Heather's Adventures in Lesotho

Lemur in Ankarana National Park

2013 is the first time since the year before I left for the Peace Corps (2004) that I did not spend the holidays with my immediate family. It made more sense for me to go home for Thanksgiving this year instead, which freed me up for traveling in the region of Christmas. My friends Brian, David and I started making plans to travel together way back in August. When we started talking about beach locations I suggested Madagascar as it’s one of the final countries in the region I haven’t been to and we had mutual friends who went in 2012 and raved about their trip. Once it was decided where we would go we added Kameko – a friend and former CHAI Lesotho colleague – to make an even group of four.

Everyone asks “How was your trip?” which is an impossible question to answer. How to you justice to summarizing two weeks in paradise? Amazing? Great? Fantastic? Once in a lifetime? (Although I hope that’s not true. We only saw a small part of Madagascar; I’d love to go back and see other parts sometime.)

In three words: friends, lemurs and beach.

Christmas, of course, did not feel like Christmas. We spent the morning hiking through Parc National Montagne D’Ambre in search of lemurs and the world’s second smallest chameleon and the evening playing Uno and drinking Duty Free vodka tonics. New Years Even we spent at our lodge on an island (Sakatia), off an island (Nosy Be), off an island (Madagascar) eating delicious seafood – possibly the largest lobster I’ve ever seen – and saving the night by stepping up as honorary DJ. The Black Eyed Peas and KC & the Sunshine Band were big hits. 🙂 In between was more hiking, geographical wonders, snorkeling and relaxing.

For more photos check out my Facebook album where I posted 60+ of the 450+ photos I took and stay tuned for plenty of scrapbook pages attempting to document the trip!