Dear all,
From the 30th of January 2012 until the 10th of February, I’ve travelled with my friend Yannick to one of the best countries in the world for herping, Madagascar. Obviously, I don’t know every countries (I’m sure Costa Rica is also highly worth the trip ) and the only down side of Madagascar is that there are no venomous snakes at all but still, after 2 weeks there, I can confirm that if you choose the right season, you won’t regret your trip. The thing is that Yannick had travelled there in July 2011 with his family so he had some good contacts with taxi guides and also for guides inside the national parks. We decided to go in January-February because it’s the rain season and a very good time to see lots of animals (during Yannick’s trip in July, it was winter in Madagascar so after a whole month of trip, he had seen less than 10 snakes and only a few cameleons).
Our targets were snakes and as you can imagine any other animals especially reptiles and amphibians. We’ve visited 3 areas, Andasibe at first (rainforest), Ankarafanstika (not as wet as Andasibe despite some heavy rains from time to time) and to finish, we’ve been to Ranomafana (rainforest). We also wanted to visit Isalo but as we were pretty tight with the timing (when you have to move from one place to another, it’s a one full day trip with the car), we’ve preferred to go to Ankarafanstika and to be honest, we haven’t regretted it (it’s the place where we’ve found the most snakes out of the three).
After a 2 weeks trip, the results speak for themselves: 16 different species of snakes, 46 pictured specimen. Not a single day without at least 1 snake but on the other hand, not more than 7 snakes a day. Even in Madagascar we’ve spent hours walking in the jungle without seeing anything and then you find 3 within a few meters. The specie we’ve found the most often was Sanzinia madagascariensis with a total of 9 specimen. Of course, we’ve also missed a few ones that we highly wanted to see: Ithycyphus perineti (you should have seen how bad our guide wanted to find one for us, I think I’ve never seen him drinking any water neither did he take any 2-3 minutes break) and Langaha madagascariensis for instance. But on the other hand, we’ve had some fantastic surprises like a night when we were looking for Stenophis arctifasciatus and found one in the vegetation. Our guide hadn’t seen one for years!
So, finally, I’ve taken the time to sort the pictures out and after my introduction, here we go with the rewards !
Andasibe 30th of January – 3rd of February 2012
Night herping: