Today we went to Lokobe Nature Reserve in search of Chameleons and Lemurs. The day started with us meeting up for breakfast with two of the people that we will be working with while here in Madagascar. Our marine conservation work will start up on Monday, so in the mean time we are exploring on our own. We chatted with them about their experiences in Madagascar and how everything functions. They recommended that we take a tuk-tuk to Lokobe Nature Reserve and go for a hike. This is exactly what we did.

The Park is on a peninsula of Nosy Be (the big island) and famous for it’s endemic species of chameleons, lemurs and other small animals. We set off on the trail to look them. We were told that many of the chameleon species are quite small. We had to watch the leaf litter on the trail and listen for them to fall off the leaves as we passed.

Leaf Chameleon chilling on Kara’s hand.

Sure enough after only 15 minutes of looking we found our first chameleon. It wasn’t quick, but it was at the edge of a huge pile of leaves. It escaped before we could get a good photo of it. The forests here are quite dense and getting enough light to photograph a small object was difficult. We ventured deeper into the forest reserve and found another one! This one was right in the middle of the trail. We picked it up for further investigation. It was a brown leaf chameleon. It was very small, but not the smallest. We hiked 1km into the forest and found 4 in total, but couldn’t put our eyes on any lemurs. We could here them being loud in the distance, but the forest was so thick it was hard to see very far into the trees. It was also hot, humid and full of mosquitos that would eat you alive if you stood still for more than 30 seconds. This is definitely a jungle out here, but all sorts of cool animals.