June 9-10 - rest days in Antananarivo

Rest days... blog, laundry, a few things like that. We wandered a bit of the central area on Friday... 

memorial for Malagasies who died in wars fighting for they French

human power on the city too - goods to market, and take the whole family along
and share the road with everything else



presidential palace

 ...including going through the market which is typically full of everything you can imagine in little alleyways where there is hardly room to move.

Friday night we went out for dinner with Tiana, our driver from the first two weeks here and his family including his son Deric who is working as part of the support crew for TDA for the cycling. Absolutely delightful people. Tiana and Lea work very hard for what they have and while doing so they have instilled in their family a similar work ethic and desire for education.

Deric (who is part of our support crew, us, Tiana (our driver from earlier), Harena, Lea, Mamitiana

Saturday we took a trip out to the Lemurs' Park with Deric and his cousin Mamitiana - the Lemurs' Park is set up as an environmental education centre where the habitat is protected, but the Lemurs can come and go as they wish, which basically means that they stay there because outside, the environment isn't suitable and on top of that, they get regular meals at the Park. Young ones are released back into the wild elsewhere in the country.

Coquerel's Sifaka

Crowned Sifaka

Coquerel Sifaka

Madagascar Kingfisher in the Lemur Park

a sleepy Black and White Ruffed Lemur

Ring-tailed Lemur - how many tails?

Bamboo Lemur

Tomorrow morning, we start cycling from the hotel in the middle of Tana - Sunday, and early, so they hope the traffic and all that will not be a problem - almost certainly we'll have an interesting time. Then it's six successive days on the bike, camping the first four nights, so we'll certainly be outside wifi and other such communications for most of the next week.