it is because the way to the other side is around or that the river is saltwater and thus creates a natural fence (elephants love to swim and bathe, but prefer freshwater), this remains to be seen. Camera traps, GIS tracking, and future research trips will help answer these questions…and more.

Happiness is contagious.
During our initial drives, we observed un-stressed, curious, social, and thriving elephants. As with humans, lack of stress reduces cortisol, which leads to overall better health and well-being. Additionally, seeing happy and healthy elephants put a smile on the face of everyone in our vehicle. Per Antoinette, “What we observed yesterday is like the best example of how range expansion contributes to animal well-being.” When elephants are happy, so are the people watching them. Want to learn more?

When I asked Brooke what her biggest surprise was, she commented that it is so exciting to see the different herds socialising and commingling like this. “It remains to be seen,” she said, “whether this is just exploratory because it’s new, if the new commingled herds and interactions will persist, or if they will go back to their original structures in time.”

Interested in getting involved (highly recommend!)? Go here. Now.

A final note… this blog has been cross-posted on the BTEH website (HERE). Please take a look at all the amazing articles they have on their site. The eles will thank you.

THIS JUST IN: I just launched my new print store… take a look HERE. And use coupon code TGM-15 for a 15% site-wide discount!

A Madagascar Finale, Part VI: Rhum arrangé, vanille, noix de cajou and gratitude

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A trip to Madagascar would not be complete without a seeing where its world-famous vanilla comes from. And so, on the way back from the north to Nosy Be, where I’d spend my last two nights, we stopped at a small locally-owned vanilla plantation. Here, the owner showed me his cacao trees – he opened a ripe pod, from which I tasted the surprisingly sour and custard apple-like fruit. He played the “guess the spice” game with me: peppercorns (red and black), cinnamon, lemongrass, and turmeric among others (I think I surprised him). I hadn’t ever seen any of these plants in their original state before, so it was fun to see where what I cook with comes from. And although I think this little show-and-tell was the smaller version of the larger spice sowing/growing/reaping enterprise, the experience at the vanilla farm felt a little more authentic than the one the French tourists were paying 50000 Ariary to enter just down the road. Needless to say, I left there with an armload of cocoa, vanilla, pepper and other spices, and felt like I was contributing to the livelihood of a local family.

Another curiosity on the road to the north: a certain section of the road is lined with tables. The tables are stacked with recycled tin cans. The cans are filled with roasted cashews. You go up to a stand, and for 5000 Ariary, you get roughly 250g of cashews, the equivalent of about $2 a pound here in the US (for the record, an unexpected amount of math went into writing that sentence!). We stopped at the house of a cashew guy my driver knows, and met his wife/sister/daughter who showed me how they roast and hull the cashews. Earlier in the week, we had found some cashews still on the tree. As with the spices, I had never seen a cashew in the wild, so it was another fun learning experience seeing it end-to-end. The amount of manual labor we take for granted here while consuming little luxuries crossed my mind.

Of note: raw cashew nuts contain urushiol, the same enzyme that makes poison ivy a terrible plant (or villain). This is why, even when we purchase raw cashews in those clean and tidy plastic packages back home, they are still roasted or boiled to remove the toxins. Also of note: freshly-roasted roadside cashews are about the best road snacks one could ever ask for (and if you know me, you know I like road snacks!).

I felt a little like cattle again, being shuttled from car to port to boat to island, and I was feeling sad to leave the mainland, to have left Bush Camp and the tsingy (ooh, that could be a great band name!). I landed back in Nosy Be hoping I could come back one day, but also knowing that going back to a place is never like experiencing it for the first time with beginner’s eyes.

Nevertheless, we dodged tuk tuks and people and bikes and road construction as the taxi wended its way through Hell-ville* and the other towns on Nosy Be en route to my final destination, a weird beach resort near the town of Madirokely. I would have 2 days here before flying back home.

*Hell-ville is the holdover French name for the main city on Nosy Be. Locally, it is called Andonay.

As perfectly-suited Bush Camp was to who I am, the cushy beach resort where I was booked for these two nights seemed like an ironic joke. This is no fault at all of the resort – it was lovely by resort standards: a salt water infinity pool overlooking the beach and the cove. An open-air restaurant overlooking the bay. A masseuse and a spa and a beauty salon. But on arrival I experienced a moment of sort-of culture shock, coming off a couple of weeks spent in nature and amongst much less-curated wildness.

So as I lay on a chaise lounge next to said saltwater pool and read a book while I waited for my room to be done up, I thought this for my final days: I wanted to see the town and also bring home some of the local rhum arrangé, I had planned to visit with Stella to hear about what the Madagascar Whale Shark Project is up to next, and I felt that some time to decompress a bit before transitioning back to the real world would be in order.

A rhum mission and the ugly side of paradise.

If you read only sensationalist reporting, you may hear that Madagascar is unsafe for foreigners, that human trafficking is rampant and that crime is pervasive. While I felt entirely safe during the whole of my stay, and I would recommend Madagascar as a destination 1000%, back in Nosy Be I wasn’t UNaware of the number of older European men in the company of very young local girls. I was to learn that prostitution is legal in Madagascar. According to Wikipedia, the prostitution here developed around the Japanese fishing industry; and as tourism flourished, so did sex travel and human trafficking. Because of this, Europeans, and mainly French and Italian men, are drawn to Nosy Be. During the day, they swim and snorkel and do the touristy things. By evening, they visit the bars and clubs and easily find companions. Many of the resorts here (including the one at which I was staying) have pledged against the sex trade, especially child sex trafficking which is apparently and unfortunately rampant here.

I mention this, and provide this link to the International Justice Mission, to say two things: if we don’t go to these places, these kinds of activities will continue to exist but only with fewer eyes on them. If we do go, and in the process bring practices of responsible tourism, and in doing so support local businesses that care about change, and give to charities such as the IJM, we can move the needle and help drive a better future for the girls who may have no other choices today.

I walked down the beach that afternoon, replaying the past couple of weeks in my head: the vibrant greens and blues and terracotta hues; the sea and land creatures that exist nowhere else on earth; the geologic marvels that seem to have been painted in place.

Sharks discussed and rhum arranged, I wandered around the little town. The rhum shop looked like an apothecary of sorts, shelves lined bottles of amber liquid and myriad mystery objects suspended in each. It is a local tradition here to distill rum and infuse different fruits and spices. I watched the shop owner wrap the bottles of lychee, vanilla, and ginger rhum arrangé I bought, all the while hoping the tape on the tops would hold until they arrived at their final destination. It’s a bit sad, and possibly a tad judgey, but I couldn’t help to also wonder which of the single men at the various little beachy bars were there for nefarious purposes. I didn’t stick around to find out.

It was nice to have time on my own here, with no itinerary to keep to or particular sites to see. And so I followed my own advice: relax a little, let the trip sink in. I walked on the beach, dipping my toes into the last warm tropical water I’d see for a while. I read by the saltwater pool, doing my best to ignore the pompous loudmouth nearby filling up the air with his words. At dinner, I stayed a while to listen to the local music. At breakfast the next morning, I watched in amusement as a guy drove a herd of zebu across the beach. Later, I cheered on as local school kids played football on the same sand.

And like that I was in a taxi to Nosy Be airport, nearly 3 weeks flown by like I was about to. The trip back was uneventful, but included some highlights to help the trip end on a high note: A long stopover in Addis Ababa gave me time to enjoy some really great Ethiopian food and tej, their honey wine (airport food, no less!). A night in London made me grateful for decent tea and the luxury of indoor toilets (with seats!). An aisle seat in Premium on Virgin into Boston made me want to fly this way whenever possible.

The world is an amazing place and every time I return from a trip, I feel such reverence for the natural world and such disdain for those who want to pave it in the name of modernization or turn it into a theme park under the guise of tourism.

Here’s to all the heroes I met on this trip: those who are promoting sustainable tourism and working hard to save the natural treasures; to the ones doing small acts each day to reduce plastic and educate youth and reform outdated practices and bring wonder and joy to those who come to visit.

Thank you, Madagascar.

(OMG the little feet…I can’t even!)

Madagascar Marvels Part V: Gecko love and a last blast on the mainland

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One of the couples in the group on Sakatia had done this last part of my itinerary before getting to the island, so were keen on reporting how wonderful this leg of the trip would be. The woman was also very eager to remind me to check my shoes. While I didn’t know exactly how big the cockroaches were at that point, I’ve spent enough time in nature to cautiously ask why. She proceeded to tell me that she found a scorpion in one of her boots. One of the little white ones. Ew.

So as we drove the dirt road from the main road through dry, dusty, rustic little villages, I thought about scorpions. We were going to a Bush Camp, after all. The good news is that not one of the 52 (!!!) species of scorpions endemic to Madagascar is venomous. The little white ones, apparently, still pack quite a punch.

The 35kms took almost 2 hours (did I mention the state of the roads here?) and so almost felt like a commute back home, driving virtually the same distance from home to office in roughly the same amount of time. The difference of course being the crystal blue sky contrasting against the red-dusted, 38-degree air, the tsingy springing up out of nowhere and lining the last 5kms of the drive, the zebu-dodging we did along the way, the smiling and waving children singing “salut” at me as we drove down the road… so in reality exactly nothing like a commute, except possibly a better use of time.

The next couple of days were to be spent at the Iharana Bush Camp, situated on the edges of a Tsingy massif. I don’t think I was wholly prepared for the experience: in my head was a scorpion farm, or at least a rustic bush experience and all its accoutrements – rustic huts and scary toilets not least. In front of me as we drove up was an absolutely gorgeous natural wood and stone and thatch camp that seemed to bloom and wend in concert with its surroundings. There was only one place on the camp with electrical outlets. Internet only available in another area, and then for only a couple of hours a day. Shoes completely optional. A stiff breeze created its own air conditioning as the warm air wafted through the feuilles de satrana (the roofs were thatched with the leaves of the Bismarck palm, called satrana locally). My bungalow, crafted in the style of traditional Malagasy housing (per their website), overlooks the (at present very dry) lake and, beyond it, the Tsingy massif itself. I think the Tsingy creates its own magnetic field: it is so mesmerising that you simply can’t not look at it.

Because of the heat, we wouldn’t go out hiking until later in the day, so I arrived with enough time to settle in, greet my very sweet house gecko, and have lunch, at which they were serving the local poisson fumé, smoked fish. From day 1, if I could have eaten one Malagasy dish every single day, this would have been it!

After a siesta, the first hike was to the Mandresy Cave in Tsingy Mahaloka. Like the Red Tsingy, this cave seemed to have been dripped from a prehistoric giant’s sand bucket, the stalactites and stalagmites meeting in the middle to form artworks from the limestone. Bats, check. Precarious footing, check. If I’m honest, I’m lukewarm about caves in general; it’s not the enclosure, but more the lack of sunshine that makes me want to leave a cave about halfway through. Glad to have continued on this one though: the cavern, an impressive grotte des chauves-souris (squeaks audible well before we came upon them), was absolutely massive. This cave is locally known for its population of Rousettes – the Malagasy fruit bats (Rousettus madagascariensis), just one more endemic species of this wild place.

Look through these photos: there is a special one, where I turned around shortly after entering the cave and noticed that the entrance looks like Africa itself. My guides were equally moved by the sight!

I was waking up early every day; 4:30 or 5, listening to the sounds of the Crested Drongos, Malagasy sunbirds, and the different Couas…the dawn chorus played out in so many different keys. So by the time the carpet of stars rolled out, I was firmly planted in bed, cocooned by a mosquito net.

The next morning was an early start – we would be hiking to the roof of the Tsingy, on a private trail curated by one of the local naturalists. Same rules hold here: défense de tomber, as these Tsingys are no less sharp and unforgiving as the last. The views were nothing short of stunning! And no photos will do justice to the landscape that unfolded around each turn or over each viewpoint. I am a big fan of rocky, above tree level hikes, so this really ticked all my boxes as far as hiking goes. Note the birds (gray-headed lovebirds, a gorgeous red kite, crested drongos!!), as well as the carefully placed wood and wire footbridges and handrails.

A late-afternoon bike ride through the dry lakebed and into the local village was a treat. I can still hear the children’s calls of “salut, salut” as we rode past, the kids stopping to watch and wave. I smile to think of the man I saw so gently petting the head a zebu calf as he rested beneath a tree; his well-loved herd grazing nearby. He invited me over, “caresse, touche…” He wanted me to pet the calf as well. I did. Visitors, I think, are still something of a curiosity here, as tourism hasn’t really, fully taken hold. And so we rode through the village as life unfolded: tending chickens, weaving baskets, hand-hulling rice, playing football, chasing tires with sticks… “Don’t let the modern world steal this beautiful simplicity,” I want to shout; but the fact that many of these villages still don’t have clean water makes me hope for a happy medium once tourism comes via the new paved roads they’re building here.

At this point, had I known what the following days would entail, I would have extended my stay here. But since my future sight was wonky in the heat, I got up that next day, pulled my things together, and said au revoir to this lovely oasis by the Tsingy. Not captured on film: just before I left, I went back to my bungalow and said veloma, goodbye, to the very sweet day gecko who lived in the bathroom. More than once I found him drinking from the water left in the shower, so I made it a point to leave some water for him throughout my stay. It’s like he came down to say goodbye to me. So as I slowly reached a finger towards his little nose (thinking “boop” in my head), he looked directly at me and then bravely and tentatively took the drops of water I offered before retreating up into the satrana. It’s dry season here and every drop matters.

I walked away thinking about that tiny encounter, thinking that small gestures matter, that each critter has its place. Even the horrible hissing cockroach serves some reasonable purpose (even if they make one shudder to think about them).

When I go back to Madagascar, one of the reasons will be to return to the Iharana Bush Camp.

PS: I did leave my boots overturned overnight. And I did check them again each morning. But not once did I encounter a scorpion while I was there.