Coverage / Madagascar
Madagascar
Eastern Africa
The world's fourth-largest island, off the southeast coast of Africa, where close to 90 percent of the wildlife lives nowhere else on earth. Madagascar runs from the eastern rainforests of Andasibe and Ranomafana, home to the singing indri and other lemurs, to the limestone pinnacles of Tsingy de Bemaraha, the baobab-lined roads of the west around Morondava, and the humpback-whale channels off Ile Sainte-Marie and the dive reefs of Nosy Be.
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What you can do in Madagascar
Wildlife Safaris
- Andasibe-MantadiaSep Oct Nov DecAndasibe-Mantadia is the easiest place in Madagascar to meet the indri, the largest living lemur and the one whose eerie, whale-like song carries more than a kilometre through the rainforest canopy at dawn. The reserves here hold habituated indri family groups, so a morning walk in the Analamazaotra forest almost always ends with a close, unhurried sighting of these black-and-white primates high in the trees. Alongside them the forest shelters the diademed sifaka, common brown and grey bamboo lemurs, and chameleons from the giant Parson's down to thumbnail-sized brookesias, while a night walk turns up mouse lemurs, leaf-tailed geckos and tree frogs. It is three to four hours by road east of the capital on a paved highway, which makes it the standard first stop on almost any Madagascar wildlife trip. Guiding here is community-run, so the fees you pay put money straight into local conservation and village projects rather than into an outside operator.
- Ile Sainte-MarieJul Aug SepEvery southern winter, from about July to September, thousands of humpback whales leave the Antarctic and gather in the warm channel between Ile Sainte-Marie and the Madagascar mainland to mate, calve and raise their young. The narrow, sheltered water means the animals pass close to shore, and a morning boat trip regularly delivers breaches, tail-slaps, escorting males and mothers nursing newborn calves, often with the song of the males audible through the hull. Sainte-Marie is the classic base for this migration, a long island that was once a pirate haven and still holds an overgrown pirate cemetery above the bay. July brings the Festival des Baleines, a week of concerts, pirogue races and whale science at Ambodifotatra that marks the start of the season. Watching is regulated by a local code of good conduct, so boats keep their distance and the whales set the terms of every encounter rather than being chased.
- RanomafanaSep Oct Nov DecRanomafana protects a steep swathe of montane rainforest in the southeast and is the park that put Malagasy lemur science on the map: the golden bamboo lemur was discovered here in 1986, a find that led directly to the park's creation in 1991. Twelve lemur species live in the forest, including the critically endangered greater bamboo lemur, the red-bellied lemur and Milne-Edwards' sifaka, and the reserve is one of the best places in the country to see them in wild forest rather than at a feeding station. Days are spent climbing forest trails after mixed-species troops, while the roadside night walks turn up mouse and dwarf lemurs, chameleons and the occasional striped civet. The park also gives its name to the Centre ValBio research station on its edge, a reminder that this is a living laboratory as much as a wildlife destination, and the surrounding hills steam with the hot springs that give the town its name.
Best months at a glance
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