Madagascar. The red island. Funny enough it is primarily known for the animation picture "Madagascar" which featured some years ago. All of a sudden everybody knows there is a country with that name. But of course real travelers knew of this island for a long time. Because Madagascar is special. There is nothing like it. Everything is unique. The people, the animals, the plants, the landscapes: it is all very special. Officially the country is part of Africa but I can assure you it is nothing like anything else in Africa. Madagascar is different and as such it is one of the most special destinations in the world.

As you can find out from this website I have been to Madagascar before. That was 10 years ago. Marieke however had never been there and because we live in Africa it is relatively easy to go to Madagascar. So this time we went with the 3 of us; but it had to be attractive for all of us! So our itinerary had a nice mix of previously visited areas, new areas and a beach or swimming pool once in a while for Kiora. And it turned out to be just perfect.

We flew from Livingstone via Johannesburg to Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. Yes, its quite a long name for a capital, but I promise you, this is nothing compared to other names we found on Madagascar. But they made it easy for us and referred to Tana instead of Antananarivo. Tana is not really an attractive town, but I was surprised with the improvements compared to 10 years ago. Back then it was impossible to walk the pavement at night, so many beggars and homeless were living in the streets. We saw a few but nothing similar to 10 years ago. Also the town itself looked much more clean and everywhere we saw building sites, usually a sign that things are improving. Nevertheless we met quite a few travellers who found Tana dirty and poor. We started to doubt ourselves: was Tana really doing better or were we so used to poverty after travelling in 3rd world countries and living in one right now, that we didn‘t notice it anymore?

Madagascar is the 4th island in the world; only Greenland, Nieuw-Guinea (=Papua New-Guinea + Irian Jaya), and Borneo are bigger. Distances on the island are huge; its not you just go to the west coast when you are in the east. Furthermore, Madagascar is a developing country which means that the roads are not always too good. Therefore we booked some national flights to be able to visit several areas of the island. The first one was from Tana to Morondova, at the west coast.

Morondova
De west coast was one of the new areas we visited. Not well-known, bad roads, few tourists: real fun! We were directly at the bach which was huge with nobody on it. Morondova is the basis for visiting the Avenue des Baobabs, Kirindy National Park and Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park. The last park was too far away and we would still visit another Tsingy during our trip, so we limited ourselves to the first two.

Madagascar is well-known for its baobabs. There are so many of them that mainland Africa is just a baby compared to Madagascar. Did you know that only 8 species of Baobab can be found in the world but that 6 of them can only be found in Madagascar? Yes, Madagascar is the cradle of the baobabs. The other 2 species (one on mainland Afrika, one in Australia) do originate from Madagascar as well.

There will always be people who do not know what baobabs are. Shame on you! Baobabs are among the oldest living creatures on earth; thousands of years, but how old exactly cannot be proven. But being 30 meters thick these trees are majestic. And Madagscar has got many of them with Morondova at its centre. Unbelievable how many baobabs we saw. The highest concentration can be found at the so-called Avenue des Baobabs, which is not more than many baobabs along a road. Because of the high density it makes for perfect photography. The drive from Morondova takes about an hour on a bumby road but it was very much worth it. We could not get enough of it!

About one-and-a-half hour north of there is Kirindy National Park, a relative new park which has been mapped by some Swiss. They have done that in their meticulous way with trails that have divided the park in squares. After 2.5 hours driving we started a 3 hours hike. As said before, the animals of Madagascar are unique with the lemurs as most special. Lemurs are a kind of predecessors of the monkeys and apes well-known to us but have stopped their evolution at one point. Also in Kirindy some species of lemurs are walking around of which we saw the diurnal ones. Well, diurnal...with temperatures of 40 degrees and above we did not blame them to be very inactive, sleeping in the trees. The Verreaux Sifaka, the most famous one because it dances when it tries to move over the ground, we found already in their siesta-tree after 10 minutes walking. After that we found the brown lemurs who walked around making their pig-like sounds. We also saw our first Malagassy reptiles and birds. At noon we retreated in the research camp where Kiora took a nap. She just woke up when a troop of brown lemurs were checking out the camp and were very much interested in that little human in a camping cot!

From Tulear to Isalo
From Morondova we flew south to Tulear, of which 30km north the beach of Ifaty can be found. Those 30km took us about 2 hours because of the state of the road. Ifaty is quite popular among tourists, but we found a quiet place in low season so it was perfect. These days were to relax. You know the drill: bit of reading, bit of beach combing, bit of watching local fishermen catching their food, bit of sleeping...sigh....

This area is known for its spiny forests: whole areas covered with cactus and other spiny plants in the most bizer forms. In the arboretum of Tulear we coudl admire all these plants but god, it was hot. From Tulear we continued to Ranohira; the landscape was extremely hot and dry! Ten years ago I did the same stretch but this time the road was quite good. The Spiny Forests changed into a high plateau with huge boulders, which form Isalo National Park close to Ranohira.

In Isalo we did some hikes which were very much worth it. These day-hikes all made their way into canyons in the Isalo mountains. These canyons consist of real with lots of wildlife. As for lemurs, we saw sifakas and ring tailed lemurs. We also saw chameleons, or rather Kiora spotted them. Our little one hiked herself and because her eye level is about a meter lower than ours, she was the one who spotted the chameleons first. She just could not get enough of it!

Ranomafana
After Isalo we drove to Ambalavao, one of the nicest places we visited. You can picture this: nice colorful market, some ancient skills, cattle market. Especially the latter was special with hundreds of zebus in a majestic landscape. Yes, the landscapes around Ambavalao were the best. The 60kms after Ambavalao (coming from Tana) are among the best we have ever seen.

Very near to Ambavalao is Anja Reserve run by locals. This reserve has a lot of ring tailed lemurs which are the most appealing and famous of all lemurs. The landscape was beyond words and together with all the ring tailed it just made it very very special. The guide just ignored the fact I was carrying Kiora in a back-carrier and led us to high points and steep ridges. But the ring tailed were everywhere! The animals swere very curious and came very close to check out this strange back-carrier!

After Ambalavao we continued to Ranomafana, one of the most famous parks of Madagascar. This park is a real rain forest and is under a lot of pressure because of logging, a huge problem to the whole of Madagascar. But just like in any other rain forest it is quite difficult to see any animal here. Oh yes, we saw the giant bamboo lemur and the golden bamboo lemur (only discovered in 1986!), both one of the rarest animals on earth. But they were all high up in the trees which meant we didn‘t see much more than shadows. Real fun! With 16kg Kiora on my back this park was a real challenge, because there was a lot climbing involved. I nearly died out there!

Andasibe
Via Tana we headed west. The landscape cosisted of the most beautiful rice fields; every little corner seemed to be used to grow rice. On our way we visited a reptile farm which was quite fun, since it showed us all kind of species that we were not going to see in the wild. Especially the many species of chameleon were impressive: from the Brookesia (small as a fingernail) to Parsons Chameleon (as big as a poodle). Even more bizar were the Uroplatus-geckos: These nocturnal lizards do camouflage in the most bizar ways, just beyond words. Just have a look at the photos!

At Andasibe one can find the most visited national park of Madagascar: Andasibe National Park, and west of it Mitsinjo Reserve and north of it Mantadia Nationaal Park. Here lives the Indri, the biggest of all lemurs which means the size of a chimpanzee. The Indri is the reason for Andasibes popularity. Hordes of tourists come this way to not only see the Indri, but most of all to hear it. What does that mean? The Indris call to each other, specially early mornings, in order to keep in touch with eachother. Their screams are electrifying and can travel for about 5kms. It resembles the sounds of whales, but then above the water. I can assure you, when you are standing in the middle of a forest very early morning and all of a sudden some vague ape-like creatures start their screaming, it is almost scary. The first time Kiora heard it she was very quiet for a while, but then looked at us and said: what a noise, mama!

The Malagassy parks you can only enter with a qualified guide and unfortunately these guys are out there for tips. In order to secure tips, the guides in Andasibe do not only need to track down the Indri, but the Indris also need to scream. When the Indris keep quiet for too long, some guides just play tapes with Indri whaling, which does trigger the real Indris to start whaling as well. Just assume all guides would do the same: the poor Indris wouldn‘t have a voice left!

Andasibe NP (formerly known as Perinet NP) actually consists of secundair forest; only Mantadia consists of primairy forest. As such a lot of lemurs can be found but the park is not easy to hike. With the difficulties of Ranomafana just beyond us, we chose for an easier option: Vakona Reserve. This reserve consists of some islands, run by Vakona lodge, where lemurs that came out of captivity can live a relatively wild life. Well, the wild life was a bit artificial but it was THE ideal possibility to make pictures. The black-and-white ruffed lemurs jumped on us even before we we could disembark our canoes, the brown lemurs than started a fight with the black & whites, the small grey bamboo lemurs just looked at us a bit shy and the only sifaka was a sweetie: dancing he made his way to us hoping we would give him something to eat.

The sifakas (this time it were the rare diadem-sifakas) can only be found in Mantadia, but recently they have introduced a couple with one young in Andasibe, and all of them are relatively easy to find. All in all Andasibe/Mantadia/Mitsinjo were very worth visiting, despite the fact everybody goes there, the guides can be annoying and many tourists behave like fools in order to draw the attention of the Indri to get their perfect shot!

The best photo-opportunities I got in Mitsinjo; a complete indri family came out of the trees (which they hardly ever do) and were as curious about us as we about them!

Montagne d‘Ambre en Ankarana
The last part of our travels took part in the north of Madagascar, a new area for me. We flew from Tana to Diego Suarez and drove straight to Joffreville, the base for exploring Montagne d‘Ambre National Park. We stayed at Nature Lodge, which was the best place we stayed during our trip.

Montagne d‘Ambre is the kind of rain forest you can find in Costa Rica; with high humidity. There were some fine trails and the park is remarkable for its big and many tree ferns, beautiful. Again we found lemurs (red fronted brown lemur and crowned lemur) but especially the little things we found were special. Among them were the tiny Brookesia chameleon, which was the size of a finger nail. We also found a big Madagascar boa, a very friendly animal which did not even think about biting us, let alone strangling. And as a bonus we found very small beetle with a very long neck, the so-called giraffe-necked weevil. Madagsacar is truly amazing.

But the highlight was yet to come: Ankarana National Park. This park has the so-called Tsingy, heavily eroded rock formations that are razor sharp and were inaccessible for ages. Because of this inaccesibility the most bizar animals, but most of all plants could develop. Never seen such bizar plants! And what about the rocks: razor sharp, for kilometers wide. To get there we had to hike through thick, beautiful forests with chameleons and lemurs. But once we reached the Tsingy we truly were amazed: bizar, unique, beautiful. we took hundreds of pictures!

Nosy Be
At the end of our trip we chose for Nosy Be, the ultimate sun-sea-sand-island of Madagascar. Most hotels and guest houses in Madagascar are run by French (it used to be a French colony) and most of them still do not speak english. Or rather do not want to speak english! Just like at our lodge. It had a nice location on a hill with a beautiful view but there was not much to do. The beach was muddy but we enjoyed the pool instead. The owners were typical French: they tried but couldn‘t. Its just unbelievable how uneasy some people are with their guests. We have seen it before at lodges in Africa. You ask yourself why these kind of people chose to work in the service-industry. You would think the first condition is that you know how to relate to other people and also like to.

Anyway, it was a relaxing final and that was what we came for. But we were happy to leave the place after 5 days, going home, to Zambia. On our way back we spent some time in Pretoria, with friends and for some shopping.

Looking back
Was Madagascar a succes? Yes, completely. The island has grown in terms of tourism, almost too much you would think (Andasibe). The begging for tips is VERY annoying; we are quite used to it but sometimes it was just too much. Continuously they point out that Madagascar is very poor which should make us give more tips, but he, after 5 weeks that is quite some tips! And when you think: this is enough, our guide book (Bradt) reminded us to do it anyway.

Next to that Madagascar is not very cheap anymore. I am sure you can do it cheaper than we did if, for instance, you don‘t take national flights, use public transport and eat from the street stalls, but nevertheless its not Asia.

The French are still very influential in Madagascar, even if it is not their colony anymore. Now I seem to meet quite some French people during my travels who are soooo arrogant, and unfortunately I met quite some of these in Madagascar. Furthermore Madagascar was turned to a destination for sex tourism for the French, unbelievable. The government is trying to fight this and indeed it was much less than 10 years ago, but still we saw plenty of prove this is stull going on. Just picture this: white man with 50kg overweight and so ugly even he himself knows he is without a chance in France, is walking with 30 years younger Malagassy girl on his arm who resembles Naomi Campbell. It just hurts the eyes. And its true: Malagassy girls are very very pretty. Their Asian mix and African blood does often result in a real beauty.

But despite all of the above is Madagascar still a super destination for the curious, adventurous and active traveller. The landscapes are very attractive and different, the animals are bizar and the people beautiful and friendly. But if you want to go, go soon. The erosion as a result of logging is enormous, so who knows for how long Madagascar is able to maintain its natural beauty!