Madagascar is the only place on earth where lemurs live naturally. While you can find many lemurs in zoos, some types of lemurs cannot survive in captivity. Also, it is way more fun to see the lemurs live their best lives in their natural habitat. Day 2 in Madagascar (12/03/2024) was all about seeing lemurs.

After a fantastic breakfast at the lodge, we met Charlie and drove south of Andasibe to the Parc National Andasibe Mantadia. There we met our local guide (the same one as the night before) and we spent the morning walking through the jungle looking for lemurs. You must be accompanied by a local guide and I soon understood why – we frequently had to abandon the ridiculously well-maintained trails to search for lemurs and it would be easy to get lost. Also, finding the various animals would have been impossible without the guide.

The scenery was fantastic!

The main attraction is the Indri Indri, which is the largest lemur and is critically endangered. They live high in the canopy in family groups and rarely stay in one place for long. Fortunately, they have a very loud cry (90 decibels) which makes them easier to find. As the Indri Indri cannot survive in captivity, the only way to encounter them is to visit Madagascar.

We also found a family of Diademed Sifaka (aka Dancing) Lemurs in the trees.

As the hike was winding down, we found a single bamboo lemur.

We also saw many other lizards and birds.

I found traversing the thick jungle to observe lemurs incredibly healing – almost a religious experience (even while lugging a large camera with a 400mm lens). We met other people in the jungle, and most only had their camera phones, which would have made it nearly impossible to photograph the Indri Indri.

Since I loved the jungle so much, Charlie suggested that we eat lunch at a restaurant (next to the Hotel Feon’ ny Ala) with an outdoor patio overlooking the jungle.

After lunch, we drove north to lemur island, which is tourist attraction owned by the Vakona Forest Lodge. It is illegal to keep lemurs as pets in Madagascar, so when a partially domesticated lemur is discovered, they confiscate it and send it to lemur island (which actually consists of several man-made islands, only one of which you can actually visit). Here the lemurs live in their wild habitat, but are fed and cared for by humans. As lemurs do not swim, the lemurs do not leave their island.

Prior to Covid, tourists could feed the lemurs and the lemurs would crawl all over the tourists. I saw videos of this and was really looking forward to this, but they changed the rules during Covid – tourists can no longer feed the lemurs and lemurs have been trained to not jump on the tourists (I was thrilled when one disobeyed their training). But the lemurs are still semi-tame and the island guides facilitate very close interaction with the lemurs. You take a 50 foot canoe ride to the main island (where you can walk around), and then you can paddle around the other islands to see the other lemurs from a short distance.

The main island contains many types of lemurs, including:

Common Brown Lemurs

Grey Bamboo Lemurs

Black and White Ruffed Lemurs

The adjacent island contains:

Diademed sifaka (aka dancing) Lemurs

Red ruffed Lemurs

A nearby island contains ring-tailed lemurs (their facial markings make them appear very serious, but they were very playful).

Paddling around the islands is also very scenic.

We got back to the lodge around 4pm and we hung out and relaxed for the rest of the day. In the nearby forest we heard the cry of the indri indri, which was incredibly amazing. It was an incredible day in Madagascar!