The island Nosy Mangabe is part of Masoala National Park but is located 2km off the coast near Maroantsetra and is 520ha in size. The island is teeming with wildlife and groups of black and white ruffed lemurs have been translocated here from the mainland. No village has ever been located on Nosy Mangabe but fishermen have small huts on the foreshore and visit the island regularly. Old tombs and graffiti by sailors (several hundred years old) can also be seen during treks.

There is a camp run by the national parks centre with toilets and showers, a kitchen and six camp sites.  The camping is very basic but they have done a great job building wooden decking on the foreshore for tents. At any time you can hear the gentle breaking of waves. When we arrived it was almost lunchtime.  We had a refreshing swim followed by a tasty meal of fresh fish. After lunch we started on our first trek on the island. The island was practically deserted when we arrived, but a large group of Peace Corps volunteers arrived the next day for a day trip.

We had seen two different species of leaf-tailed gecko while in Ranomafana and did not expect to see such a different variety as in Masoala. The long, slender, almost blue body coupled with the huge white/silver eyes was a majestic sight to behold. We saw our first geckos sleeping through the day. Our guide Bionic had shown us our first one and after that Anneka and I kept spotting them. Anneka was also the chameleon guru spotting them playing dead or hiding within dense foliage. During the night walk we also saw many leaf-tailed geckos on the move. It was a wonderful experience.

The wildlife in Nosy Mangabe may have been even better than the main part of Masoala; we saw black and white ruffed lemurs, many leaf tailed geckos, chameleons (including Brookesia micra the world’s smallest), bats, many weird insects and four snakes!

We camped on Nosy Mangabe only for one night.  It began to rain heavily at the end of our night walk and only just made it back before getting saturated. We had a quick meal and retired for the night. We lay on our sleeping bags listening to the rain – imagining what may happen tomorrow. Thankfully we managed to keep all of the mosquitos outside of our tent. With recent rains the mosquitos were horrendous.