Saint Patrick’s Day 2011

Well, I spent my favorite holiday sitting in our vahsa van for about 12+ hours en route to Majunga. The trip was pretty bearable. Somehow we’ve managed to still come up with new car games, so my game collection has expanded exponentially. <3 car rides. As per usual, I took some pictures along the way.

An hour outside of the national park we were staying at, called Ankarafantsika, we got a flat tire which resulted in 17 vasha standing on the side of the road in the rain for about an hour. Fortunately they had a spare and our handy bus driver was able to put the spare tire on in the darkness. It was special…

We arrived at the campsite at dark and there was no light since the generators had already been turned off. This is our camp site.

And my lovely tent-mate.

Yes, they fit two people and all of our luggage for the entire trip in those tents. It was cramped to say the least. But there weren’t any bugs inside, so yay!

The next morning we went on a nature walk and saw some lemurs and chameleons.


The tiny sportive lemur. We also watched the Raptor Bird, the sportive lemur’s predator circle and think about eating him. Exciting!

 A super cool lemur who enjoyed watching us more than we enjoyed watching him.

A fifth grade picture of our footwear. Yes, I did bring Vibram toe shoes to Madagascar and wear them often.

We also saw a project working to repopulate an almost extinct duck population. It was interesting because there are like 40 of this population left in the world… but it also doesn’t have a natural habitat anymore and possibly can’t survive on its own… ever. My thoughts on this program were mixed. Also, the pictures of the ducks aren’t very interesting so I’m not uploading any.

And then I let Ashley take my camera. So these next couple are her’s.

Kely (tiny in Malagasy) Turtles!

And then we became slightly bored with the presentation so we started doing things like this…

Then we went to a women’s weaving place. The pictures from that are just silly because we were really bored. I’ll spare you.

And now we’re in Mahajunga with our new families! Pictures to come.