I had no idea that chameleons got that big. This guy was about a foot long, not counting the tail. He was huge.

The guide caught a couple of grasshoppers. He would hold them up about two feet from the chameleon. The chameleon would slowly turn his head and look at the grasshopper, and then ZOT! BLAMMO! It had a tongue that was about two feet long, and it would shoot it out with perfect aim and nail the grasshopper. Pretty impressive. It would move too fast for me to get a picture of it, but I got a great video of it that I'll try to post later.

Check out the color on this one.

This guy is blending in with the dirt and plants.

This lemur really wanted to jump on me for some reason. I learned that if a lemur wants to jump on you, there's not much you can do about it. They're really, really quick.

It turned out that he wanted to jump on me so he could check out (and chew on) the little thingie on the back of my hat. If a lemur wants to chew on your hat, there's not much you can do to stop it.

A big lemur liked the salt on my sweaty arm.

very cool pics. Thanks for sharing

Okay, almost done, and then I'll stop bumping this thread.

This is an animal that is righteously cool and knows it.

Check out its hands wrapped around my hand and fingers. No claws, just fingers and nicely shaped little fingernails.

It's pretty big, too.

More mussel collectors, with the mainland of Madagascar in the background and the dog from Little Rascals nearby.

This dog was always running around, and was way cool. His face was exactly half black and half white, separated down the middle.

As we prepared to depart from our little hut, my thoughts returned to home.

ROFL

In case you ever wondered what the coastline of Madagascar looks like.

The main street of Antananarivo. On our second visit, the city seemed much friendlier, though you still had to shake off a few beggars. One little girl, about four years old, followed me for about two blocks nonstop saying "Money money money money money money money money" really loudly over and over. It's amazing how annoying that gets.

Yours truly wandering the streets.

The dude in the black shirt was my driver. The dude on the right was the instigator of my first third-world car wreck. He cut right in front of our car and took out the front headlight and bumper while we were on the way to the airport. We were witnesses for our driver, but no one knew since we didn't speak French or Malagasy. This picture is them negotiating a settlement.

The message in the sand is way cool!!
The pics are too.

very entertaining.
Thanks!

I don't think I posted this, but our car wreck was near this really cool lake and monument. You can see the hilly terrain and interesting housing, too. I didn't quite get the photo out the window of the car.

At night, they would light big, multicolored flourescent lights up the monument, kind of like the lights you see on ferris wheels.

Here's an interesting bit of trivia for you. Antananarivo has at least 1.3 million people, and as far as we could tell, they have no stop lights or stop signs. We were staying in the middle of the city and never saw one.

My guess is that infrastructure is expensive and labor is cheap, because on the busier streets they had traffic cops posted to direct traffic.

Also, we saw three types of police. There were guys like this, who were less common and seemed to be traffic directors. Then there were guys in cool French Legionnaire hats who were "gendarmes", though they also seemed to be traffic directors. Finally, there were guys with "police" vests, but otherwise they looked like soldiers with fatigues and automatic rifles. Those guys were all over the place.

Then it was back to South Africa to start the trip home. While flying over Mozambique, I kept seeing massive smoke from big fires. At first, I thought they were forest fires, but I thought there were too many of them. Then I thought it might be farms burning sugar cane to get ready for the next season, but they were definitely in the forests. Then I got a good look and saw that the fires were on the fringes of forests, and I figured out that it was slash and burn deforesting. It was kind of sad, because it was happening in forest areas that weren't very big to start with. Lots of animals going extinct down there, I bet.

We had one night in Durban on our way back. I saw this car parked on the street. Is it a Ford GT? Or some sort of kit car or homemade car? I couldn't tell.

It had a little plaque on the dash that I think was aftermarket.

There's a bit of a problem with theft at the Johannesburg airport, so for a few bucks you can get all of your suitcases wrapped in plastic wrap. The goal is to annoy the thieves enough that they'll go after an unwrapped suitcase instead. This is Rain Woman getting ready to check in at the Durban Airport on our way to Johannesburg.

And then...homeward bound. Unless of course we wanted to go to Ndola or Gaborone.

And that, my friends, is what I did on my summer vacation.

Did you find the Russkies secret hideout on the island?

I think this is the place where the French are plotting their world domination.

Ah, oui oui.

Let's face it, we throw LOL and ROFL pretty often around here when all we really do is smile a bit at whatever it was.

I literally laughed out loud at this one. The dairy creamer really seals the deal on funny.

For this reason alone, I will never see Madagascar. Teh wife thinks Massachusetts has bad mosquitoes. Oy.