Madagascar was our final country In Africa (save for another trip back to Kenya to take our kids on Safari). And Madagascar didn’t disappoint.
We had originally planned to come here in December. But due to political unrest (they ousted their president – Hey USA, take a cue), we had to put it off for a few months to allow time for the situation to stabilize. Because of advisories for travelers and because the infrastructure is too poor to get around on your own, we ended up signing up for a tour. Our tour would consist of three main areas. Andisbe National park area, Morondava national park area and Nosy Be island (in that order). After Nosy Be island, we were schedule to fly from Nosy Be airport to Kenya where our kids would join us for a family safari vacation.
We flew into Antananarivo (the capital) on May 14th. We drove through miles of shanty towns until we reached a walled off area that had hotels and shopping. In this secure area, we checked into a Radisson (point options were poor, but we were able to get one third off a cash booking by using United credit card free travel credits).
The next day we were picked up and driven to the Au Bois Vert hotel (also in Antananarivo). This hotel was provided by our tour operator. Why not fly in on the 15th and have our tour operator take us directly to their hotel instead of having to pay for our first night in the Radisson? Because you never know if your flight will be cancelled. When changing countries it’s simply a good idea to build in a buffer day.
Speaking of flight problems, our tour schedule had us flying on May 19 to Morondova, a town on the east side of Madagascar. By dinner time on the 15th, we hadn’t heard anything from our tour operator about our flight tickets. So we started messaging and calling them. It turned out that we expected them to purchase our domestic tickets and they expected us to purchase our domestic tickets. AND IT TURNED OUT THAT NO DOMESTIC TICKETS HAD BEEN PURCHASE YET! We immediately went into scramble mode with Kate communicating with the tour operator and myself looking up airline flights. We were also looking through the 20+ emails we had received from our tour operator to try and find out who was supposed to have purchased the tickets. But we soon decided “let’s get our flights sorted out now and we’ll figure out who should have done what later.”
Unfortunately, there weren’t any seats available for the flights to Morondava. Thinking outside the box, I thought what if I flipped our schedule and we went to Nosy Be next and did Morondava last? This would also require cancelling our flight from Nosy Be to Kenya and rebooking it from Antananarivo to Kenya.
Was the flight to Kenya cancellable? Yes. It was a United points booking and I could easily cancel it and get our points reinstated and a full refund for the flight taxes that we paid.
Was there a flight from Antananarivo to Kenya available? Yes there was, and it was the same amount of points and taxes.
Great. Next, lets see if there are domestic flights available for going to Nosy Be first and Morondava second. There were! I told Kate what I had come up with and she stated that the tour operators had come up with the same idea. The tour operators sent us an invoice for the flights which we paid and we rejiggered the entire trip. In the end, most of the tour operators stated that the domestic flights would be paid for by us. Except, there was another section that stated that the cost of the tour had increased because the cost of the flights had increased. So these were in opposition.
(sorry this is chronologically out of order). On May 16th we drove from Antananarivo to Andasibe National Park. The asphault road was the worst paved road we’ve ever been on. For eight hours their were continuous potholes. There were the usual pedestrians walking through traffic, bikes, cars and motorcycles passing inches away from our vehicle. I always demand seatbelts, but most people in Africa don’t wear them. Granted, seatbelts wouldn’t have helped the two people that were killed while riding on a motorcycle (we saw the covered corpses).
The one good thing about this eight hour trip is that we got to stop at Exotic MD reptile reserve on the way. What a treat. Probably my second best animal encounter in all of Africa. They had an enclosure, maybe 30′ deep by 160′ wide by 20′ high, that housed dozens of chameleons and geckos. Absolutely gorgeous, friendly creatures. Beautiful colors and some were up to 18″ long. It was heaven. Our guide brought some bugs and we watched them snatch them with their tongue. Their tongues are just as long as their body is. So imagine seeing an 18″ tongue shoot out and grab a bug in a blink of an eye.
Besides the chameleons and geckos, they have other enclosures that house snakes, frogs, hedgehogs, other types of lizards and more. We both took the opportunity to hold a boa constrictor and neither one of us got hiss-terical!
After the reptile reserve, once we got near our destination we did an afternoon trek at the Vio Reserve. While we were there we saw mouse lemurs, chameleons and frogs.
That evening we checked into the Mantadia lodge. After dropping our bags, we left the lodge to go on a night walk in the Mitsinjo Reserve. Here we saw mouse lemurs, frogs and a chameleon.
On the 17th we went to Mantadia National Park. We explored that for a couple hours and we sighted Indri lemurs, golden safika lemurs and brown lemurs.
On the 18th we checked out of the Mantadia Lodge. We did a morning trek in Analamazaotra National Park where we saw Indri lemurs, golden safika lemurs, brown lemurs and two very small geckos.
Then we had an enjoyable ride (not!) back to Antananarivo where we spent another night in the Au Bois Vert Lodge. But! We took the opportunity to make a second trip to the Exotic MD Reptile Reserve. Who could resist?
On the 19th we flew north to Nosy Be (an island on the northwest side of Madagascar) and checked into the Maison Ylang hotel. This was a planning day for us.
On the 20th, we went scuba diving at the Tanikely beach dive site and at the Tanikely South dive site. These were both excellent reef dives. We saw a total of 18 rays, five turtles, a morey eel, a nurse shark and some types of sea stars that I had never seen before. Kate has now been diving for two years and you can see how much more comfortable she is with it now.
On the 21st we went on a tour of Lokobe Island. We rode in a pirogue (the local version of an outrigger canoe) to the island. We had a great experience and spotted a boa constrictor, a second snake, chameleons, geckos and many lemurs (black lemurs and mouse lemurs). The black lemurs climbed all over us which is always fun.
On the 22nd we flew back to Antananarivo. Then we got a second flight to Morondova. We drove north to the Avenue of the Baobobs. These huge trees seem to be almost all trunk with very little canopy. We checked into the Relais de Kirindy. We went to the Kirindy Forest and did a night walk. We spotted grey mouse lemurs, fork marked lemurs and red-tailed sportive lemurs.
On the 23rd we checked out of the Relais de Kirindy. We did a morning walk in the Kirindy Forest and saw red fronted brown lemurs and verreaux sifaka (white) lemurs. We checked into the Soleil de Tsingy.
On the 24th, we drove to the Manambolo river and took a pole pirogue upriver to a cave that we explored. After that we went further upriver and our guide showed us indigenous gravesites along the river canyon walls. After finishing with the river, we drove to Tsingy de Memaraha National Park. We hiked into the park and did some Via Ferrata climbing on bolted in rock steps. We also did some canyoneering and spelunking. The calcified limestone pinnacles in Tsingy are amazing. I’ve never seen so many jagged points. It looks like a great spot for a movie where the bad guy, you guessed it, falls and gets impaled by one of the sharp crags. Fortunately that didn’t happen to me.
That night we did a night walk and saw numerous geckos and a couple Kingfishers.
On the 25th, we checked out of Relais de Kirindy and drove back to Morondova. Along the way we got stuck in a muddy road for thirty minutes before someone was able to tow us out. We checked into the Chez Maggie. That afternoon we drove back to the Avenue of the Baobobs for the sunset.
On the 26th, we drove to the Avenue of the Baobobs for the sunrise. We went back to our hotel for breakfast. Then we took a Pirogue on a river to a fishing village that we toured. We checked out of our hotel and caught a flight to Antananarivo. We checked into the Au Bois Vert for the third time.
On the 27th we flew to Nairobi, Kenya, where our next adventure awaits.
Madagascar final thoughts. The roads are the worst in Africa. The infrastructure is almost as bad as Ethiopia. There were more slums/shanty towns than in other African country we’ve been to. The food is bad. The cocktails are terrible. The wifi sucks. The humidity is bad and the mosquitos are awful.
On the plus side: Lemurs, chameleons and excellent scuba diving!