Queens Palace and Lemur Park, birthday celebrations continue. Farewell Benj 🥲
Colosseum. The people are not in favour.
Nice sleep, if short. The majority of pillows for the past 6 weeks have been made of small foam blocks held in some sort of pillow shaped bag – the room here has some options (including the foam block option) first world problems.
Up to breaky early and did a tiny bit of 3 May blog post.
Then into a new van with Claris, our driver.
We wended our way through the city to Lemur park. On the way we stopped at an ATM to top up the Ariary in our wallets.
$AR 750 000.00 in $AR10 000 notes. An absolute wad of notes that don’t fit in the wallet at all well.
Lemurs Park is a 5 hectare park and is bordered by a river on one side which limits the lemurs movement into farming area as the lemurs fur is not water resistant – they are like cats, they can swim but don’t like too. Jonathan our guide relayed a lot of info and led us around to see yet more species of Lemur, some other critters and also provided info about plants through the park.
The park has a rewilding program which introduces some of the Lemurs bred here back into the wild. They have established a sort of botanic Gardens here and while the lemurs move freely they need supplementary feeding as there is not enough natural feed in the park.
Here’s what we were treated to:
Hammerkop nests.
Toxic Euporbia – white sap.
Touch me not. Mimosa
Macaco lemur. Female brown, male black. 8 month old female.
Gold faced sifaka
Grey Eastern bamboo lemur (in the barcode bamboo imported from Vietnam)
Crowned Sifaka
Coquerel’s Sifaka
Black and white ruffed lemur
Coquerel’s lemur again
Dam wall
Dragon fly
Giant bamboo endemic to Mada. Good for rafts. Lemur eat bamboo shoots.
Mongoose lemur
Star tortoise. Live to 130-40 years. These are about 50 years. The ‘baby’ one is 7-8 years old and about 20cm long while the parents would have been 40 -50cm long I reckon.
Ring tailed (Maki) lemur.
We ate a very relaxed lunch at the Lemur Park. Then bundled back into our van and headed off to the Queens Palace with a detour to Benj’s village to drop off his luggage. Sadly we finished our tour and time with Benj tonight.
After some roadworks and gridlocked traffic in the streets of Benj’s village (luggage dropped successfully and we met Benj’s wife) we eventually arrived at the Queens Royal Palace. Our guide, Fali, was fabulous. There were lots of facts and stories and my brain is weary so I’ve not remembered half of it. Also the history is complicated.
The hawk atop the gate was a gift from Napoleon Bonaparte- he never visited Madagascar but gifted this for a reason I didn’t catch.
The Madagascan Kingdom ended in 1897 when the French took over and last king was exiled to Algeria. The Queen is entombed here and a such the Palace is enshrined to her.
Ok the left of the gate/arch is a Phallus, symbolising power, fertility and circumcision. Nothing to the right for the girls!
Circumcision is an important tradition. A doctor performs the circumcision and grandfather on mother’s side eats the foreskin.
The circumcision ceremonies happen every seven years and the boys are done en masse from what I can gather. If they miss the opportunity in their first 7 years then it happens after another 7.
There were 20 steps to the arch to symbolise power or love. Ficus and fig trees were important and a few remain near the entrance. The hill area was once covered by ficus and figs and the whole city was called Blue Forest, which
later became Antananarivo meaning 1000 soldiers.
There were quite a few rules to be obeyed in and around the Palace. We were forbidden to point with a finger, instead having to fold the finger or use flat hands to indicate.
Blue is a special colour. Blue is nice/ good.
The Palace was burned in 1995,
has been restored and reopened in 2023.
All the wood is new using mahogany (Palisade) to replicate the original structures.
Scottish man 1869 James Cameron was the architect of the palace.
The Stonework is original with all the wooden interiors and top parts burning.
Prior to Christianity the Malagasy used wood which equals life. Stone came with the Christian’s.
Queens palace is stone. Kings palace is wood.
Tombs are stone, topped with wooden house for life. Bodies are buried 7 metres down.
The prime ministers palace is out through the gate and he married each Queen – a busy man.
The first Queen did not like Christians so she pushed them off the cliff.
Second Queen was grumpy.
Third Queen was exiled to Algeria.
The mortar of the bricks is made of egg white, sand and seashells.
Eggs were not eaten back then. Now they eat them but never hand over an egg, they place the egg for the recipient to take.
No onions allowed as it bad ?????
No pig/ pork meat. Bad luck.
First king Radama of Mada 1820-1828. Was succeeded by his wife (as they had no children) Radama’s younger twin brothers went to study on an island and never returned (were they killed by the wife/Queen?)
Madagascar was an English colony prior to French Rule. It was part of the silk route and a good place to rest. The creation of the Suez Canal meant that Madagascar was no longer a necessary rest stop.
Once through the museum of artefacts saved from the fire we went went up a couple of flights to see the 360 degree views from the top. The climb up to the palace in the car was steep so the views were great, if a little hazy.
Football Stadium, and lake in one direction. The stadium is home of National Soccer team Barea Barea meaning Zebu.
There are a number of wooden buildings- palaces of the kings. The Colosseum was built in 2020 a whim of the current President which is not popular with the people. Also the church and Kings Palace # 1.
Eunuch body guard statue.
This was a good visit – just enough artefacts and information and not left feeling like you skimmed it all and needed lots more time. Fali did a great job and was enthusiastic about his work.
We returned to the hotel and while Benj went to buy some water we readied for dinner and sorted out his tip (luckily I had an A5 envelope from one of the previous hotels as there was no way our wads of $Ariary would have fitted in a standard letter size.
Benj had arranged dinner upstairs in the Sakamanga restaurant. We had a drink down beside the pool first. Another Madagascan gin we tried. A bit different but it grew on me.
Dinner menu was very good, service was excellent too. The food was delicious.
Benj had also arranged a birthday cake for Suzie (so we knew not to order dessert and Suzie wasn’t tempted either thankfully). The cake was delicious and of course way too much – so Benj took almost half home for his family.)
Benj seemed a bit overwhelmed with our envelopes and wasn’t in a hurry to get home. He arranged a taxi and let us know he was safely on his way and when he got home via What’s App.
Back to our rooms for our last night in Madagascar.
Travel adventures with Nicola & co. 