A dream called Madagascar - Part One

Trip organisation: Altrovolo viaggi. Hotels visited: Vakona Lodge (Perinet)-Tana Plaza(Antananarivo)- Colbert(Diego Suarez)-Domaine de Fontanay(Joffreville)-La Mer(Ankify)-Tsarabanjina l'Hotel(Tsarabanjina). Departure on Saturday 05/08/06 from Malpensa with Air Madagascar: destination Antananarivo. First stop after 9.5 hours at Nosy Be, where the plane drops off a first group of tourists before reaching Antananarivo. Total flight time 12 hours. On arrival at the airport we find our driver Lubert (nicknamed Lupin) waiting for us with a sign bearing our surname. He introduced us to the other members of the Gasikara agency, to whom we gave the material Altrovolo had provided from Italy: videotapes and newspapers to let them learn our language, and we changed money at the airport agency SOCI.MAD, which has a better rate than the others.

I advise you not to change too much money because life costs very little; to eat for 2 (breakfast-lunch-dinner) we spent 20 € a day in total. Lubert loads us into his car of an unknown model but still working. Direction: Vakona Lodge. The journey is very long, about 5 hours even though it's only 160 km. There are no potholes, the road is paved but there are many bends and the pace is slow, to allow us to look around and take the first photos. The landscape in this area is marked by streams, hills reflected in the water of the rice paddies and terraced crops. We can make out the women washing clothes in the streams and spreading the multicoloured laundry on the grass to dry. We can't resist and stop to capture this moment, and we have our first contact with the local people, to whom we give a few things we brought from home.

We continue our journey and finally arrive at the Vakona Lodge, where a wonderful sight awaits us. A hotel immersed in the rainforest. You cannot imagine the lush nature that surrounds it. The main body of the hotel is shaped like a bungalow with a pointed roof, built on stilts over a small pond that mirrors the sky and the dense vegetation. The rooms are built to the side and connected to the restaurant by little wooden bridges. Vakona has a large private park and we took advantage of it to visit it straight away. The first thing we wanted to see were the lemurs, teddy-bear-like creatures they call monkeys but which have very little to do with monkeys. They are extraordinary, there are so many species, all different from one another. The first one we saw was grey and yellow and let itself be stroked. It took the banana from our hand.

It's an emotion to see these animals and meanwhile I became more and more aware of being in Madagascar and not another country, because it is the only place in the world that is home to them. We continue our route and meet other very funny ones that launch themselves from the tree branches to jump on your shoulders. They are lovely and we had a lot of fun because at times you can have 2 on your shoulders and one on your head! The sound they make is unrepeatable, I swear I tried many times at home too but with no result! We then saw the chameleons and took them on our arm for the obligatory photo. They are beautiful and have incredible colours. Their eyes turn 360 degrees and they always manage to see you. They are not aggressive. We saw some of tiny size (1 cm) and some very large ones. It remains a mystery how the guides manage to spot them, especially the small ones...

never mind! Other inhabitants of the reserve are the crocodiles and there really are many of them, don't be scared, they are not free. As a first day we are satisfied and take the chance to go and sleep a bit! We wake up just in time to enjoy dinner which, I must say, is very good. The temperature drops in the evening and something heavy is advisable. In the restaurant we had dinner with the fireplace lit. The next morning Lupin comes to pick us up early to return to Antananarivo. I had read in the guide about a Camaleon Farm right on the way back and so I asked Lupin to take us there. It's worth it. Here too there are lemurs, an endless series of chameleons and other "mimetic" insects, butterflies, crocodiles etc. etc. In the afternoon we return to Tanà and by car we do a tour of the markets, the centre and Lake Anosy, which is in the southern part of the city.

In the middle of this lake, on a small island, stands the "monument to the dead" who fell in the First World War. At the end of the panoramic tour, we go to our hotel (Tana Plaza) and stay there because we don't feel safe walking around the streets of Tanà on our own... we tried... we left the hotel and were immediately surrounded by groups of not very trustworthy people and decided to turn back. From the window of our room we could see all the coming and going of the city and I don't know how many thousands of people there were on the street, most of them on foot heading to the nearby markets, and one thing we noticed... not a single European! They had told us there would be a curfew at night... what curfew? People kept moving about as in the afternoon and were getting ready for dinner...

homeless families cooking food of dubious origin on little stoves on the pavements, others preparing cardboard to sleep on for the night. The most painful sight we saw was when the hotel put out the rubbish container and a group of people threw themselves on it and began tearing open all the bags to eat the leftovers. I swear, nothing was left, not even the bags... The next morning we have the flight to Antsiranana, Diego Suarez, where a mega-jeep and our driver await us to begin the northern tour. They take us to the hotel (Colbert), which is not as luxurious as the Grand Hotel next door but isn't bad either. We set off to explore the surroundings of Diego and find landscapes completely different from the highlands. Here the earth is red, with canyons carved by the wind, baobabs, the blue sea and the contrast with the intense blue sky is a perfect match.

We explore the bay of Diego with its "Sugarloaf" and the beaches of Sakalava (very windy) and Ramena, very beautiful, where we have our first swim in Madagascar! We return to the hotel and dine in the Colbert bistro, where I must say there is a wide choice of meat and fish. The next morning we set off for Joffreville, which is 40 km from Diego, where we will visit the "Montagne d'Ambre" national park, which involves a volcanic massif whose height ranges from 850 to 1480 m. The rainfall creates several waterfalls and makes the forest very green and dense with vegetation. We have the impression of being enveloped at any moment by some parasitic plant and, faced with all this nature, we feel very small. We have a nice walk of about 4 hours. We found other species of lemurs, chameleons and birds.

After seeing the beautiful waterfalls we arrive at the spot where our guides have prepared lunch for us... rice, 2 fish, 2 chicken wings, 2 fried vegetable patties and bread... Just at that moment (luckily) it starts to rain and our hesitation about eating goes unnoticed........TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO