If you ever get a chance to go to Madagascar, chances are, you’ll want to see lemurs. However, sometimes, doing the lemur safari doesn’t mean you’re going to see them. These creatures can be elusive and hard to find even if they aren’t afraid of humans.
Entering the Vakona Forest Reserve
After doing the lemur safari in Analamazotra in Andasibe, we went to the Vakona Forest Reserve to check out the famous lemur island.
To enter lemur island, our first task is to take a canoe across the water (this prevents the lemur from escaping).
As soon as we reached the island after literally a one minute canoe ride, we were greeted by a brown lemur.
These brown lemurs are trouble makers. As soon as we walked passed by him, he called his family over to jump on all of us.
At one point, I literally had three brown lemurs hanging on my jacket and on my head.
Bamboo Lemurs
The brown lemurs never lefted us alone. They literally followed us during our entire walk around lemur island.
Along the way, we met the really cute bamboo lemurs which are easily my favourite of all the lemurs I saw.
They’re a bit shy so if you offer them some fruits or leaves to eat, they are apprehensive at approaching you. But once they’re close enough, they will grab the leaves or fruits off you and start eating it happily.
Black and White lemurs, Dancing lemurs, and Red Ruffed lemurs
After playing with the Bamboo Lemurs, off we went deeper in lemur island. We eventually stumbled on a Black and White lemur. These guys don’t normally jump on people but our guide enticed one of them with a banana. Using me as a stepping platform, the Black and White lemur jumped on me and grabbed the banana off the guide.
We also saw dancing lemurs from a distance. However, we weren’t able to take a picture of it because our cameras couldn’t catch it. If only we had those fancy telephoto lense to capture the shot.
The last treat was when we saw some Red Ruffed lemurs eating some bananas on another island. They looked really different from the lemurs we already saw. It was very interesting to see a bunch of them running around eating bananas.
Crocodile farm in the Vakona Forest Reserve
After checking out lemur island, our next destination within the Vakona Forest Reserve is the crocodile farm.
While this place definitely had a lot of crocodiles, they also had tons of different animals roaming around.
Here are the ones we saw while walking through the crocodile farm area:
Conclusion
After a full day of adventure doing a lemur safari in Analamazotra and exploring lemur island and the crocodile farm in Vakona Forest reserve, we were dead exhausted.
Looking back, I think doing the lemur safari was definitely an amazing adventure in the forest of Analamazotra.
Lemur island in the Vakona Forest reserve also blew our minds and it was really cool having lemurs jump on you. Not to mention seeing more lemur species up close and even getting a chance to feed them leaves and bananas.
However, if touring the crocodile farm wasn’t part of the itinerary, I don’t think you will miss much. At best, it’s good to go through it quickly just to see some of the other wildlife living in the reserve.
After checking out the Vakona reserve, our next destination is the famous Avenue of the Baobabs!
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