One week in Madagascar is a breeze. It’s not enough time if you want to explore every kind of cold, hot, wet and beachy climate that this island has to offer. It’s a biologist’s paradise, as it contains many species of endemic animals (lemurs) and plants (baobab trees) in ecosystems that are found nowhere else in the world.
Stay longer: I made the mistake of going by a travel agent’s advice to only book one week. Don’t listen to the travel agent. Book two to three weeks in Madagascar if you want to see it all. But be ready to splurge. My trip for one week with a private driver cost $1,300, and it’ll be even more for a comprehensive tour. Of course it depends where you go. I didn’t go south into the rainforests this time; my itinerary took us west.
Lower expectations: Touring Madagascar by car revealed several disappointments. They shadowed my experience, despite my appreciation for the wildlife and natural environment. For instance, I had heard that roads would be bad. But they are bad. They are broken in an astounding number of ways, not only physically but a symptom of other social problems. They’re so bad that I saved talk about them for another post.
But there was still plenty of remarkable things to do, see and eat. Here a few highlights from my trip:
Day One: Antananarivo to Antsirabe
Go mora mora: The airport of the capital of Antananarivo, or “Tana,” as it’s called by locals, is so small it only has one conveyor belt for multiple incoming flights. It wasn’t clear which bags came from which plane, so it was a bit hectic as crowds jostled for space to pick up their suitcase. The modest airport betrays the actual size of the city’s population of 3 million people, including the surrounding suburbs.
I got a taste for the slow pace of island life immediately off the plane. Locals have a word for it in Malagasy: “Mora mora.” It can mean, literally, “slow slow,” or taking it easy. My guide and I were stuck for two hours while we waited for the car to be fixed, a repair that was supposed to only take 15 minutes. Finally we hit the road under a full moon and an expanse of stars to Antsirabe.
Day Two: Morondava
I woke up to a crispy, chilly morning. The cities of Tana and Antsirabe are in the colder highlands, where descendants of Malay and Indonesians had settled. We set off west and down in the lowlands to see the baobab trees. This leg of the journey was by far the most unpleasant. Sun beat down on my face and legs, and the AC wasn’t cold enough in the SUV. Add bad roads to the mix, and I was pretty grumpy by the time we arrived at the famous “avenue of the baobabs.”
Find the baobabs: This is where I faced another surprising disappointment. About a dozen baobab trees, scraggly-looking because it was winter and they didn’t have leaves, were dotted along a dirt path, but by no means is there any sort of baobab forest. Why? My tour guide explained that tribes in the area were cultivating bigger plots of rice to expand agriculture production. Baobab trees need dry land to grow and so couldn’t survive in the drenched soil of around rice paddies. As if to prove a point, in the distance, a large baobab tree had fallen over, its roots sticking up. Other trees were chopped down or burned in large fires to make way for rice fields.
Baobab trees remain impressive despite human interference with their growth. Meaning “mother of the forest” in Malagasy, their lives span hundreds of years. Tribes worship the oldest one in the area, “le baobab sacre.” Worshippers must take off their shoes to walk on the holy ground next to the tree. In Madagascar, pointing at sacred sites and graveyards is taboo; instead, you can curl your forefinger to gesture in the direction of the object or stretch out your palm with all five fingers. The silhouette of baobabs is striking: They are straight-backed like a tall man with great posture, and their branches fan out at the top like an umbrella.
Day Three: Bekopaka
Take an epic ferry crossing: It was a long, rough-and-tumble ride on a dirt road from the avenue of the baobabs to Bekopaka, but we got a reprieve from the rolling and the swaying at an epic ferry crossing. One by one, SUVs drove across two pieces of metal planks and onto a makeshift wooden raft laid on top of two pirogues. It took more than half an hour just to fit all the cars onto the raft like puzzle pieces, but after that, once we had all boarded, it was a perfect perch on the edge as we drifted down the Tsiribinha River. Watch a video of it here.
Later in the afternoon, we crossed a smaller river, also by pirogue.
Day Four: Bekopaka and the Grand Tsingy hike
Explore river caves: Before the hike, I had another epic river crossing, this time with me sitting in a narrow pirogue not much wider than my two legs pressed together, a guide and our skipper, a stylish older man wearing a red fedora hat and sweatsuit. He pushed us down the shallow Manambolo River by digging a long stick into the riverbed and propelling us forward. We visited several limestone caves where crocodiles lay their eggs and the Vazimba tribe give offerings to the dead.
Hike the Tsingy: After I did my best to gracefully slip my legs through the loops of a harness, we walked through a grassy savannah and then a stroll through shady forests until we hit walls of limestone. Then we began the ascent. I clipped my harness to metal cables bolted into the wall and scampered up ledges and around sheer drop-offs next to sharp spires of rock. “Do you have vertigo?” my guide asked. Thankfully I did not. But at one point I felt my knee quiver in fear. By far the most adrenaline shot through my body during my walk on a bridge across the gorge. But once I reached the top, the panoramic views of geological formations were stunning.
Spot lemurs! Tsingy is made even cooler by the abundance of wildlife: medicinal plants, ropes of parasite vines, a blue bird called a coua, at least two types of lemurs and chameleons chilling out on a branch. We were incredibly lucky and saw the sportive lemur hanging out on a tree, as well as a family of white lemurs, a species that lives only in this part of Madagascar.
Day Five: Morondava
Browse cute markets: Always. Wander. Off. The. Tour. In Belo Sur Tsirinbinha, after my guide dropped me off at a restaurant, I broke free from the tour and wandered off on my own down some dusty back streets. There, a colorful, energetic market blasted me with sights and smells. A maze of stalls between turquoise and deep blue walls, woven baskets of white rice with flies sitting on top, iron pans sizzling with oil, blue plastic tarps with neat rows of purple shallots, oval tomatoes, fresh lettuce. I was the only tourist there. Under an awning, I bought two small woven rugs for 5,000 ariary, and because no tourists come around I didn’t even have to haggle.
Sit on the beach: Morondava is a humble but charming beach town to rest in for the travel-weary. There’s a small domestic airport nearby, so you could skip the driving, but then you might miss all the little produce markets lit up by swinging naked lightbulbs and goods laid out on plastic tarps on the ground.
Eat fish filet at sunset: At sunset, I wandered down the calm, quiet beach. It’s nothing like the overdevelopment of Bali or Thailand. A ghost building sat on a pier, and there were only a sprinkling of little restos serving fish. I chose one on the sand that had a poster of Che Guevara on the wall. I ate two thick fish steaks served with minced tomato salsa, French fries, one giant scoop of homemade coconut ice cream and a tomato salad with chopped red onion and lettuce and a pinch of chives, all laid out on a cute wooden serving tray. Two other French tourists soon sat next to me. But this stretch of beach is still really for locals. I watched a sailboat float ashore with fresh fish of the day. Women quickly divvied up the fish, put baskets of the catch on their heads and headed for the market. A few of them had smeared a paste on their cheeks, a natural sunscreen made from ground-up bark.
Day Six: Antsirabe
Dip in the hot springs: Up in the highlands, Antsirabe is a popular vacation spot for other Madagascans looking for a break. Known as “ville d’eaux,” or the city of water, Antsirabe’s main attraction are natural thermal baths. They seemed to be worth a try, though I didn’t have time to go.
Stroll downtown: A walk about town is advised: You can see a church built by a Norweigan settler, a monument commemorating the 1960 independence from France, rows of rickshaws pulled by hand, a beautiful mosque and some old colonial buildings.
Day Seven: Antananarivo
Back to the capital. City traffic was so bad it took nearly three hours just to go from one side to another near the airport.
