Heading out of Fort Dauphin there are number of options and tons to see. We had already had 2 weeks in Madagascar and wanted a soft (in other words easy) ending, hence the decision to head for Berenty (Reserve Privee de Berenty) which has a reputation for making life easy and having habituated fury creatures to gawp at. As it happened this turned out very well, as it was off-season and we basically had Berenty to ourselves and were always alone when viewing the little critters. The winners of the show were the delightful Verreaux Sifaka.

Caveat: My camera had packed in by this stage and I borrowed another friends broken camera to take these limited shots, which don't do justice to what we saw.

Berenty is a haven of natural wonders. Ironically it was set up by the very sisal farmers who have wiped out massive swathes of the beautiful and eccentric spiny forest. Apparently one of the biggest demands for Sisal comes from Europe where it is used for recycleable packaging...

Massive population increases in Madagascar are also wiping out the Spiny forest and the habitat for the indigenous species that I was gawping at in Berenty. It is an amazing sight but it is more stunning to think that massive swathes of the country used to be thriving with such extraordinary and unique wildlife. Magagascar has lost 80% of its forest over the last few decades (or something like that), so i hope they can protect what they have left.