Tulear

Situated in the far south-west of the country, Tulear is the base for exploration of the spiny desert to the north. But it also offers two outstanding wildlife experiences rather closer by. First, there is the stunning desert island of Nosy Ve just offshore, and second, no visit to this part of Madagascar would be complete without a painful visit to the coral rag scrub at La Table, which is the only site on Earth for Red-shouldered Vanga.

The Nosy Ve day started early, - the sea becomes rough in the afternoon, as we discovered for ourselves! The first interesting bit of the journey was the zebu carts that were driven right into the water some hundred yards off shore, in order to get us onto the tiny boat. The competition for business between them resulted in the whole scene being like an aquatic Ben Hur, with galloping zebu goaded by small boys jostling for prime position. The journey to Nosy Ve was fast, wet and extremely bumpy, and quite hard work but great fun for those of us standing at the back. At first we stopped at Anakao, where we managed to find Littoral Rock Thrush in the heat around the hotels on the beach.

The island of Nosy Ve itself was really scenic with interesting shells and detritus on the coral beach. The Red-tailed Tropicbirds were wonderfully elegant, and it was a treat to see the chicks so close under bushes just off the beach. The other great and rather peculiar-looking bird here was Crab Plover, which was a top target for Julia as Simon had just seen it in Oman without her! Both Lesser and Greater Crested Terns were seen together, which was useful, and there were also Caspian Terns here and some very tame Madagascar Cisticolas on the beach. The journey back to Anakao was exhilarating, but also even rougher and bumpier than before, with all of us becoming wet through and not a little jarred.

A few of us had managed to go snorkelling off Nosy Ve earlier, and had noticed that the sea was becoming rougher. Rainer did manage to find a Lionfish, and Simon had some kind of stingray, but Simon's exit off the boat was not one of his most dignified moments, due to the gathering swell of the sea (he still has the bruises!). We then returned to Anakao to enjoy a seafood lunch in a fairly luxurious hotel.

It was after lunch that things became really interesting. The hotel decided to switch boats to a larger, more stable one, but even so the journey back to Tulear took a very long time with some significant waves. We were all quite relieved to arrive back safely. It wasn't until a week later that we heard of a disaster on that very same trip with some French tourists a few days later, where the boat had overturned and one person had drowned. That put our own experiences into sharp perspective.

In Tulear, we stayed in Motel Capricorne, which was similar to the hotel in Tana in that it seemed an oasis of calm in the midst of a very busy town. One memorable incident here was the Saturday night that four of us (Simon, Julia, Glen and Rainer) drank the seedy, smoke-filled casino dry of beer, while watching the Rugby World Cup between England and South Africa. (not quite as dissolute as it sounds...!). Another plus of staying in Tulear was the possibility of some civilisation, including a visit to the ice-cream shop, although this was threatened by a power-cut lasting several hours (apparently a daily occurrence!). This was of particular importance for Tom, an ice-cream fanatic.

One habitat that is not high on our favourites list is the horrendous coral rag scrub. However, we did manage to find the two target birds here, although hardly any other birds at all. Verreaux's Coua appeared quite quickly and was eventually seen quite well. Red-shouldered Vanga took a little longer, with much scrabbling around in this nasty, thorny, dusty scrub, and much help from Rainer for Julia. Well worth the struggle, however, as we had great views and it posed beautifully for photos. This bird was only discovered in the mid 1990s and described to science less than a decade ago. It has a known range of just a few square kilometres. Mmmmm! Several Madagascar Buttonquail were also seen briefly by some, and we encountered an extraordinary large digger wasp excavating a 'burrow', which was interesting.

One visit we made whilst in Tulear was to the arboretum. We were fortunate in our group to have several members - namely Rainer and Wim - who were fairly knowledgeable about plants, and this helped us to get a good all round natural history experience here. It was really good to see many of the endemic plants such as Baobabs, Pachypodia and Dideria up close and helpfully labelled. Also we found a Green-capped Coua here, in the gloom of dusk.