A guide can make or break your experience.

Not only should they know their ‘stuff’ but its also about how they deliver that ‘stuff’. Good English for me, of course, is a pre requisite, but too much information I will glaze over, too little leaves me wondering if I wouldn’t know more by reading Google. Never should they exaggerate their knowledge, be willing to answer all questions and yet say if they don’t know the answer.

Then there is all the other stuff I’m going to ask about : politics, family, popular culture, education, etc. I love a person who will share, but then someone ready for the two way experience, where you can compare and contrast to give context and meaning.

All this with warmth, humour, understanding, compassion and, ‘ joie de vivre’.

Frank has all of this – in spades!

You know you are in good hands when your guide sings to the birds. When they know the favourite sleeping trees of the nocturnal and rare Northern Sportive Lemur, and can walk a kilometre of pitch dark hedgerow and spot a 5cm long chameleon clinging to a branch 2 metres away, with just a bit of torch light.

We spent 6 hours together in Ankarana Special Reserve ; 4 hours in the morning, 2 hours under a moonlit sky. So special. Average temperature 32 degrees, average humidity 85%. Over heating, but over excited.

Ankarana has been a national park since 1956. Small at 182 km2, but critically important. Known for its 150 million year old Jurassic Limestone plateau (that has turned to spires or ‘ tsingy’ with rain damage) and the dry deciduous primary forest that sits above it and around it, and the longest cave system in Africa. 100km in total and one single cave with 8km of passageways. The caves are the home to 14 species of bats, 50% of all found in Madagascar including its biggest and smallest.

Count me out of the caving. Diving at sea, in a cyclone, is preferable to water filled cave passageways.

The park also has 60 reptile species ( including Nile Crocs), 96 bird species and 11 species of lemurs.

Early on we were to cross paths with a family of Crown Lemurs (video). An endangered species of 1000 to 10,000 animals ( quoted 2014) and found here in the park, and only one other place in the Northern tip of Madagascar. They are one of the few animals able to cross the razor sharp Tsingy.

VID-20240323-WA0048

Later on seeing a critically endangered Northern Sportive Lemur. With only a few left in the wild and a nocturnal Lemur it stared at us from its from its hidey hole.

The evening twilight walk was all about chameleons, snakes and bats. Frank even identifying a heavily pregnant green chameleon. Close, he said, to laying what would be an average 40 eggs in the ground that would help further this beautiful species.

Frank – thank you. Without you this would literally have just been just a nice walk in a wooded place, but with you as the guide was a magical experience.

Very pregnant green chameleon.