While Madagascar is known for pristine coastlines and tropical beaches, it also has some incredible flora and fauna in the central regions. We stayed several days in the capital, Antananarivo (known by locals as "Tana"), and also had an overnight tour to Ampefy. Since we had plenty of beach time (and fresh sunburns) from Réunion, this focus suited us well.
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| This drive is included in the tour we booked, it took about 3 hours total. |
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| Some perspective for you. |
*Important* - very, very few people living and working in Madagascar speak English. You cannot count on guides or even hotel staff speaking English. Bring someone with you who speaks French and doesn't mind translating. My services are available in exchange for a fully paid vacation to Madagascar 😜. Also, you will need a guide, no ifs ands or buts about it. Madagascar is rather wild compared to other places, and you certainly won't be stumbling upon random pubs in a well lit, secure neighborhood when you're there. Even in the capital, the sidewalks are about 6 inches wide and the bars/shops are not for tourists. Here's a bit of footage driving through Tana (and assuring Russell, the best guide ever, that Mike didn't think he was rude for speaking French). Russell reeeeeally wanted to speak English but said he couldn't figure it out. He even joked (I think he was joking) that he wished the English had colonized Madagascar instead of the French so he could speak English!
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| I did a double take when I saw this girl in a "Don't mess with Texas" shirt!! |
Antanarivo is a crazy place. There is one main road, with one lane in each direction, going through the capital to other major cities in the country. By some miracle we glided by on our way to Ampefy, but on the way back we suffered an extra hour and a half on it. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to be at any meeting spot you may need for flights or tours.
We stayed at the Asia and Africa hotel in Tana. At the time I booked it I didn't think much of it, but the "Asia" is not just in the title - it was Chinese through and through, from the decor to the food. Our guide later explained that China is "invading" (his word) Madagascar, snapping up land parcels and developing the heck out of them. I asked our guide how locals felt about this, and his answer was pretty sobering: "We're used to it." As I mentioned in my Reunion post, many African countries have long, violent histories with western colonization and exploitation of resources.
On all of our combined road trips, we saw hundreds of thousands of acres of fields being actively cultivated. This is all, and I mean ALL, rice. I was surprised because I was expecting lots of vanilla fields, but it turns out these are very concentrated in the northwestern part of the country. Luckily I was still able to buy some divine vanilla. My tip for you when purchasing vanilla is to resist the urge to buy the vacuum-packed beans themselves and just go with a bottle of the extract - they're small enough to take in your carry-on, and honestly, do YOU know what to do with the actual bean? No, you don't. Plus they are similar in price (not cheap).
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| I didn't take this pic, it's from https://www.madacamp.com/Madagascar_Vanilla |
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| The vanilla extract I bought, about $7 USD for a tiny vial. Did you know that 95% of the vanilla products sold worldwide contain artificial vanilla? This is the real deal, despite the dubious peeling label. |
I bought that vanilla in Tana, but there are not many places to buy souvenirs. On one hand, it's charming - the towns are made for locals with no "made in China" keychains or shot glasses. On the other hand, the place to buy artisan crafts is literally a shanty town that is set up in the middle of a muddy field. Your guide will know how to get there - it would be extremely difficult to navigate to on your own.
We booked this tour to Ampefy. It had everything I wanted: a trip to the lemur park, an overnight stay in nice hotel in a country town, and a driver to get us everywhere. For some reason the main element emphasized in the ad for the tour is a geyser - I admit, the geysers were cool - but come on! Lemurs!
The lemur park is about an hour outside of Tana, and is a nice way to break up the 2.5 hour drive to Ampefy (it's on the way!). You get to see 7 out of the 9 species of lemur. Some are more shy than others, but they are all quite visible: the park staff feed them regularly, so they aren't scared of humans. That combined with the natural "fence" of a river (lemurs are so scared of water that they hydrate themselves by eating plants) keeps the lemurs in a concentrated area to ensure high likelihoods of sightings.
These are Coquerel Sifaka - they are jumpers. Other Sifaka are known as "dancers" because they only move sideways (adorable video showing this) instead of straight because of their hip bones that did not evolve for forward motion.
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| I can die happy. |
From the lemur park, we got back on the road and made it to Ampefy. We stayed in a lovely eco-hotel in the middle of nowhere with birds chirping like crazy (and I think I even saw a monkey in a tree there, but I didn't have my glasses on).
The next morning, our tour continued in remote central Madagascar with the Lily Waterfall and some geysers.
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| Geyser |
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| Getting some clay "tattoos" from village girls |
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| Madagascar is known as "the Red Island" for the high concentrations of iron in the soil which give it a distinct red tint. Here is a scene from rural Ampefy. |
The waterfall was meh and the geysers were cool, but the most memorable part of this portion was buying souvenirs. Little girls swarm you as soon as you leave the car with things they have made out of pumice stone (Madagascar is full of now-dormant volcanoes that spewed lava everywhere, which solidified into pumice) and older villagers offer to hold your stuff and take pictures for you. We "hired" a comical number of porters but were too soft not to buy at least one piece of "artwork" from each child. They split between me and Mike to showcase their wares. I explained that I would buy the smallest toy from each girl and bargained them down to a slightly less obscene price than what they were asking (a few American dollars per stone, an absolute fortune by local standards). After a tumultuous few minutes I pay and turn back to Mike. He has both arms stuffed with huge pieces that we would never be able to take home with us and says, "Ok. I need $50." Some of the girls I had purchased from deftly moved over to his side and sold second and third articles to him over my laughing objections.
We ended up engaging the services of several more porters to bring all the souvenirs to the car 😂 and leaving several pieces at our hotel as patio decor. But we were thrilled to have provided an influx of cash to locals since we were getting so much from their country.
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| The lucky few that made it home |
We came back (through traffic!) to Tana a bit overwhelmed. The animals, the people, the poverty... it's a lot to take in. But Madagascar is absolutely stunning and worthy of a visit. As for us, we eventually had to get going - Victoria Falls was waiting!
Other details:
Other details:
- Malaria: You will need a hefty dose of malaria pills and heavy duty (read: DEET) bug spray. There is a high malaria risk in Madagascar. It's worst in the rainy season (December-January when we went, oops).
- Money: Bring US dollars, you can easily switch them to the local currency, Ariary, at your hotel. 1 dollar is about 3,500 Ariary.
- Tipping is usually about 10% and not common for restaurant staff (we tipped a lot since it was one of the few ways we were actually giving back)
- Electrical outlets are like European ones.
- For some reason, when we were flying INTO Madagascar, the airline personnel wanted our paper tickets FROM Madagascar to our next destination. We didn't have them printed, so we had to spend an extra hour in the airport at a customer service desk - forwarding our email confirmations to the personal account of the poor employee who got stuck with us who then forwarded it to a computer with a printer.
- Also we couldn't have anything metal in our carry on bag. I had to check my tiny travel tweezers. Weird!
