Oct 6 – A Walk in a Spiny Forest.

Today we will have a walk in a spiny forest.  Along the way to our trail head, we encountered a large herd of zebu being moved down the road.

The village we passed on our way to the spiny forest. 

Some of the fascinating plants seen in the spiny forests.  The tall, skinny ones are called octopus plants because these large “trunks” often grow bent and curved.  And there can be many of them, like legs on an octopus.

This baobab tree had a platform built into the side of it.  Baobabs are used as water storage reservoirs and the platforms built to allow access to the water.

There were a surprisingly large number of animals here.

White-Footed Sportive Lemur

White Lemur.  Several with babies.

Ring-tailed lemur

The lemurs have very thick pads on their feet and hands and can jump from spiny plant to spiny plant with no apparent discomfort.  And they even hide out in these spiny plants.

A few other things we saw were a Gecko.

and a Crested Dongol.

There were also large ant holes.  The story is that snakes take refuge in these holes.  The ants groom the snakes in exchange for the snake protecting the ant hole.

In late afternoon we headed out for a night safari.  We had a very good sighting of a Grey Mouse Lemur

And a Reddish Grey Mouse lemur.  It was eating a bug almost as big as itself.

After getting back to camp they informed us that we would be having dinner at our tent.  They had set up a table for us on our patio.  Seems we were to have yet another anniversary celebration. 

After dinner some of the staff came out and sang a lovely song that we didn’t understand and had a big cake for us.  We only had small pieces.  Hope someone enjoyed the rest of it.