All day long trudging through mostly mud in the Ranomafana National Park rain forest, my guide and I were welcomed by a breathtaking series of butterflies, all of them unfamiliar to me, although I could recognize swallowtails. I managed to photograph all the little ones, but two big ones kept eluding me. Finally, toward the end of our hike, the big black swallowtail with turquoise markings alighted in a wet area--and promptly closed its wings. Still, I managed to capture it...but here's the whole story.
We arrived yesterday in mid-afternoon at Ranomafana Park, after leaving Isalo at 8 in the morning. We checked in at the Manja Hotel and Bungalows, which was both recommended in the Bradt guide and approved by Ruva, our driver. It overlooked the river, on the other side of which is a banana plantation, which gives way to the cloud forest that we would explore today in the park. The weather looked threatening.
Before it got dark I took a walk towards the village and stopped by a simple cement home where three women sorted rice grains in front of the curtain which served as the front door. I greeted them and asked what they were removing--stones and rice husks. A portly man appeared and asked what I was doing. I introduced myself as a photographer, and gave him one of my good will cards, explaining who everyone was (my family and friends from many parts of the world). This broke the ice, and soon I was photographing the family, the man's brother's family who lived next door, the interior of their house, and the rear, where they had their chicken coup, their two cowsheds, a garden and a number of banana trees. They asked me where my wife was--a common question, and I told them I was divorced. They asked why, and I told them we just didn't get along./ A neighboring couple stopped by, and I photographed them, too. We exchanged addresses (they had no email), and I promised to send them prints. The man's wife gave me four green tangerines, which I recognized as satsumas. This sealed our friendship. Later when I met the brother's wife and found out her name was Alice and told them this was my ex-wife's name, they both found this hilarious.
So this morning we got up at 6 and were on the trail by 8. Barbara decided to take her own guide and a shorter trail, where she would be able to made a more spiritual connection to her natural surroundings, while I opted for the all-day 7-mile hike with a guide who actively point out the flora and fauna and be patient while I fooled with my lenses and exposures. It turned out to be the perfect solution for both of us. There was only one minor problem: it was raining. My coat with the lining removed was still pretty thick, and soon I was drenched in perspiration. The rain wasn't heavy; I didn't use the camera cover I had brought along, but I did have to keep wiping the lenses. In addition to Dauphin my guide, he engaged a wiry older man in flip-flops to be our "spotter" (Fr. "pisteur"). This man went ahead of us to spot out the lemurs and direct us over to them. He turned out to be very useful.
The first jungle we entered was a bamboo one. Certain lemurs eat bamboo, which contains cyanide, and would be fatal to humans. But my guide explained that it is thought that the mushrooms and other plants that they eat enable them to digest the bamboo. And sure enough, our spotter soon discovered a lemur calmly chomping away on a piece of pale yellow bamboo.
Looking at my photograph of this lemur I though I understood why so many people find them so endearing. Although they are primates, their faces are closer to dogs' faces than to monkeys', yet they act more like monkeys, so they come close to being the embodiement of the "humanity" we try to see in our dogs and cats.
Wherever we went we were surrounded by some of the most beautiful butterflies I had ever seen. It was like the forest in "Avatar," a wonderland almost too beautiful to believe, except that the path we were following was often rather challenging: through thick bamboo woods, down steep muddy hills, where I caught myself from falling one time by grabbing onto a bamboo stalk, but fell on my elbow another time. I tried to capture as many of the smaller creatures as I could: the chameleons and spiders with my macro lense, since they didn't move, the butterflies with my telephoto in as close range as it would allow me. There was one butterfly that kept appearing: a black swallowtail with bright turquoise markings, it was a strong flier and seemed never to alight. The other smaller butterflies I managed to photograph.
This was a true jungle, as opposed to the woodlands we had visited in Kenya and at the Parc d'Isalo, a true rainforest. The ground was always wet, and there was a pervasive humitity. The foliage grew very thick, with huge ferns that seemed to harken back to the Carboniferous age; enormous fan palms, vines twisting everywhere, and many types of broadleafed trees, including some medicinal ones that my guide pointed out. There were also two varieties of inedible coffee beans, and guava, which produces a red cherry-like berry, that we found strewn on the forest floor. Orchids, from small to minuscule, sprouted as epiphytes from treetrunks. Plants with fountain-like leaves anchored themselves in trees as parasites, eventually killing the tree. I was particularlly taken by the bamboo, growing prodigiously in enormous profusion. My guide said one stalk can grow as much as 5 centimeters in a day. Looking up at the canophy and photographing it with my super-wide angle produced an image in which a circle of bamboo stalks all aspire to the light. It's an illusion created by the curve distortion of the lense, but it makes for a very "spiritual" looking image. The contrary image is that of large palm growing in the middle of the forest, whose shadowed fronds seem to explode out from the center.
We went down a steep descent that seemed to go on forever. Luckily there were rough-hewn wooden railings to keep us from slipping. Finally we came out at a banana plantation. The fronts to the banana palm always seem particularly extravagant to me, and I framed a few images with them. I also found them dead and dried out, on the forest floor, evidently the refuse from the plantation. The forms were fascinating. A great roar got steadily louder. We were about to cross a stream, and the black and blue swallowtail reappeared, then two of them. One of them started to land on wet rock, still flapping its wings. I shot and shot, and managed to come up with some good images, even one of the butterfly in flight, with a very clear shadow.
After crossing the stream, we turned a corner and came upon a huge waterfall in several stages. After photographing it, I lay down on the damp grass and fell asleep for nearly an hour. Upon awakening, we walked through a poor village where apparently the plantation workers lived. I saw a mother and her four children, and my guide told me that the women became mothers while still teenagers. The cottages were wattle and daub with thatched roofs.
We made our way to the exit of the park past the thermal bath area, where the first president of Madagascar had an elaborate "cottage" build that still stands, and past the public swimming pool fed by the thermal waters, then across a makeshift bridge then another commercial area, where I bought a huge grapefruit for 500 ar (about 20 cents) and 3 small bananas for about 8 cents each, to our waiting driver.
That night at 6 we met the guide again, and he took us on a one-hour night tour along the road outside the park. When we arrived another guide had smeared some tree branches with banana, and sure enough, the famous brown mouse lemur, at about 5 inches long (not including tail) appeared as if on cue, and "posed" for us, as it lapped up the banana. After that we crossed the road and discovered a number of magnificient spiders, and four more chameleons, including the classic giant one. All were asleep on their branches, with their global eyes open, of course.
We arrived yesterday in mid-afternoon at Ranomafana Park, after leaving Isalo at 8 in the morning. We checked in at the Manja Hotel and Bungalows, which was both recommended in the Bradt guide and approved by Ruva, our driver. It overlooked the river, on the other side of which is a banana plantation, which gives way to the cloud forest that we would explore today in the park. The weather looked threatening.
Before it got dark I took a walk towards the village and stopped by a simple cement home where three women sorted rice grains in front of the curtain which served as the front door. I greeted them and asked what they were removing--stones and rice husks. A portly man appeared and asked what I was doing. I introduced myself as a photographer, and gave him one of my good will cards, explaining who everyone was (my family and friends from many parts of the world). This broke the ice, and soon I was photographing the family, the man's brother's family who lived next door, the interior of their house, and the rear, where they had their chicken coup, their two cowsheds, a garden and a number of banana trees. They asked me where my wife was--a common question, and I told them I was divorced. They asked why, and I told them we just didn't get along./ A neighboring couple stopped by, and I photographed them, too. We exchanged addresses (they had no email), and I promised to send them prints. The man's wife gave me four green tangerines, which I recognized as satsumas. This sealed our friendship. Later when I met the brother's wife and found out her name was Alice and told them this was my ex-wife's name, they both found this hilarious.
So this morning we got up at 6 and were on the trail by 8. Barbara decided to take her own guide and a shorter trail, where she would be able to made a more spiritual connection to her natural surroundings, while I opted for the all-day 7-mile hike with a guide who actively point out the flora and fauna and be patient while I fooled with my lenses and exposures. It turned out to be the perfect solution for both of us. There was only one minor problem: it was raining. My coat with the lining removed was still pretty thick, and soon I was drenched in perspiration. The rain wasn't heavy; I didn't use the camera cover I had brought along, but I did have to keep wiping the lenses. In addition to Dauphin my guide, he engaged a wiry older man in flip-flops to be our "spotter" (Fr. "pisteur"). This man went ahead of us to spot out the lemurs and direct us over to them. He turned out to be very useful.
The first jungle we entered was a bamboo one. Certain lemurs eat bamboo, which contains cyanide, and would be fatal to humans. But my guide explained that it is thought that the mushrooms and other plants that they eat enable them to digest the bamboo. And sure enough, our spotter soon discovered a lemur calmly chomping away on a piece of pale yellow bamboo.
Looking at my photograph of this lemur I though I understood why so many people find them so endearing. Although they are primates, their faces are closer to dogs' faces than to monkeys', yet they act more like monkeys, so they come close to being the embodiement of the "humanity" we try to see in our dogs and cats.
Wherever we went we were surrounded by some of the most beautiful butterflies I had ever seen. It was like the forest in "Avatar," a wonderland almost too beautiful to believe, except that the path we were following was often rather challenging: through thick bamboo woods, down steep muddy hills, where I caught myself from falling one time by grabbing onto a bamboo stalk, but fell on my elbow another time. I tried to capture as many of the smaller creatures as I could: the chameleons and spiders with my macro lense, since they didn't move, the butterflies with my telephoto in as close range as it would allow me. There was one butterfly that kept appearing: a black swallowtail with bright turquoise markings, it was a strong flier and seemed never to alight. The other smaller butterflies I managed to photograph.
This was a true jungle, as opposed to the woodlands we had visited in Kenya and at the Parc d'Isalo, a true rainforest. The ground was always wet, and there was a pervasive humitity. The foliage grew very thick, with huge ferns that seemed to harken back to the Carboniferous age; enormous fan palms, vines twisting everywhere, and many types of broadleafed trees, including some medicinal ones that my guide pointed out. There were also two varieties of inedible coffee beans, and guava, which produces a red cherry-like berry, that we found strewn on the forest floor. Orchids, from small to minuscule, sprouted as epiphytes from treetrunks. Plants with fountain-like leaves anchored themselves in trees as parasites, eventually killing the tree. I was particularlly taken by the bamboo, growing prodigiously in enormous profusion. My guide said one stalk can grow as much as 5 centimeters in a day. Looking up at the canophy and photographing it with my super-wide angle produced an image in which a circle of bamboo stalks all aspire to the light. It's an illusion created by the curve distortion of the lense, but it makes for a very "spiritual" looking image. The contrary image is that of large palm growing in the middle of the forest, whose shadowed fronds seem to explode out from the center.
We went down a steep descent that seemed to go on forever. Luckily there were rough-hewn wooden railings to keep us from slipping. Finally we came out at a banana plantation. The fronts to the banana palm always seem particularly extravagant to me, and I framed a few images with them. I also found them dead and dried out, on the forest floor, evidently the refuse from the plantation. The forms were fascinating. A great roar got steadily louder. We were about to cross a stream, and the black and blue swallowtail reappeared, then two of them. One of them started to land on wet rock, still flapping its wings. I shot and shot, and managed to come up with some good images, even one of the butterfly in flight, with a very clear shadow.
After crossing the stream, we turned a corner and came upon a huge waterfall in several stages. After photographing it, I lay down on the damp grass and fell asleep for nearly an hour. Upon awakening, we walked through a poor village where apparently the plantation workers lived. I saw a mother and her four children, and my guide told me that the women became mothers while still teenagers. The cottages were wattle and daub with thatched roofs.
We made our way to the exit of the park past the thermal bath area, where the first president of Madagascar had an elaborate "cottage" build that still stands, and past the public swimming pool fed by the thermal waters, then across a makeshift bridge then another commercial area, where I bought a huge grapefruit for 500 ar (about 20 cents) and 3 small bananas for about 8 cents each, to our waiting driver.
That night at 6 we met the guide again, and he took us on a one-hour night tour along the road outside the park. When we arrived another guide had smeared some tree branches with banana, and sure enough, the famous brown mouse lemur, at about 5 inches long (not including tail) appeared as if on cue, and "posed" for us, as it lapped up the banana. After that we crossed the road and discovered a number of magnificient spiders, and four more chameleons, including the classic giant one. All were asleep on their branches, with their global eyes open, of course.
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