Two hours into another world
We left Fort-Dauphin on Tuesday afternoon and drove for around two hours towards the southwest, crossing a small mountain range along the way. The drive itself was already an experience. One of the things that continues to amaze me about Madagascar is how quickly the landscape can change. Within a relatively short distance, the environment can suddenly look completely different. On our way to Berenty, I saw plants and trees unlike anything I had ever seen before. Some of them looked so unusual that parts of the landscape honestly made me feel as if I had arrived on another planet. As we got closer to Berenty, the surroundings became drier and increasingly unfamiliar to me. And shortly after arriving, I finally saw them for the first time: lemurs. Everywhere. Some were sitting peacefully beside the road, others were moving through the trees, and many seemed completely unbothered by the people around them. Seeing lemurs with my own eyes in such an environment had been a dream of mine for a long time, and suddenly they were sitting only a few metres away. What made me laugh was how strangely human some of them looked. A few were simply sitting by the road, looking as if they had finished a long day of work and were now taking a well-deserved break.
A warm shower – and then into the darkness
When we arrived at the house where I would spend the night, another surprise was waiting for me. The room itself was beautiful, but there was one detail that caught my attention immediately: there was hot water. At Marillac, we normally showered with cold water, so this was actually my first warm shower in quite some time. Travelling sometimes makes you appreciate the smallest things all over again. There was not much time to relax, however, because Philippe and Bénédicte had organised something special for that evening. A private guide took me into the forest after dark. Armed with flashlights, we walked through Berenty at night, and the atmosphere felt completely different from during the day. Hidden among the branches, we spotted tiny mouse lemurs, other nocturnal lemurs and several chameleons sleeping motionless on the trees. Without the guide, I probably would have walked past almost every single one of them. It was fascinating to realise how much life surrounds you there without you even noticing it at first.
Three hours among lemurs and chameleons
The next morning, it was time to explore Berenty properly. Together with a guide, I spent almost three hours walking through the reserve, and after a while I hardly knew where to look first. There seemed to be something moving everywhere. We saw different species of lemurs, chameleons, tortoises, crocodiles and many other animals and living creatures. The lemurs fascinated me most of all. Watching them in photographs or documentaries is one thing; standing beneath a tree while they effortlessly jump from branch to branch right above you is something completely different. At the same time, some of their movements, expressions and behaviours seemed surprisingly human. Some were constantly moving while others simply relaxed in the trees or sat on the ground. Being able to observe these animals without cages or fences around them was probably one of the most memorable nature experiences of my entire journey.
Later, I even decided to go for a run. It was certainly one of the more unusual running routes I have ever had: part of it led through the landscape of Berenty, and at one point I even used a small airstrip as my running track. Somehow, that also sums up my time in Madagascar quite well. Things that would have sounded completely unusual to me before coming here suddenly started to feel almost normal. At around 7 p.m., Philippe and I headed back towards Fort-Dauphin. That same evening, I had dinner together with Philippe, Norbert and Maria, giving me some time to process everything I had experienced in less than two days. The entire trip had come from a completely spontaneous invitation and showed me a side of Madagascar that was very different from my everyday life at Marillac and Centre Toky. What I did not know at that moment was that Berenty was only the beginning of a week I would probably never forget.
