Isalo National Park Hike (With a Ridiculous Amount of Pictures)

The last stop of Part 2 of our vacation was in Isalo National Park. We arrived mid-afternoon, spent the entire next day at the freaking craziest, most amazing hotel, and then the next day went on our hike (we had to choose our route the day before so our guide could get a Isalo guide. It's interesting how many guide's guide's guides we had to pay for!).

We decided on the 6-7 hour excursion. All-in-all, it was about 14km, with lots of stops for swimming, resting, picture taking, and a lunch break.

It all started around 8h30 or so. Our poor General Guide was always having to wait for us, so we tried to actually be on time for one morning.

Our hotel was about a fifteen minute drive from the entrance of the park. While we were paying for our park passes, two different people came up to me to say hello. It was so surprising to see someone I knew so far away! They were people that used to be my driver when I first came here! After talking to them, I found out that their company did tours as well, and I was very disappointed not to have travelled with them. Our tour agency wasn't that great.

Anyway, onto the hike. Our park guide showed us the overall map of where we would be going.

 The scenery was spectacular the entire time.

A bonus - the park guide understood that we didn't want to stop to see every kind of leaf, flower, bug, and rock. Nor did we want a thirty minute explanation of EVERY leaf, flower, bug, or rock. Until now, our guides were ridiculously over-the-top explaining everything three, four, or five times.

The scenery was such a contrast to what we were used to. It felt like we were in Colorado or something (even though I've never been to Colorado).

We walked up and down various smaller mountains and had amazing views.

 This rock was called something like, "Snake Rock" or "Dinosaur Rock".

Yes, this post has a lot of pictures. It was hard to even narrow it down to this few.

 At this point, we were all having a really good time! (It changed later on, I'm saving that for my next post!)

 This rock is called something like, "Turtle Rock".

When a person dies in Madagascar, some tribes wrap the corpse in gauze, and then bury it in a whole in the rocks. They fill the hole with smaller rocks to ensure that wildlife won't disturb the corpse.

After approximately five years, the family will climb up and get the corpse, clean off the gauze, re-wrap the corpse (which is essentially just bones now) and then a few men will climb very, very high and place the corpse in their final resting spot. It's hard to see in this picture, but the corpse is placed about two thirds of the way up on this rock.

Another "first burial" area of a corpse. It is EXTREMELY taboo to point using a finger at anything in the park, but especially a tomb. When pointing, all of the guides either used a closed fist or a knuckle to point to an area they wanted us to see.

Earlier in the tour, Louis asked our guide something to the effect of, "Isn't it gross to re-wrap the body for the second time? Have you ever had to do it?". Louis was just being interested, but he was also asking in kind of a joking manner. The park guide had just re-wrapped his father the year before and wasn't thrilled with Louis' question. A few minutes later, our tour guide held Louis back and said that the park guides are very serious. Louis kind of got a "warning", which I still find funny, kind of like Louis was getting in trouble from the teacher.

Another tradition is to chose a rock, and place it on sacred pile of rocks. As you place your chosen rock onto the pile, you make a wish. When the wish is granted, you climb back and retrieve a rock and remove it from the pile.

 The girls made a wish at each sacred rock station.

Another tomb. 

 We took a break here to eat our bagged lunch that the hotel made for us.

We had all reached the summit. We were about halfway finished, and were now on our way to the last part of the hike, the natural waterfalls and pools (and a temper tantrum/meltdown by yours truly). I'll save that for the next post.