Andasibe is a small village about 140km east of the capital city of Antananarivo, in Madagascar's eastern rainforest belt. The road from Tana is one of the better roads in the country. (It's still terrible, just not as terrible as most of the others.) After Anjozorobe, we stayed at a lodge in Andasibe for the next five nights. We also returned to this lodge for another two nights between Akanin'ny Nofy and Ranomafana. From this lodge we would sometimes walk to the closest forest, but more often our driver Joshua would take us to other nearby natural areas.

This is one of the most commonly visited regions of Madagascar for wildlife watchers, both because it is relatively easily accessible from Tana and because it has a good assortment of charismatic species, perhaps most especially the Indri, largest of the lemurs. I had been to this area on both of my previous visits to Madagascar. On both of those trips we had spent all of our time in Analamazaotra forest, which is the easiest spot to see Indri. On this trip we visited several reserves and natural areas, each of which had its own specialty species. Here I will mix together photos from all of the locations we visited near Andasibe.

You'll have to bear with me through some invertebrates before we get to the frogs and chameleons and geckos that I know you're waiting for. (If you are here to see the invertebrates, ignore that comment.) I'll start with a handful of the best moths and butterflies.

We were lucky to see a wide variety of mantises in this part of Madagascar. Here are a few of my favorites. None of them are identified all the way to species level.

I am also always on the lookout for phasmids, a.k.a. stick insects. Here are a few of the better ones from this area.

Spiders! Who doesn't love a nice spider? (Don't answer that.) Here are a few of the nicest ones I saw around Andasibe.

On my previous trips to Madagascar I had seen the iconic Madagascar Giant Fire Millipedes, but had not seen any of the equally iconic Giant Pill Millipedes. We made up for that lack this time.

While we had some free time to explore or rest, Mike ran into some random local guide on the road and went off on a bird-finding adventure in Analamazoatra, where he saw various legendary Madagascar endemics, including ground rollers and suchlike. I did no such thing, so I only saw birds that were willing to show up while we were herping in the forest or having breakfast on the lodge's outdoor dining area. This is one of my many excuses for not having many bird photos.

We spent very little time specifically looking for lemurs, but this being Madagascar we still saw quite a few lemurs.

Our visit was past the end of the wet season, so it was not the time for maximum frogulation. Even so, we saw many wonderful frogs in the rainforest.

Small to medium-sized Boophis species around Andasibe sported a wide variety of skin textures, eye colors, and skin colors, all in more or less the same basic treefrog shape.

Spinomantis frogs in the east and north of Madagascar are arboreal, treefrog-like frogs with dermal fringes and spines (hence the name). Some other non-arboreal, non-fringe-or-spine-bearing frogs in the south are also included in this group, but we didn't concern ourselves with those because we didn't see any. Keeps things simple.

You might have thought that we had seen enough different frogs for one area, but there were still more frogs. Always more frogs. Imagine if we had come in the rainy season!

Five days into our Madagascar adventure and we had yet to see a snake. This wasn't a big problem, as Madagascar is known for incredible frog diversity and gecko diversity and chameleon diversity but not so much for snake diversity. Still, we were herpers and we would not be satisfied without any snakes at all. On the evening of the fifth day we were preparing to get into the Russian Tank and ride out to our night hike location, but we couldn't leave yet because José was missing. That darn José, keeping us from all the cool forest critters with his tardiness! A few moments later José showed up cradling this large boa, which he had found on the sidewalk between his room and the parking lot. We stopped whining about his tardiness.

The only other snake species we saw in the Andasibe area (not counting a couple of squished ones on the road) was this not particularly exciting but still serpentine one.

What we missed in snake diversity near Andasibe we made up for in chameleon diversity. We saw fifteen species of chameleons in this area, and well over 150 individuals. Whee!

Probably the most common of the larger species that we saw in this area was Calumma brevicorne, which you might remember from Anjozorobe as the species with which Calumma crypticum was formerly confused.

Calumma malthe is a large and dramatic-looking chameleon that I hadn't seen on either of my previous visits. Fortunately the local guide Aristide knew just where to look for them, and we saw several.

Everyone loves a giant chameleon, and Calumma parsonii has the honor of being the most giant of all chameleons. Some people argue for Furcifer oustaleti, but I was told in no uncertain terms by both Rainer and José that Calumma parsonii is obviously the winner of the large-chameleon sweepstakes (though perhaps Furcifer oustaleti might achieve a slightly longer length). I am not going to argue with these people. It is futile, I tell you.

At the same spot where we saw the gigantic Parson's Chameleons, we also saw several Panther Chameleons, a widespread species whose dramatic coloration changes significantly from location to location.

Furcifer bifidus was a species I hadn't seen before this trip. We found two, both subadults without the pronounced doubled nasal appendage of adults that gives this species its name.

Furcifer willsii, the final "true chameleon" species we saw in this area, is mostly found high up in trees. We were lucky to see one very young individual. I guess "lucky" isn't really the right word, because José was determined to find this species and inspected many a small green chameleon, most of which were Calumma gastrotaenia, before he spotted this one. Some luck involved, but also a lot of targeted work.

As I mentioned earlier, I visited the Andasibe area on each of my previous two trips to Madagascar. The total number of Brookesia that I saw on those trips in this area was zero. This time I saw at least 22. This is an example of why it's useful to have world-class herp finders working on your behalf.

I only photographed a couple of skinks near Andasibe, both of which were found and captured by Frank, if I'm remembering correctly. A third, similar, skink was caught by Aaron at a time when only he, Mark, and I were around. Our pitiful attempts to get it to pose for a photo ended poorly for us, but well for the nearly-instantly-escaping skink.

Gecko diversity was impressive around Andasibe, especially compared to the measly three species we had seen at Anjozorobe.