The National Park is a Unesco World Heritage- listed site with jagged limestone pinnacles known as tsingy. There are two options for visitors: The Grands and Petits Tsingys. The Grands Tsingys has vertiginous bridges and involves climbing and scrambling over rocks while in a harness clipped to the via ferrata and is around a 90 minute trip in a FWD from Bekopaka. Pulling yourself up rock walls and also crawling through caves is all supposed to be part of the fun. I am not one for huge drops or scrambling and crawling through caves so most of us opted for the Petits Tsingys. There are six routes ranging from 90 minutes to a six hour one with a 30m climb. We opted for the two hour hike and as it was close to Bekopaka which we left at 7.30am, we saw no other tourists until we were leaving. Some of the gaps the path squeezes through are tight

Tree roots hang down the cracks.

We saw several parrots who flew past too quick to photograph them in contrast to the galahs perched on the rocks in The Pinnacles National Park in Western Australia that we visited last year. We also heard a Madagascan Cuckoo. There are 11 species of lemur in the park but the only one we saw was a nocturnal one who peeped at as from his perch in a tree.

We spotted a millipede on the path and a few lizards.

There are a few viewpoints that you can walk up for a wider perspective.

A gorge can be visited but this was going to be in an open boat and it was now midday and very hot. We opted for a quiet afternoon back at the hotel with a dip in the pool to cool off and relaxing on the verandah of our bungalow. Mid-way through the afternoon it began to rain but at least we felt rested for the following day which would be much longer.