lemurs, street food, and carelessness

The streets are covered in food vendors
His looks good but I'll try hers
We sit down, in the center of town,
And start our meal with cucumbers.

Three pieces of fish, ten of shrimp,
Rice, eggs, hot sauce, don't be a wimp.
Scarf it down in the center of town,
Walk to the next stall with my gangsta limp.

Bonjour ca va? What is that?
I get five skewers with some meat and fat.
Can't scarf it down, inthe center of town
So I feed it to the feral cat.

How much you say just two twenty?
Somosas, soup, I've had plenty.
I rub my bell in the center of town,
I walk to the hotel contently.


We spent a couple days in a national park called L'Ankarana, nice tropical dry forest with some good examples of tsingy, which is sharp limestone formations with forests of succulents growing on them. Visited a giant bat cave with thousands of bats and giant stalactites and stalagmites. And best of all, saw lots of leaping lemurs. Three different species: crowned, Sandords, and northern sportive lemurs. The latter are nocturnal, and we only saw the little guys with their heads peeping out of tree cavities where they rest during the day--always sleeping with one eye open. We got much closer to the lemurs than we would have thought. As close as 5 or 6 feet. Also saw lots of birds, chameleons, geckos, and got in some good exercise--one day hiking 14 miles.

Today we went climbing at a local spot near Diego. We were a bit careless and ended up with a bag of stuff and our lunch stolen. Nothing absolutely essential, but a big bummer regardless. And we had just been starting to think that we were warming up to this town. On our moderate 3 pitch climb we had beautiful views of the bay--supposedly the second largest bay in the world after Rio de Janiero. This town in the north that has been our home base for the frist half of the trip in Madagascar--Diego Suarez--is an interesting one. It is full of old lecherous French men with beautiful young Malagasy women on their arms. Tough to stomach really. Tomorrow we head back to the capital and from there we will make our way to the west.