Madagascar Travel Guide

Madagascar makes for a scintillating beach destination. Indeed, for many visitors, the primary attraction of this Indian Ocean island is the postcard-perfect beaches, turquoise lagoons, whispering palm plantations, craggy islets and snorkel-friendly coral reefs that adorn its 10,000km (6,000-mile) coastline, from well-developed seaside resorts such as Nosy Be and Ifaty-Mangily to the more uncrowded likes of Île Sainte-Marie and the magnificent Baie de Sainte Luce.

For adventurous travellers, however, Madagascar really comes into its own away from the beaches. This immense tropical island is sometimes referred to as the Eighth Continent on account of its unique biodiversity, which incorporates an estimated 10,000 animal and plant species found nowhere else in the world. Now protected in a network of roughly 50 official national parks and reserves, this diversity includes 100 species of loveable lemur, and a similar tally of chameleons and endemic birds.
There is a through-the-looking-glass quality to Madagascar’s natural landscapes. From the preposterous octopus trees that dominate the ‘spiny forest’ of the semi-arid south to the cuddly panda-meets-koala indris that wail with ear-shattering abandon from the eastern rainforest canopy; from the surrealist serrated limestone formations known as tsingy to the magnificently photogenic Allée des Baobabs, Madagascar often seems to exist in an evolutionary universe parallel to the rest of the planet.