Madagascar has very unique flora and fauna. My main goal in Madagascar was to have lemurs jump on me, whereas Amie’s goal was got see a giraffe necked weevil (a small weevil with a very long neck). Our local guide said that they were rare.

On 12/4/2024 as we were checking out of our cabin at the Vakona Forest Lodge, a porter showed us another comet moth. We tipped him, which caused other porters to bring us other bugs (which was not necessarily my intention). One of the bugs they brought us was a small giraffe necked weevil!

After checking out of the lodge, we toured the town of Andasibe (which has a population of roughly 5,000 people). The houses were mostly two stories tall and were made of wood. On the main street, the bottom floor was usually a business of some kind.

Charlie arranged for a local to allow us to tour her house. She had one of a few houses that were chosen to host several Americans in the past (mostly because she had a small shower and an actual toilet vs., a hole in the ground). She was very welcoming. Her house was very clean, small, and efficient, with three main rooms on each floor. Each room connected to another room (no hallways) and she had the steepest stairway I have ever seen (with no handrail). The power was out at the time of the visit.

After our short visit, Amie and I exited the town using a small bridge on the south of the town while Charlie brought his car around to meet us at the former Andasibe train station.

On our drive back to Antananarivo, Charlie explained that he wished that he lived in Andasibe rather than Antananarivo as it was cheaper and they had more reliable electricity and water. This surprised me as Andasibe seemed very primitive, whereas Antananarivo seemed much more metropolitan and upscale.

Upon returning to Antananarivo, however, I could start to see Charlie’s point. There were some nice houses, but the majority were not very nice. The place smelled (they have a huge dump in the middle of town) and traffic was among the worst that I’ve seen (it made me long for Seattle traffic). We did some souvenir shopping and then returned to the Novotel hotel. Our flight to Nairobi was at 2am, so we didn’t spend the entire night, but this did allow us to clean up and to take a short nap (we were both very sleep deprived – mostly from jet lag). At the airport we said goodbye to Charlie and tipped him very well.