Sailing away from the zoo

We are ready to leave the Palmarium after a couple of nights – we had planned to stay three nights but we both felt two nights was more than enough so we get ready to leave the reserve and go back to where we came from and spend an extra night there instead. An additional advantage is it will be good for the budget to leave Palmarium and get to a somewhat more budget friendly accommodation.

Lemur at Palmarium

Still looking for bananas

We bring our bags from the bungalow to little covered place close to the stair down to the boat which will take us bag to the road. The bags are not left unguarded while we are waiting for the boat to get ready – a lemur is standing on top of them making sure nobody else will touch them. Maybe it managed to sniff down an apple inside the bags I am not sure but the lemur seems to insist on being our personal baggage security guard.

After a bit of wait the boat is ready to take us back to the spot where we boarded the boat two days ago. I think this is the first time during the last days we can actually see a little bit of blue on the sky. The rain has stopped for now and we are ready to start the sail. The lack of rain mean we can keep the windows open on the boat for the sail back which means it is actually possible to enjoy the view of the landscape and vegetation along the canal we are sailing along.

The landscape is nicer to look at today since the weather is better and we can see a few of the locals going around their daily life along the water. They are doing washing and fishing in the canal.

After an hour and a half we get to the first of our destinations. We arrive at the restaurant at the water edge – but it is a bit early to go for lunch so we decide to continue the journey of the day.

Unfortunately our shuttle to the car isn’t available – it is busy shuttling somebody else from the main road to the water edge. After a bit of a wait the shuttle arrives and we can start the drive back towards the car. The trip from the road to the water was pretty bumpy – but the large amount of rain the last couple of days has done nothing to improve the condition of the road. It is even worse than it was two days ago. So we are in for an hour of being thrown around the car until we have finally managed to do the 7 kilometers to the main road.

The car is still parked at the parking lot right where we left it two days ago so we can continue our journey towards Andisabe. It is nice to go out to the good smooth sealed road after being bumped around for an hour – but traffic out here is somewhat heavier than the small dirt road with all the many trucks going towards the capital from the main port of the country. Despite the trucks we still make reasonable good progress and make it to our hotel in a few hours.