The 8th Continent (Day 41)
Madagascar is sometimes called the “8th Continent.” It has lemurs dancing overhead, ancient baobab trees, and lots of super spiky rocks called tsingy. We loved learning about this remote and unusual place!
Of course, lemurs were the highlight. Small primates found only in Madagascar, lemurs were so playful and graceful. They became our new favorite animal! (More on them and other animals in Leaping Lemurs.)
Baobabs are massive trees that can live over 1,000 years and survive with very little water. They are the world’s largest succulent. Most species of baobabs are only found in Madagascar, and it is their national tree. Here are Ashley and Hazel in front of an 800-year-old baobab that was 13 hazel arm spans in circumference.
Tsingy are mysterious spiky, hole-filled rocks that were all over the place. We were told they are limestone formations made over hundreds of millions of years from ancient coral reefs when Madagascar was under water.
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WHY IS MADAGASCAR SO DIFFERENT?
Madagascar became its own island around 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs were still walking the earth. This means that Madagascar had a long time to follow its own evolutionary path, and the result is that about 75 percent of Madagascar’s animals and plants are endemic — meaning only found here. People are still discovering new species all the time, some by guests walking around our hotel.
Another unusual think about Madagascar is that people arrived here incredibly late. Permanent settlement only began 1,500 years ago. For reference, humans have been in Africa maybe 200,000 years ago, and we made it to far away Australia about 50,000 years ago. Humans made the difficult journey to North America about 15,000 years ago. How did we miss Madagascar for so long?
Surprisingly, the original settlers came from Borneo, today part of Indonesia, some 5,000 miles away. Later, Africans and Arabs came here too to create the unique Malagasy culture, which still has a strong Polynesian influence.
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ADVENTURES
We took Hazel on a hike to a cave where we saw the skull of an extinct giant lemur, deep in an underground spring. To get there, we had to walk past a number of large hairy legged land crabs.
We kayaked through the mangrove swamp, with its twisted roots.
Another day, we hiked to a different cave filled with human skeletons. No one is quite sure who they were. One fun detail: Madagascar was once a popular hideout for pirates who attacked the ships trading goods between Europe and India/ Asia.
Probably our best day: when we sailed to a deserted cove to play on the beach. On the way, we saw a mushroom-shaped tsingy island.
Our captain caught a barracuda which he cleaned and cooked right before us. We never ate barracuda before!
Hazel had fun snorkeling!
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FRIENDS!
But the most exciting thing in Madagascar?? For the first time in 45 days, there was a family with kids at our hotel! (Not many kids travel outside of school vacation.)
Here is a underwater photo Hazel took of one of her buddies.
